My method of PAL to NTSC and vice versa...

[Demijan]

I dont know if you knew about this, I'm pretty much a newbie, so if this is something everybody knows then please don't mock me

This is my method on converting PAL to NTSC and vice versa.

1.) You rip the dvd to harddrive.

2.) You convert the movie to AVI with a program that works best for you such as flaskmpeg, gnot, etc. If you have a big harddrive then its best to do it uncompressed/full frames, but divx/xvid is great too, as long as the bitrate is high and its 'deinterlaced'. I experimented with this, and xvid works best. The quality loss is very very minimal, and not easy to notice at all.

3.) Using "WinAVI", you convert this .avi back to .vob, but in the advanced tab you choose "NTSC" instead of PAL/AUTO and change Framerate to "29.97" instead of 25/AUTO, if the original was pal of course. If the film was NTSC originally, then you would pick "PAL" instead of NTSC/AUTO and framrate 25 instead of 29.97/auto.

voilla, your dvd has been converted. ive converted several dvds with this method and ive had no problems

[nwg]

What did you do with the audio?

[Demijan]

Originally posted by nwg
What did you do with the audio?

When the .vob and .avi is converted back and forth you convert the audio, but you can choose to compress it if you want it to be done quicker.

[lgha]

Demijan - considering the detail of your first post this one ".....When the .vob and .avi is converted back and forth you convert the audio...." is lacking alot of detail. For those of us not
familar with your system would you mind going into more detail?
"When you convert back and forth you convert the audio...."? Just what do you mean? Not everyone is a computor person or a video expert. More steps and less generalization would really help here. Thank you.

[Demijan]

I don't understand the question "what do you do with the audio." When you convert the vob to avi using Flaskmpeg or xmpeg the audio will be converted with it.

Can you be more specific please?

[lgha]

Having read a great many post on working with (.vobs) the one thing that comes up almost everytime is that the audio attached to the vobs almost always have to be seperated from the video and then remarried at a point down the processing line and then there is the problem of getting the audio and video to be in sink. Not being familer with the two programs you mentioned I take it by your post that these problems do not exsit and the conversion and process is a smooth and all-in-one proceedure. To me, this has potential. I will look into these programs - Thank you.

Added question - The procedure you described above, do you still maintain the working menu structure or is this for "movie only" situations, ie, reauthor?

Thank you

[nwg]

lgha has said it above.

I was referring to the fact that I keep the audio and video separate. A quick go with flask made a separate AC3 file along with a video file. I want to keep the 5.1 sound. It looks like flask would convert it to just 2 channel.

I have been using winavi (and it is a very good program). However it is only working wih the video. I also tried to merge the VOB's from a DVD into one big VOB and it started to convert it. However, it fails after a few per cent. I tried it on a 1GB VTS1_01 file and that worked ok.

[Demijan]

Originally posted by lgha
Having read a great many post on working with (.vobs) the one thing that comes up almost everytime is that the audio attached to the vobs almost always have to be seperated from the video and then remarried at a point down the processing line and then there is the problem of getting the audio and video to be in sink. Not being familer with the two programs you mentioned I take it by your post that these problems do not exsit and the conversion and process is a smooth and all-in-one proceedure. To me, this has potential. I will look into these programs - Thank you.

FlaskMPEG will separate the audio from video I think. However, when I used XMPEG to convert the .vob to .avi, the audio was not separated but it was included in the video, and it was in sync too.

Also, be sure to select the deinterlace options to "blend" and you will have much better quality because the horizontal lines that occur when there is much action will completely disappear.

Added question - The procedure you described above, do you still maintain the working menu structure or is this for "movie only" situations, ie, reauthor?

Thank you

No. You have to make another menu. I'm sure there is a way to convert that navigation stuff too, but I haven't really worked on it.

Nonetheless, I'm very satisfied with this method, it works very well for me. It would be great if a program was made to do this all at once. Somehow convert the video to avi and then convert it back at the same time with other settings (frame rate etc.). That way you could be able to convert from pal to ntsc (or vice versa) just in one step, instead of going through 3 or 4 steps. However, Idon't program so i wouldnt even know how to start working on that lol.

[Demijan]

Originally posted by nwg
lgha has said it above.

I was referring to the fact that I keep the audio and video separate. A quick go with flask made a separate AC3 file along with a video file. I want to keep the 5.1 sound. It looks like flask would convert it to just 2 channel.

I am not sure, but XMPEG puts the video and audio together for me. I don't see a quality difference either.

I have been using winavi (and it is a very good program). However it is only working wih the video. I also tried to merge the VOB's from a DVD into one big VOB and it started to convert it. However, it fails after a few per cent. I tried it on a 1GB VTS1_01 file and that worked ok.

WinAVI is an incredible tool for avi to .vob. But I never managed to get it to work with converting .vob to .avi. XMPEG is the best tool for that job I think.