How do I turn a PAL dvd into NTSC?

[KeepItSimple]

Hello I ordered a DVD from England because it's not available here in the U.S. and I'm wondering what I have to do to make a back-up that's NTSC. Can I use my usual combination of MTR/DTOX/Toast or is it not that simple?

Thanks in advance for any help!

EDIT: Actually I don't know if it's PAL or not. It's a DVD coming from England and whatever region or format it's in needs to be converted for use here. Thanks!

[dnix71]

There is a post here somewhere on how to do it, but it very time consuming. It's much easier to buy a tabletop dvd player that will play both ntsc and pal. A computer won't care, although you'll have to rip it first to remove the region coding. VLC and MPlayer will happily play a pal movie.

There is a guide here using VLC if you really want to do it.

http://www.jakeludington.com/dvd_hacks/20061125_convert_pal_dvd_for_pc_playback.html

[tomlee59]

I second dnix71's advice. If you really want to live up to your handle and "keep it simple," then just get a standalone player that does the conversion on the fly. I bought a Coby on sale for something like $20, and it is readily made region-free with a few magic keystrokes on the remote, and will output PAL or NTSC. Many other brands will do the same. This is a much lower hassle (and higher quality) method than converting the movie proper.

[phase52001]

DVDs from the UK are generally PAL format & either Region 2 or Region 2+4.
You may find some UK titles are NTSC, but these are generally clearly marked as such.
Here in Australia we're lucky that also being a PAL format country all our TV and stand alone DVD Players are PAL/NTSC.
And we get the occasional NTSC title for sale here, but few people notice.

As everyone says, try and keep it simple.
However; if you have the time you might like to try:

(1.) "MTR" to backup disc to hard drive.
(2.) "MPEG STREAMCLIP" to convert contents to PAL format MOV files. (See TOOLs, it's FREE).
(3.) "MPEG2 Works 4" to convert PAL MOV files to NTSC MPEG2 files. (See Tools, it's NOT free, but worth the small cost).
(4.) TOAST to build a new DVD. (You lose the original menus, but keep the content.
(5.) DTOX to compress to a single DVD.

It does work, but as I say, depending you your processor, it can take some time.
And I mean hours overnight. Still if it's only once and only one title, it may be the better option.

[guns1inger]

Note also that simply converting the video by re-encoding it at 720 x 480 at 29.976 fps will give you poor quality, jerky results from the inevitable duplicated frames. The best results comes from encoding at NTSC resolution but retaining the PAL framerate, then applying pulldown flags to tell the player to add the missing frames on the fly. This gives a much smoother finish.

In the PC world, DGOPulldown is the perfect tool for this, as it allows for custom pulldown intervals. I do not know of a Mac equivalent.

Buy a cheap multi-format player instead.

[FulciLives]

TARGET has the Philips DVP 5140 on sale this week for $39.99 and this DVD player can be easily hacked with a remote control "code" to make it region free. It will do PAL to NTSC conversion. It also does MPEG-4 aka DivX and XviD. I highly recommend it especially at that price.

The sale it good through the end of this coming Saturday.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Herve]

(I don't know if it's an answer or an advertising? )

movieconverter do it
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25944

bye

[rotuts]

Will Toast 8 convert a PAL to NTSC?. the PAL is not copy protected. I see toast in pref says you can have output into PAL will it copy a PAL to NTSC output w/o streamclip?

is this the way to do it? how can I tell on just my computer is something is PAL or NTSC?

cheers and thanks

[phase52001]

movieconverter do it

Is that new? haven't heard of it before. Looks interesting.
Might give it a run after 10.5 finally arrives. (I'm still using 10.3.9).

[phase52001]

Will Toast 8 convert a PAL to NTSC?.

Toast will allow you to build an NTSC formatted disc with NTSC assets or a PAL formatted disc with PAL assets.

the PAL is not copy protected. I see toast in pref says you can have output into PAL will it copy a PAL to NTSC output w/o streamclip?

Neither Toast nor MPEG Streamclip will convert PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL.
The prefs in Toast refer to the format you want the disc to be.
http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/toast8/#features

is this the way to do it? how can I tell on just my computer is something is PAL or NTSC?
cheers and thanks

If you open a VOB on the DVD in question with MPEG Streamclip you can use the SHOW STREAM INFO option to check the DVDs frame rate. 25 fps = PAL; 29.97 = NTSC. (You may encounter 24fps, which is probably also an NTSC disk.)

If you want to copy PAL to NTSC, try "MPEG Works Advanced" or as Herve mentiond "MovieConverter".
Is that what you were asking?

[Herve]

movieconverter do it

Is that new? haven't heard of it before.

"Yes and no", it's the first international version (all previous versions were only in french).
PS: I'm not native english, so if you found some mistakes in my translation, thanks for your feedback
bye

[phase52001]

movieconverter do it

Is that new? haven't heard of it before.

"Yes and no", it's the first international version (all previous versions were only in french).
PS: I'm not native english, so if you found some mistakes in my translation, thanks for your feedback
bye

Thanks for putting up the information about MovieConverter.
I for one would probably not have come across it otherwise. Nice to see an english version released.
And your english is better then I'm seeing on many english sites by english speakers.

haveagoodday.

[Scav2003]

Visual Hub - To convert and Toast to reauthor did a good job for me recently, but the DVD's VIDEO_TS folder only had a small VOB for the whole movie, so there wasn't much reconverting and so forth needed.

Does movie Converter, if using to convert a dvd from PAL->NTSC, keep the menus?
Does it work on VIDEO_TS folder, or a disc image?

[SERBIAN]

DVD PAL <-> NTSC conversion using MPEG2 Works 4 Advanced

[Huntr777]

Here's what'cha do:

Go to BestBuy and snag a Cyberhome for $40 bucks. It will play anything you throw in there, NTSC or Pal. I have one and love it.

or

Use MPEGStreamclip to trnasfer it from Pal to NTSC. Does a great job, have transfered many foreign clips that way.

T

[Scav2003]

I don't think you can buy Cyberhome DVD players anymore...iirc, they got sued out of existence, so they're now called DigitalHouse or something else.

[Huntr777]

Really? Wow that's news to me...but I'm sure there's something else out there that will play Pal discs right out of the box. It seems the cheaper they are the more they'll do.

[FulciLives]

The Philips line of DVD players can do MPEG-4 (DivX and XviD) as well as do PAL to NTSC with MPEG-4 and DVD Video. All are easily "hacked" with simple remote control "codes" which you can find on this website.

Popular models include the (now slightly "old") DVP-5140 and DVP-5960 as well as the slightly newer models such as the DVP-3140, DVP-3960 and the DVP-5982 etc.

I don't think any of those are over $100 and some can be found for under $50

- John "FulciLives" Coleman