How to convert a PAL video_ts file to an NTSC video_ts file?

[Huntr777]

Hi all, I have a Pal DVD that I took the encryption off of (via DVD Smith) and now I have a Pal video_ts file. I'd like to convert it to a NTSC video_ts file. I thought I could use Toast 11, but their customer support line told me it will not convert a video_ts file from pal to ntsc. So VideoHelp helpers, is there a program that will do this for me?

[Huntr777]

OH forgot to mention that obviously I need to burn an NTSC DVD from this ntsc video_ts file...

[jman98]

We have tons of guides on doing this, BUT...
I am not sure if we have any on doing this on a Mac.

If you have access to Windows, it's easy. Check our Guides section and use whatever you like. The "patch" method is the easiest and quickest but do note that some standalone DVD players won't play discs made this way. Finally, note that computers do not care about PAL and NTSC so if you use VLC (it ignores region codes) you can play your original DVD on a Mac just fine.

[Huntr777]

I have an iMac, that's why...and I need to burn it to an NTSC DVD for my boss....

[jman98]

I checked and none of our guides cover doing this on a Mac. We do have forum members who look for Mac forum postings (they have a special symbol that shows up in the main news feed) so perhaps one of them will help.

For what it's worth, I have an iMac too that is about 4 or so years old and it has NEVER been able to correctly burn any dual layer DVD discs. I only use Verbatim DVD+R DL which are the best and EVERY attempt I've made has resulted in a coaster. The burner works fine on single layer DVD media though. For your sake I hope this movie is just single layer size. In desperation I even tried using good old reliable ImgBurn under a Windows VM and even it can't burn DL media correctly on my iMac. Fortunately this is not a critical issue for me, but it is annoying.

[Huntr777]

I made this a single layer DVD via DVD2One for the Mac.

[orsetto]

There isn't much in the way of DVD or BD tools available on Mac beyond very basic ripping apps, and as jman98 confirmed the tiny Matsushita and LG slot drives in most Macs are not ideal for anything beyond simple playback and data file archiving. I love my Macs, but never use them for disc creation.

Converting a PAL dvd to NTSC using any computer, Windows or Mac, is more difficult than people expect and best avoided unless someone is paying you big money to do it professionally. It can be done, but the quick-n-dirty way is nasty/unreliable and the "good" way is like solving a Rubik's Cube: fine if you have experience in these tasks, but very tricky if its your first time.

The easiest, most effective conversion method is to go analog: burn the TS file normally as a PAL dvd. Then find any cheap portable or standard DVD player that is "region free" or can be hacked to region-free. These will auto-convert PAL to NTSC during playback, so if you connect them to any standalone DVD recorder you can create an NTSC dvd. You can accomplish the same thing directly playing the video output of your Mac into a DVD recorder, but that requires the little $25 Apple plug adapter that converts the monitor jack to Composite/S Video.

Alternatively, you could digitally convert the Video_TS files on the Mac to an MP4 or AVI, load that into an all-in-one Windows-based tool like DVDflick or AVStoDVD, and tell that program to author an NTSC dvd. As complicated as that sounds, its easier than trying to alter the Video_TS directly. Note digital conversion from PAL to NTSC often results in audio going out of sync, this is avoided using the analog conversion method (which will reduce video quality somewhat).

Unless your boss has money to throw at pro conversion or time to wait for you to learn how to do it properly, analog conversion would be the fastest choice with the least chance of technical glitches.

[Case]

For a progressive scan DVDs, there are easy conversions possible that will skip frames or duplicate frames to go from 25 fps (PAL) to 23.976 fps (NTSC Film) or 29.97 fps (NTSC).
It gets a bit more complicated if the source is interlaced.
So, is your source progressive or interlaced?
If your source video was shot with a DV camera, then I expect it to be interlaced.

Toast's crude conversion from PAL to NTSC can be used if you extract the video as a single MPEG file (per title) first. With .mpg input and Always re-encode on, it will allow output in NTSC format, if set to NTSC in Preferences. It is kind of a black box what Toast does to achieve this, though.
Here's a sample of such a conversion on interlaced material.

[Herve]

For a progressive scan DVDs, there are easy conversions possible[…]

just a notice:

DVD-VIDEO has to be interlaced (it's the norm, both in PAL or NTSC), so you will never encounter a "progressive commercial DVD in PAL" (it's not normalized)
And NTSC Film (aka "cinema") is not an exception": because of the pulldown flag, the resulting stream is written as interlaced too (whatever its progressive contents)

So whatever its real contents, a video in a commercial DVD-VIDEO is always tagged interlaced

---

back to the topic:
- you cannot keep menus after a conversion (too much data are not formatted anymore like in the initial DVD, so your resulting video is not compliant anymore with previous dvd structure)
so,
- remove DRM / protections (if your local laws allow you to do it) -> rip on disk
- extract the .mpg file from your VIDEO_TS with the soft MPegStreamClip (it does a very good job, but you will need the non-free apple MPEG2 component=20$)
- give the resulting mpeg file to …whatever you want (depending on the quality you hoped )

Another option: your boss want it in NTSC? …let him to it himself or just buy it in NTSC

bye

[FulciLives]

When you convert the PAL DVD to a NTSC DVD you have to re-encode it. Therefore you want to do that from an uncompressed DVD rip. Using DVD2One first makes NO sense. All you did was destroy the quality of the original PRIOR to your re-encoding of it to NTSC.

So if you still have the original PAL DVD ... rip it again and DO NOT use any tools that will re-encode / transcode it to a smaller size.

As for doing the conversion itself ... well ... you need to be running either Windows or Linux. I'm not aware of any way that allows doing it properly on a Mac. Surely you have access to such a computer or maybe you can run Windows XP or Linux on your iMac using VirtualBox or some such solution?