PAL to NTSC WITH menus and extras

What is the best way to convert PAL to NTSC with the original menus and special feature?

Originally Posted by fropones

What is the best way to convert PAL to NTSC with the original menus and special feature?

The best way to do it would be to rip the movie and the special features seperately and reencode them to NTSC and build your own menu. There doesn't seem to be an all-in-one piece of software that does this for you.

There's a program called Menu Rebuilder (or something like that) in the tools section. It's supposed to be able to convert your menus from PAL to NTSC, but when I tried it I couldn't figure it out. It didn't come with any instructions and was quite complicated.

Or, you could try the patch method (There's an entire thread dedicated to it here, and I think a tutorial in the How To section). That seems to be a hit-or-miss method of PAL->NTSC conversion. It might work for you.

Originally Posted by guns1inger

Get a PAL capable player and save yourself the heart-ache.

Ditto...MUCH easier on your brain and computer.

Originally Posted by Startropic1

It's not that simple if your TELEVISION doesn't play PAL. Which is the way most TVs are in North America.

Why don't people understand this.

Exactly. I want to be able to play it on any DVD player I put it in, which, considering I'm in the states, are all NTSC. Even if I did have a PAL DVD player, I would only then be able to watch it there. What if I want to watch it at a friends house, or with my girlfriend? Thanks LloydAZ for trying to help, but if I wanted to be told to buy a PAL dvd player by everyone I would have saved my self the trouble.

Originally Posted by Startropic1

It's not that simple if your TELEVISION doesn't play PAL. Which is the way most TVs are in North America.

Why don't people understand this.

Seeing that I am an American now living in Europe...I DO understand
that if you buy a DVD Player that is capable of converting PAL to NTSC
"on the fly"....what you end up with is an NTSC signal to your NTSC television.

I send my homemade PAL DVD's to my family back home in America and they
play them on the DVD Player that I purchased for them....a DVD Player that
does exactly as I describe above....converts PAL to NTSC(and vise versa) "on the fly".

Region coding is another issue but that has not yet been asked in this thread.

Originally Posted by fropones

Thanks LloydAZ for trying to help, but if I wanted to be told to buy a PAL dvd player by everyone I would have saved my self the trouble.

NOBODY told you to buy a PAL DVD Player. What was said was to purchase a DVD Player that converts PAL to NTSC. They are now VERY common in the U.S. if you know what to look for.

Computer conversion between formats is NOT for the faint hearted and if you do manage to accomplish this task you most likely will be back here complaining about the lack of quality in the finished product. If I had a nickel for every time your question has been asked here I'd be right up there with Bill Gates as far as money goes.

In my opinion, if you have to ask how to do it, you're not ready to do it, as you don't have enough knowledge to do it. The trickiest part is the menu conversion. NuMenu4U can do the PAL2NTSC menu conversion, but you'll need either Scenarist or the Pro version of Muxman. Much easier would be to create new menus from the static or motion video making up the menus already. If you're willing to create new menus yourself (which can wind up looking very similar to the originals), the project becomes much easier. Converting the movie and extras also takes knowledge, but isn't all that difficult in principle.

LloydAZ said many of the same things in his first response to you.

Originally Posted by hech54

NOBODY told you to buy a PAL DVD Player. What was said was to purchase a DVD Player that converts PAL to NTSC. They are now VERY common in the U.S. if you know what to look for.

Yes, but the picture quality isn't nearly as good as using something like DGPulldown. Having just converted the new BBC series Torchwood using the latter, I'm genuinely unable to tell the difference from an NTSC original.

Even for those of us that have been doing video work for years, making a NTSC DVD out of a PAL DVD with all original menus is just NOT worth the work. While most DVD players that play both formats do so poorly, there are units out there that do a great job. Lite-ON DVD recorders will play a PAL DVD correctly on NTSC TV's. My Lite-On 5006 cost $100.00 at Radio Shack after rebate. Best $100.00 I even spent!

Originally Posted by ntscuser

Originally Posted by hech54

NOBODY told you to buy a PAL DVD Player. What was said was to purchase a DVD Player that converts PAL to NTSC. They are now VERY common in the U.S. if you know what to look for.

Yes, but the picture quality isn't nearly as good as using something like DGPulldown. Having just converted the new BBC series Torchwood using the latter, I'm genuinely unable to tell the difference from an NTSC original.

Seeing as Torchwood is PAL, I'd be surprised if you saw a difference after converting to PAL...

Seeing as Torchwood is PAL, I'd be surprised if you saw a difference after converting to PAL...

Maybe, but since he converted his Torchwoods from PAL to NTSC...

Afterall, he is ntscuser

Hi there,

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=267229

Read my post about VSO ConvertXtoDVD

Okay, let's revise this question. I have numenu4u and sonic scenarist V3 Pro, so how would I do it then?

Best way to convert from PAL to NTSC? Canopus ProCoder. Works flawlessly every time. It's a bit pricey, but I know that when I load a PAL movie into it and select Convert, I will have nice NTSC-compliant DVD files on my hard drive waiting for burning after leaving it to run overnight.

