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  1. VideoGuy
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    (hope i have the right section)

    I have a DVD that is in PAL format and I need to convert it over to NTSC so it will play in the DVD player. Any ideas?
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  2. Member DB83's Avatar
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    Now the simplest way is like this.

    1. Rip the disk to your HDD.
    2. Use vob2mpg to create a single mpeg file of main movie
    3. Load mpeg file in to avstodvd with NTSC as the format setting
    4. Author dvd from that program
    5. Use imgburn to burn to a blank disk

    Simpler still

    Play the original PAL disk on your PC using vlc

    Even if you converted the disk the hard way, you still could not use the menus.
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  3. VideoGuy
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    Thanks. I was trying to find a way that enabled me to keep the whole DVD intact. From researching here i found that you are right. It will be very hard to convert over while keeping the menus. https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/209559-DVD-PAL-to-NTSC-or-NTSC-to-PAL-DVD-Conversio...=1#post1221807

    Only one that looks easiest to me that id try would be - https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/166266-PAL-NTSC-DVD-Conversion-%28patch-method%29

    What I do with some DVD's is this - I rip the title menu to an image then import it as the menu screen and add some small button next to each original menus button (play, chapters etc). For sound on the menu I open the corresponding .IFO and rip with pgcdemux or audacity (both work fine for this) then import it. The only thing I cant do are extras and chapters. There is some discussion though here that explains how to do it. However it looks a bit difficult - https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/209559-DVD-PAL-to-NTSC-or-NTSC-to-PAL-DVD-Conversion
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  4. Many (most?) North American NTSC players can play PAL disks. It's the region code that stops them from playing PAL imports. If you rip the disc and burn your own it will be region free.
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  5. VideoGuy
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Many (most?) North American NTSC players can play PAL disks. It's the region code that stops them from playing PAL imports. If you rip the disc and burn your own it will be region free.
    I was under the impression that most were too but every DVD player I have tried wont play one. It's not just the DVD it's the DVD player too. You can make some of them region free. However I tried that on a couple too and had zero luck.
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  6. If you do what I told you your disc will be region free. Then it doesn't matter if the player is region free or not.

    I have a number of region free PAL import DVDs and they play just fine in every player I've had in the last 15 years, whether the player was region free or not. And every PAL DVD I've burned has played without any problems.
    Last edited by jagabo; 12th Apr 2016 at 18:45.
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  7. VideoGuy
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    I always do region free when ripping. The DVD was already ripped so I didnt have that ability. Thats why im stuck with it the way it is.
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  8. Member DB83's Avatar
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    @jagabo

    I, obviously, am at a disadvantage here being on the other side of the pond. But I have read many posts on here about issues with PAL disks on NTSC tvs. And, yes, nothing to do with region coding.
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  9. Originally Posted by DB83 View Post
    I, obviously, am at a disadvantage here being on the other side of the pond. But I have read many posts on here about issues with PAL disks on NTSC tvs. And, yes, nothing to do with region coding.
    Yes, some players will not play PAL discs properly. And North American TVs almost never accept PAL video input. But in my experience most DVD/BD players will convert to NTSC (quality varies) when they play PAL discs. I guess the OP's players don't. One of the first thing I do when I get a new player is test PAL playback. If it doesn't work the player goes back.
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  10. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    Sony ntsc dvd/blu-ray players will not play pal discs even if they are region free,only way to play pal on these is to have them as mkv and play as data on sony blu-ray players.
    I think,therefore i am a hamster.
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  11. Originally Posted by johns0 View Post
    Sony ntsc dvd/blu-ray players will not play pal discs
    It doesn't surprise me that Sony, the company most unfriendly to consumers, would be the exception to the rule.
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  12. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    Ya,the same company that uses cinavia.
    I think,therefore i am a hamster.
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  13. I have had to deal with many PAL DVDs over the years. I too am in NTSC land.

    The easiest solution is to find a way to play the disc on your TV. I haven't purchased a DVD player for quite awhile, but none of mine will play PAL DVDs, so my experience is the same as yours.

    However ...

