Hardware NTSC to PAL Conversion

[Amaroc]

Hello everyone, I would like to buy a hardware converter designed for converting Laserdisc NTSC to PAL. I have a collection of documentaries some of which I would like to convert to PAL DVD. I have the opportunity to buy a used Snell & Wilcox CVR500, or Atlona or Kramer or DataVideo. Does anyone have experience in such conversion and could describe if the result is good ??. And what device did he use ??. Maybe someone will advise which equipment to buy ??. Regards !.

[jagabo]

The field blending used by hardware converters looks poor compared to a proper software conversion.

[hech54]

Equipment in PAL countries have had the ability to display NTSC material for decades. No real need to convert in that direction.

Also note:
This means video.....NOT video games.

[DB83]

Echoing the above.

Concentrate on capturing from the Laserdisc to NTSC video. Then create NTSC dvds. Absolutely no need to mess around with standards-conversion.

[lingyi]

+1 to all the above.

Most current devices easily play NTSC/PAL videos with no conversion necessary at all. LD quality compared to DVD/Blu-Ray is low and you want to retain as much original quality as possible.

[dellsam34]

All the above.

[Amaroc]

Yes, I know all this, but my question was not about it at all. I wanted to know if any of you have already passed this path .. and tried hardware operation ??. I know that the software conversion gives better results, but with the video material I obtained from LD there is no easy work consisting only in getting rid of pulldown and scaling .. It is a documentary material in which there is a mix of different types of material to only reach 30 fps (full ntsc 30 from the camera .., pulldown from footage ... etc .. and interlacing). So far, I have not seen such an Avisynth script written that would be so intelligent to interfere in the material depending on what the situation requires at the moment. (inverted pulldown when needed, and when it encounters other combinations, e.g. 30 fps interlaced, deinterlaced and rendered intermediate frames for a given fps). That is why I decided to buy a hardware converter for some work .. I am waiting for delivery now ... after consulting the seller I chose Snell & Willcox Mach IM.sc has motion compensation on composite input and SDI ... as I will think again what will be the option the best and I will start testing .. at least I will have the idea of ​​audio synchronization .. Currently, the prices of professional equipment from the past era are friendly .. I paid the equivalent of $ 40 for me ... I keep the recorded video material by blackmagic in NTSC using FF1 video codec and flac audio for possible future technologies. This is what advised specialists from archiving in film libraries .. If someone has competent comments on the matter that interests me, I will gladly read them. Regards.

[dellsam34]

What we did not understand is why would you convert a video from 30 f/s to 25 f/s and mess up the already fragile NTSC chroma, There is just no need to that for the reasons the members explained above, Maybe I'm not getting what you wanted, apologies.

[DB83]

I may be wrong but that that standards converter will also not be intelligent enough to determine different sources. Original PAL video on the NTSC disk will still appear as blended PAL and not pure PAL.

Avisynth scripts are not intelligent. They are written to a purpose and I do understand that you can write in to a script to only process certain frames which you have already determined by visual means that require specific treatment.

[manono]

Yes, I know all this, but my question was not about it at all. I wanted to know if any of you have already passed this path .. and tried hardware operation ??.

I have and it was a complete waste of time and money. jagabo already answered that question in the first reply. The introduced field blending ruined the video. But I've never seen a Snell and Wilcox box in operation.

So far, I have not seen such an Avisynth script written that would be so intelligent to interfere in the material depending on what the situation requires at the moment.

You break it into pieces. Make the parts that can be 23.976 into 23.976 (IVTC if necessary) and encode as progressive 23.976 with soft pulldown added. Keep the truly interlaced parts as interlaced and encode as interlaced 29.97fps. Then you put the pieces back together using the 'ADD' button in Muxman.

[jagabo]

So far, I have not seen such an Avisynth script written that would be so intelligent to interfere in the material depending on what the situation requires at the moment. (inverted pulldown when needed, and when it encounters other combinations, e.g. 30 fps interlaced, deinterlaced and rendered intermediate frames for a given fps).

Those hardware converters do a very crude conversion. Something like:

Bob()
ConvertFPS(50)
BicubicResize(720,576)
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,0,3)
Weave()

[Brad]

It is a documentary material in which there is a mix of different types of material to only reach 30 fps (full ntsc 30 from the camera .., pulldown from footage ... etc .. and interlacing). So far, I have not seen such an Avisynth script written that would be so intelligent to interfere in the material depending on what the situation requires at the moment. (inverted pulldown when needed, and when it encounters other combinations, e.g. 30 fps interlaced, deinterlaced and rendered intermediate frames for a given fps).

The Snell & Wilcox unit you bought doesn't perform pulldown removal either, near as I can tell. What you want is one of their units that has "DEFT".

https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/snell-wilcox-upgrades-alchemist-standards-converter

In the past, jagabo has posted an example script combining TFM for field-matching and QTGMC for deinterlacing to output 60p from mixed 24/30i sources.

[lingyi]

I wish the OP good luck with his/her project

OP, feel free to ignore this post as it doesn't directly address your questions. But as with forum posts everywhere, I try keep in mind that possibly long we've all long abandoned this thread, someone may find what I and others post, useful.

As with most of these types of threads, fast and easy rarely gets better results than the slow and correct [harder] way to do things. When used professional equipment is cheap and readily available, it's usually because it doesn't perform well for analog to digital capture. If it did, more people would use and recommend them and the prices would be much higher. Read any of threads where lordsmurf posted about why a professional TBC isn't the appropriate tool for home video sources.