R

Originally Posted by robertazimmerman

Best way to convert from PAL to NTSC? Canopus ProCoder. Works flawlessly every time. It's a bit pricey, but I know that when I load a PAL movie into it and select Convert, I will have nice NTSC-compliant DVD files on my hard drive waiting for burning after leaving it to run overnight.

R

Does it convert the menu and extras as well?

i used nero7 today ripped pal dvd to harddrive
converted/burned with nero7 worked fine

Originally Posted by fropones

Okay, let's revise this question. I have numenu4u and sonic scenarist V3 Pro, so how would I do it then?

So were you able to convert the menus with numenu4u? Or have you tried any method at all yet?

Originally Posted by robertazimmerman

Best way to convert from PAL to NTSC? Canopus ProCoder. Works flawlessly every time.

I don't believe you. Care to upload a small section (10 seconds or so) that has motion/movement, so we can inspect it?

If you don't know how; cut a small piece of a vob by loading it into DGIndex, using the [ and ] buttons to isolate that small section, and then File->Save Project and Demux Video. Take that M2V it gives you and upload it to:

http://rapidshare.de/

When done, post the link here.

Does it convert the menu and extras as well?

It'll encode anything you give it, movie or extras. How well it does it is another question. Although BJ_M has said it's actually possible to do it correctly, as far as I know, very few people know how. Of course it won't create the NTSC menus for you. Nothing special about Procoder, anyway. Any encoder can do the conversion. I use CCE for it, frameserving with an AviSynth script file. I just have a huge distrust of any program that has a template for it, and claims to do it automatically. And I get a little tired of these Procoder fans claiming it does a good job. Show me some video, please. If I'm wrong, I'll eat my words in public.

By the way, Pinstripes23, I've done it now, movie, logo (all the extras there were) and menus. All with freeware, using the same fonts and buttons or whatever they're called, as the original. No DVDLab Pro, no DVD Remake Pro, no Scenarist, no payware of any kind. Except I used CCE, but could just have easily used the free HC Encoder.

Originally Posted by manono

By the way, Pinstripes23, I've done it now, movie, logo (all the extras there were) and menus. All with freeware, using the same fonts and buttons or whatever they're called, as the original. No DVDLab Pro, no DVD Remake Pro, no Scenarist, no payware of any kind. Except I used CCE, but could just have easily used the free HC Encoder.

Could you list the freeware tools you used?

Originally Posted by manono

By the way, Pinstripes23, I've done it now, movie, logo (all the extras there were) and menus. All with freeware, using the same fonts and buttons or whatever they're called, as the original. No DVDLab Pro, no DVD Remake Pro, no Scenarist, no payware of any kind. Except I used CCE, but could just have easily used the free HC Encoder.

Awesome man! Care to share your method? It's been awhile since I messed around with this...but in regards to menus IIRC, this was the steps to my method:

1. Use pgcedit to export menu attributes (hotspots, color schemes)
2. Use pgcdemux to demux any audio, video. VobBlanker or pgcedit on static menu images.
3. Use DGPulldown on video, image editor on images to convert to NTSC
4. Use subrip to rip SUP files and convert to BMP. Image editor to convert to NTSC-BMP
5. This was where I got stuck....Could not get it to work correctly when converting the NTSC-BMP back to SUP files. Actually in this step I was trying out a goonix sticky on doom9 where you use an SST file with the BMP in order to use with muxman. But it still wasn't turning out what it was supposed to.
6. Use muxman to mux everything back together.
7. VobBlanker to replace the menus and changing video attributes.
8. Use pgcedit to import the original menu attributes from step 1....making any adjustments to the hotspots

I think that's all. I have used this method successfully on re-encoding the menus but keeping in the same format. And in that case I would not need steps 4 and 5, and just use pgcdemux to demux the original SUP files.

Yeah, I'll write something up sooner or later. I have some quirks to iron out. My DVD was (purposely) a very simple one (logo, movie, 5 menu screens),but I need to find out some things so it'll work with more complex DVDs.

You didn't say how you got the reencoded DVD back into the original. Using VobBlanker gives you only the original chapter points, which have to be changed for NTSC. You have to use the ReplaceVTST in PGCEdit to get the movie back into the DVD keeping your 29.97fps chapter points. Here's where one potential problem crops up. If there's more than one title in the VTS that you want to keep, you're screwed, as this Replace VTST method works only when there's 1 Title/PGC. So, for example, if there are 4 episodes, all in the same VTS, you're out of luck. If the other PGCs are minor logos and such, you can get rid of them.

5. This was where I got stuck....Could not get it to work correctly when converting the NTSC-BMP back to SUP files. Actually in this step I was trying out a goonix sticky on doom9 where you use an SST file with the BMP in order to use with muxman. But it still wasn't turning out what it was supposed to.

