NTSC to PAL-UK

[chuck1j]

Can anyone tell me how to convert and burn vcd's to the PAL standard? I have captured NTSC TV broadcasts that I usually edit in vdub and encode with the standard NTSC VCD template using TMPGenc before burning to VCD with NERO. Because of some older hardware owned by a relative, I need to convert these to PAL format in order that he may view them in the UK. I have two different versions of the source material. I have the vcd's that I have already burned with NERO, and I also have the Mpeg's as they were encoded by TMPGenc, prior to burning. The Mpeg's are saved to a spare hard drive, but I no longer have the avi's. Is there a relatively easy way to do this, or do I need to start over at the beginning with any new avi's?

Thanks in advance,
Chuck

[Xesdeeni]

Are your NTSC VCDs 23.976 fps or 29.97 fps?

If the former, then you are better off converting them to 25 fps by speeding them up. This is similar to what is done when 24 fps movies are put on PAL TV.

If the latter, no matter how you do it, it won't look too great. If you could go back to the original AVIs, you'd get a bit better quality. But you can still do it.

I have a web page started to provide methods to convert from NTSC to PAL and vice-versa. Unfortunately, I've only done a few combinations so far, and I haven't done NTSC VCD to PAL VCD yet. If you want to take a look, you can try the PAL VCD to NTSC VCD instructions kind of backwards if the NTSC VCD is 23.976 fps (http://www.geocities.com/xesdeeni2001/StandardsConversion/index.html). If it's 29.97 fps, then you'll have to do a different procedure.

And if I get the chance over the next few days, I'll try to add explicit conversions for this.

Xesdeeni

[chuck1j]

Many thanks Xesdeeni,

I took a quick look at your site/guide and it looks like I'll be able to get some good info there. It's a bit much to digest here at work, so I'll try again tonight from home. I've never really understood the (film) designations and how they apply in my case. All my captures are from NTSC broadcast TV, to TIVO, to Sony DV tape, to computer via firewire. I know that's not the most efficient method, but it works until I can get an AVDC100. What does that make my material from film/tv -> DV/firewire, is it (film) or not?

Thanks,
Chuck

[Xesdeeni]

It depends on the program. Some are video and others are (telecined) film. Live sporting events are definitely video, as are most soap operas and talk shows. Obviously movies are (telecined) film (although they are often edited as video, which screws things up somewhat). But almost all dramas and most sitcoms are film as well. The only way to be sure is to examine the frames yourself.

In all probability, your source was actually film. But the process you used complicates matters quite a bit.

If you examine the video frame-by-frame and find that there are no repeated frames, then you are dealing with video. You can probably just feed the video into TMPGEnc, tell it to encode the video (don't encode the audio) at the PAL rate, and you will have a watchable video (after you demultiplex the audio from the NTSC source and remultiplex it with the PAL video--all in TMPGEnc). The quality won't be great, but there isn't much you can do without the original interlaced source.

If you find repeated frames, then you can still do the above, but the results will be worse still. A better way would be to try to reclaim the 23.976 frames, speed the video up to 25 frames per second (along with the audio), scale, and then re-encode. This is more complicated, but the results will look much better.

Xesdeeni