    ALL of my computers have DVD players, and they will easily play PAL DVDs. Therefore, if all you want to do is play this on your big-screen TV for your own enjoyment (i.e., you are not making copies to send to other people), then the easiest thing to do is to hook up a laptop to your TV. In making this recommendation, I assume you have a modern HD TV that is not "hard-wired" to the old NTSC 29.97 interlaced standard. On an older laptop, you can use the VGA connector, if your TV supports it. Even better, if your laptop outputs DVI or HDMI you can use either of those to connect to an unused HDMI input of your TV. The DVI output of the laptop will require a DVI to HDMI adapter, which is a $3 item from Monoprice.

    In addition, my son's XBox plays PAL DVDs with no problem. Other game consoles that support round shiny objects may also work.

    If none of these suggestions will work for you, then you have to convert. I have done many conversions of PAL DVDs into NTSC. Nick Hope, who posts at both doom9.org and the Sony Creative Software forum developed a very nice workflow using QTGMC to do the standards conversion.

    Perfectionists' PAL<=>NTSC Conversion

    I don't know if it is "perfection," but it works pretty well. When I've done these conversions, I rip the DVD using options that tell the ripper to create a single VOB file. I then feed that into Nick's QTGMC AVisynth script. It creates an NTSC-compatible video file that I then feed to my DVD authoring program.

    Finally, I understand that you would prefer to have the resulting NTSC version still have all the original DVD menus, etc. That is much more difficult, although I'll bet there is some re-authoring software that might make this easier. Unfortunately I don't know what program to recommend. I've re-authored several DVDs a long time ago, preserving menus, but my brute-force approach was not very pretty and involved PGCEdit and lots of other software that is not that easy to use.

    Even though I have authored hundreds and hundreds of DVDs, over the years I have come to actually dislike most complex menus because they take so long to play and, with commercial DVDs, I have to wait through all these PUO screens containing corporate logos, warnings, and advertising. When I rent a movie on DVD (which I still do via Netflix), I always rip it using DVDShrink's "re-author" mode specifically so I don't have to sit through all the darn menus.

    But that's just me ...
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  14. Originally Posted by johnmeyer View Post
    Nick Hope, who posts at both doom9.org and the Sony Creative Software forum developed a very nice workflow using QTGMC to do the standards conversion.
    While it looks like a nice script, I think it should be made clear it's for interlaced PAL sources. For progressive sources that's not necessary or desirable and a waste of time producing inferior results.

    As for the menus, the easiest way to approximate the original menus is just to save out menu screens as BMPs, resize to 720x480 and use them in an authoring program. If you have motion menus and wish to reuse them in the NTSC DVD, just reencode them for NTSC and use them in any decent authoring program. I use DVDAuthorGUI. You can use the authoring program's buttons or, if you're clever, make your own based on the originals (I don't bother).

    Trying to convert every aspect of the menus is quite difficult. I've done it before as an exercise to see if I could, and it's no fun.

    Originally Posted by pcapone View Post
    The only thing I cant do are extras and chapters.
    I don't know why not. You reencode the extras for NTSC and add them as separate titles/PGCs when authoring. Chapter points are converted from PAL to NTSC frame numbers by a factor of 2997/2500. You can get the original frame numbers in a celltimes.txt when demuxing with PGCDemux.
    Last edited by manono; 13th Apr 2016 at 17:01.
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  15. Originally Posted by manono View Post
    While it looks like a nice script, I think it should be made clear it's for interlaced PAL sources. For progressive sources that's not necessary or desirable and a waste of time producing inferior results.
    That's a really good point. I just re-read the OP's posts and I don't think he mentioned whether his DVD is progressive or interlaced.

    For 24p material that has been changed to 25p simply by changing the playback speed and then adjusting the audio, the workflow to go from that back to 23.976 for playback on NTSC equipment is a completely different workflow than what Nick presented. With the right tools it can be done with virtually no quality reduction because no re-rendering is needed.
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  16. VideoGuy
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    Originally Posted by johnmeyer View Post
    In addition, my son's XBox plays PAL DVDs with no problem. Other game consoles that support round shiny objects may also work.
    I never thought about that. Just tried now and my pal discs play fine.
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  17. VideoGuy
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    as for the extras and chapters I would need to rip those and create menus. I have never used PGCDemux for that purpose.