Yeah, I also followed the sticky and did get it to work, sort of. After importing the menus and color schemes with PGCEdit, the buttons, rather than being the color, size, and shape of the underlying text (like "Scene Selection", or "07", for chapter 7) were real big (a big rectangle around "Scene Selection" or a big square around "07" and the picture above it from Chapter 7). Not sure if that description made any sense. I solved it by shrinking the menu size (if that's the right term). Also, my colors weren't right. The transparent background color wasn't transparent. So, rather than these in the PAL version:

[img=http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/3856/palmenuvd3.th.jpg]

[img=http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7773/palmenucolorsol3.th.jpg]
For the NTSC version I had to do this:

[img=http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/9591/ntscmenurf5.th.jpg]

[img=http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/3430/ntscmenucolorsme6.th.jpg]

And it looks just like the original. Maybe that'll give you an idea of how to complete your project. I thought that maybe my problem resulted from some quirk of this particular DVD, or resulted from something I did wrong somewhere along the way, but if you confirm similar problems, then I guess some kind of workaround is necessary.

machf-

Could you list the freeware tools you used?

Pinstripes23 pretty much laid it all out. For encoding I usually use CCE. For this project, in addition to using CCE, so I could honestly say I used all freeware, I also encoded using the HC encoder. Muxman to do all authoring. PGCDemux to demux everything (movie, logo, menu screens). SubRip to get the menu BMPs. MS Paint to change the PAL Menu 720x576 BMPs to NTSC 720x480 BMPs. VobBlanker to change the attributes from PAL to NTSC. VobBlanker to replace the logo and the subtitles. PGCEdit to replace the main movie keeping my new chapter points. PGCEdit to both export and import menus and colors. PGCEdit to make some changes to menus and color schemes. DVDSubEdit to raise the subs on the screen.

One thing I didn't do was to shrink the size of the subtitles for the dialog, as I didn't find them too large. They are larger on the NTSC screen than they were on the PAL screen, but not bad at all. This is a 4:3 DVD. Maybe it would be worse with a 16:9 DVD. Don't know for sure.

Like I said, I'll write this all up with pics one of these days.

Originally Posted by manono

You didn't say how you got the reencoded DVD back into the original. Using VobBlanker gives you only the original chapter points, which have to be changed for NTSC. You have to use the ReplaceVTST in PGCEdit to get the movie back into the DVD keeping your 29.97fps chapter points. Here's where one potential problem crops up. If there's more than one title in the VTS that you want to keep, you're screwed, as this Replace VTST method works only when there's 1 Title/PGC. So, for example, if there are 4 episodes, all in the same VTS, you're out of luck. If the other PGCs are minor logos and such, you can get rid of them.

Manono....you know I did use VobBlanker to replace the movie. Well this was when I used numenu4u for the menus. But before replacing I changed the celltimes for the frames to match a 29.97fps, imported the new celltimes, audio, sup, video into muxman and authored. I then used VobBlanker and the chapter points were as close to the original PAL chapter points as possible IIRC. I never used pgcedit for any replacing. This way wasn't working for you? In fact just I just tested a 5 min PAL clip with 3 chapter points and did the steps above. And the new chapter points on the NTSC video were as close possible to the PAL one when viewing in PowerDVD. I compared the cells by opening each clip in VobBlanker and even though the durations were off by 10ths of a second here or there I'm sure it's just muxman choosing the best I frame to make the new chapter point for NTSC. When I get the chance I will do another whole PAL DVD conversion and get a more definite confirmation though.

Originally Posted by manono

Yeah, I also followed the sticky and did get it to work, sort of. After importing the menus and color schemes with PGCEdit, the buttons, rather than being the color, size, and shape of the underlying text (like "Scene Selection", or "07", for chapter 7) were real big (a big rectangle around "Scene Selection" or a big square around "07" and the picture above it from Chapter 7). Not sure if that description made any sense. I solved it by shrinking the menu size (if that's the right term). Also, my colors weren't right. The transparent background color wasn't transparent. So, rather than these in the PAL version:

Yep this was what happened to me also. Whenever I hovered over the hotspot it seemed to cast a shadow over the text. I am gonna try your workaround maybe sometime next week cuz I am in the middle of a project right now. I have a couple PAL DVD's to test this on so I will see if I can get it to work. Thanks a lot for the tips.

Hi-

I then used VobBlanker and the chapter points were as close to the original PAL chapter points as possible IIRC.

Oh, I was under the impression that, while the muxman authored DVD has the new NTSC chapter points in the right places, when replacing it into the original DVD , if you use VobBlanker for the job, it gives you back the original (and now wrong) chapter points. I'll check it out again later. I still have all the files.

Originally Posted by fropones

Originally Posted by Startropic1

It's not that simple if your TELEVISION doesn't play PAL. Which is the way most TVs are in North America.

Why don't people understand this.

Exactly. I want to be able to play it on any DVD player I put it in, which, considering I'm in the states, are all NTSC. Even if I did have a PAL DVD player, I would only then be able to watch it there. What if I want to watch it at a friends house, or with my girlfriend? Thanks LloydAZ for trying to help, but if I wanted to be told to buy a PAL dvd player by everyone I would have saved my self the trouble.

I live in Chicago and I bought a Phillips dvd player and it plays everything. Divx and Ntsc and Pal.
I bought some dvd on ebay from the UK and it plays fine. Some I had to run it though dvd decyrpter to remove the region coding, but didn't have to convert.
Here is a link for the player.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4910374
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F2KUK8/ref=pd_cp_e_title/102-7729366-3127364