NTSC - PAL Framerate problems

[Ingram]

Hi,

I'm trying to convert my divx's of Scrubs and smallville to Pal vcds to play, and I use TMPG 2.5 plus, anyhow, I get framerate problems with the output file, both on the pc and on the dvd player it chugs when the camera moves and is'nt very smooth, I tried encoding as NTSC vcd and the output perfectly smooth. What seems to be my problem?

[sterno]

Well, if it's smooth at NTSC frame rate and not at PAL frame rate then it sounds like it's an NTSC clip. Converting NTSC's 30fps down to PAL's 25fps means that frames get dropped, and when you throw away frames your motion gets jerky.

[Ingram]

My friend converts NTSC to PAL and he says he hardly gets any jerkyness :S

[banjazzer]

NTSC(film) can be converted using a PAL template, but there will be jerkiness particularly on motion scenes. Some people notice this more than others. The best way (if you cannot play the original format) is to change the framerate of the video in Virtualdub and adjust the length of the audio with something like Soundforge or Cooledit.

[SatStorm]

The only true way includes 2 Steps and really needs HD space:
Inverse Telecine your source, so to be made from 29.97 to 23.97. That must be done with Virtualdub, using Reconstract from fields (adapting). Then you have to save to a new avi your results (neccessary...). Then use a program called avifrate to change the avi framerate from 23.97 to 25ftp. That way, everything speeds up a bit but both audio/video is in synch and you have the best motion and flickering-free possible NTSC to PAL convertion.
Have you ever heard vinyl records? The effect it should sound like playing a 33 1/3rmp LP like 34rpm. Fair good

[Supremus]

If your original video is 24.976 fps (IVTC'ed as it should be), you can easily follow the advice of the previous poster and just change the frame rate in Vdub and time stretch the audio to fit. That's basically how professional NTSC -> PAL conversions are done.

If your original file is 29.97 fps, simply changing the frame rate probably won't work, and you would most likely still get jerkiness, so you need to IVTC the video back to 23.976 fps before changing the frame rate to PAL.

However, since the PAL conversion made you notice the jerky motion, chances are that your original files are 23.976, as 29.97 usually looks quite jerky too, but I just thought I would mention this anyway.

[Supremus]

Do you really need to convert them to PAL? If you're converting to VCD, just about every DVD player out there that can play VCDs can play both PAL and NTSC.

Converting to PAL is going to mean losing some quality, and it's a bit of hassle. Converting to VCD NTSC is a much better idea, unless you have a specific reason why you want PAL. I would still recommend that you IVTC if the video is 29.97 fps, though, but TMPGenc should be able to do it all in one step.

[SatStorm]

The one step with TMPGenc works, but it is not the best solution.
You can resize and inverse telecine your NTSC source with virtualdub and frameserve to TMPGenc. There, you can simply encode to PAL VCD/CVD/SVCD/DVD but you gonna have 1 field (not frame!) jump every 1.3 seconds (or so).
It is much better to inverse telecine your source from 29.97 to 23.97 and then boost it to 25ftp/s as I said. That way, you have the best results.

There are also some avisynth scripts for it in the forum, if you are familiar with that frameserver you might find them usefull.

In you live in the PAL world, it always helps to convert your source to PAL.

[Supremus]

In you live in the PAL world, it always helps to convert your source to PAL.

Not necessarily. Most DVD players are quite happy to output NTSC, and 23.976 fps NTSC VCD is in theory 20-25% better than PAL VCD, because of the slightly lower vertical resolution and less frames per second to encode, and if his original file is only 240 lines vertical, there doesn't seem to be much point in scaling that to 288. If it's higher, it's less of an issue, of course.

Also, a lot of people don't like the speed-up in sound from 23.976 to 25 fps, but that's a matter of personal taste. Although I capture in PAL, whenever possible, I always prefer to convert stuff back to NTSC to get the audio right.

I totally agree that AviSynth is the best way to IVTC, my suggestion was just meant as an easy 1-step solution if he couldn't be bothered with all the hassle, or if he wasn't familiar with AviSynth.

[Doppelgofer]

can somebody please post a step by step tutorial on how to convert a file from 30fps (don't ask why) to 25fps using virtualdub and avifrate and any other tools that would be useful....

greatly appreciated if anyone can......cheers