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/254043-Guide-for-extracting-menus-for-editing-and-r...g-edited-menus
    Last edited by pcapone; 14th Apr 2016 at 04:50.
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  18. Originally Posted by pcapone View Post
    Originally Posted by johnmeyer View Post
    In addition, my son's XBox plays PAL DVDs with no problem. Other game consoles that support round shiny objects may also work.
    I never thought about that. Just tried now and my pal discs play fine.
    Wonderful! An easy solution for you. Enjoy!
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  19. Originally Posted by johnmeyer View Post
    ALL of my computers have DVD players, and they will easily play PAL DVDs.
    I used to play PAL DVD's through PC but over network, I had shared VIDEO_TS for drive all the time. So WDTV Live player could play it over network.

    But to have DVD player that is capable to play it is much better, those things cost very little. Latest I had was some VIZIO from Walmart. They are cheap but not lasting much. 4 years top.
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  20. VideoGuy
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    Originally Posted by _Al_ View Post
    Originally Posted by johnmeyer View Post
    ALL of my computers have DVD players, and they will easily play PAL DVDs.
    I used to play PAL DVD's through PC but over network, I had shared VIDEO_TS for drive all the time. So WDTV Live player could play it over network.

    But to have DVD player that is capable to play it is much better, those things cost very little. Latest I had was some VIZIO from Walmart. They are cheap but not lasting much. 4 years top.
    Someone needs to compile a list of known cheap universal players that will play pal fine. Would come in handy.
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  21. Originally Posted by pcapone View Post
    Someone needs to compile a list of known cheap universal players that will play pal fine. Would come in handy.
    Hey, this site already does that!

    Go to the "DVD Players" link at the top of this page. Expand the list of features you are searching for ("more features") and put a check mark in "Multisystem PAL/NTSC". Then search. I got a listing of 388 players:

    Multisystem PAL/NTSC DVD Players

    I don't know how many of these are currently manufactured, but there is probably a way to filter or sort so you can restrict the listing.
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  22. VideoGuy
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    Originally Posted by johnmeyer View Post
    Originally Posted by pcapone View Post
    Someone needs to compile a list of known cheap universal players that will play pal fine. Would come in handy.
    Hey, this site already does that!

    Go to the "DVD Players" link at the top of this page. Expand the list of features you are searching for ("more features") and put a check mark in "Multisystem PAL/NTSC". Then search. I got a listing of 388 players:

    Multisystem PAL/NTSC DVD Players

    I don't know how many of these are currently manufactured, but there is probably a way to filter or sort so you can restrict the listing.
    Good looking out!
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  23. victoriaRex MISS CHIEVOUS's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    If you do what I told you your disc will be region free. Then it doesn't matter if the player is region free or not.
    Incorrect. I've tried this on 2 different R1 (non-BluRay) players and neither works. Stripping the region code with Fab also has never worked for me. I hope the OP won't mind my hijacking the thread but this is exactly my search topic.

    I'm looking for the the best free converter that uses the fewest separate steps after visiting:
    VIDEOHELP's All-In-One Tools, and . . .

    Has anything improved since the last time I asked this same question?
    Flying around and ready to bite.
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  24. Member hech54's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by MISS CHIEVOUS View Post
    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    If you do what I told you your disc will be region free. Then it doesn't matter if the player is region free or not.
    Incorrect. I've tried this on 2 different R1 (non-BluRay) players and neither works. Stripping the region code with Fab also has never worked for me. I hope the OP won't mind my hijacking the thread but this is exactly my search topic.
    Then you are in America trying to play PAL (region 2, 4 etc etc) DVDs on an NTSC television.
    Region Codes and PAL/NTSC are two totally different things.

    A person in Europe or Australia(or 99% of the PAL-world) can simply copy a DVD from anywhere in the world with any of the free tools
    available and it will play perfectly on their PAL system.
    It is NOT the same in America.
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  25. Originally Posted by MISS CHIEVOUS View Post
    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    If you do what I told you your disc will be region free. Then it doesn't matter if the player is region free or not.
    Incorrect. I've tried this on 2 different R1 (non-BluRay) players and neither works. Stripping the region code with Fab also has never worked for me.
    The problem isn't the region code. It's the fact that most North American DVD players can't handle the PAL frame rate and frame size. In that case you have to convert the video from PAL to NTSC and reencode.
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  26. Originally Posted by MISS CHIEVOUS View Post
    Was there something wrong with jagabo's reply at the end of the thread to which you linked? If it seems like too much work, then AvsToDVD can also do the PAL to NTSC conversion properly. jagabo's gets you no menu. Using AvsToDVD you can make a simple menu. No automated way will get you menus exactly like the originals. If you know what you're doing and are willing to put in a whole lot of work (which you don't and which you aren't), you can get a pretty good facsimile of the original.
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  27. victoriaRex MISS CHIEVOUS's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by manono View Post
    If you know what you're doing and are willing to put in a whole lot of work (which you don't and which you aren't), you can get a pretty good facsimile of the original.
    Well. There's the rub. I have purchased exactly two [R2] PAL movies:
    Kim Stanley's (1964) Séance on a Wet Afternoon and Paul Scofield's (1971) King Lear

    I managed to give Séance a sex change using VobBlanker but it wasn't pretty!! It plays, but only after fooling around with both the tray -and- the Play/Power buttons on my DVD player. That's the last time I attempt a FAB-PAL backup with nothing other than VobBlanker lol! The exercise did however mature into a better understanding of getting at bits and pieces of my video collection that annoy the hell out of me, and VobBlanker has come in handy dozens of times since Séance.

    That skill developed, I might be up to revisiting King Lear and am heartened that AVStoDVD's Author is an active participant in the Videohelp Forums, with a dedicated support thread. I guess what confuses me is this:

    Why have a section entitled "All in One DVD Converters" when apparently none of them are? Do any of you know of a program that doesn't invoke the installation (and knowledge) of at least one other program as a prerequisite? Does any one program allow you to place a DVD in your computer, start the program, and convert the [R2] disk's PAL encoding to an NTSC ISO that's burn-ready? I already have 3 different ISO applications and wouldn't need (and do not want) to install a 4th imaging utility as a pre-condition. AVStoDVD requires ImgBurn, yes? or did I not read the guide correctly?

    Thanks Guys! Just love the Videohelp Forums!
    Flying around and ready to bite.
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  28. Maybe another look, forget the DVD-player, take an old computer and rip + play it with AnyDVD + MPC-BE, then there is no stutter. Just my opinion ...
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  29. Originally Posted by MISS CHIEVOUS View Post
    Does any one program allow you to place a DVD in your computer, start the program, and convert the [R2] disk's PAL encoding to an NTSC ISO that's burn-ready?
    Of course not. Why reinvent the wheel? Making the conversion requires a whole lot of different processes. These might include framerate conversion, resizing, MPEG-2 encoding, applying pulldown, audio conversion, subtitle conversion, authoring, menu and chapter creation, burning to disc, etc., etc. If there are already good freeware programs that handle some of those processes well, why not use them in a freeware all-in-one application as AvsToDVD does?
    Why have a section entitled "All in One DVD Converters" when apparently none of them are?
    Because Pal to NTSC is only a single subset of all-in-one. Most people want to convert AVIs, MKVs, MP4s, etc. to DVDs they can play in their DVD players. In that sense they're all-in-one - they convert a lot of different formats to DVD.
    AVStoDVD requires ImgBurn, yes?
    No. You install it only if you want to burn to disc through AvsToDVD. You are perfectly free to make the ISO or VIDEO_TS file and then burn it to disc yourself, using ImgBurn or any other (inferior) burning program. In fact, I daresay most people don't burn to disc within AvsToDVD because, if they have any sense, they want to check out the DVD AvsToDVD made before burning.

    By the way, I don't have AvsToDVD installed in my computer but, because I make a lot of DVDs, I have most of the programs it uses already.
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  30. Originally Posted by DB83 View Post
    Now the simplest way is like this.

    1. Rip the disk to your HDD.
    2. Use vob2mpg to create a single mpeg file of main movie
    3. Load mpeg file in to avstodvd with NTSC as the format setting
    4. Author dvd from that program
    5. Use imgburn to burn to a blank disk
    Will this work?
    1. Demux the video, audio and subtitles using DVD Decrypter
    2. Use avstodvd to convert the M2V video file from PAL to NTSC while direct stream copy the AC3 audio and SUB subtitle files.

    Will the DVD video be in sync with the audio and subtitles?

    Edit: Found out the video and audio will be in sync but avstodvd may have problems muxing the AC3 and SUB files.
    Using Handbrake to convert the DVD to MP4 with burn-in subs first and then use avstodvd to convert to DVD is faster
    Last edited by digicube; 26th Jun 2018 at 17:48.
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