PAL to NTSC

[dbalentine]

Can anyone please tell me if it is possible to view a VCD made in Europe (PAL) on an american computer, Dell, that is on NTSC standard? I believe I have the right software do eventually do a conversion from PAL to NTSC in order to play on a Region 1 American DVD player. However, the program I have says it can not open the particular VCD or file because it doesn't support that file type. The file type is an MP3. The program is TMPGEnc. I've also downloaded about all the codecs I could find. Any insight or help would be greatly appreciated.

[Leo_C]

Hmm, there's a lot going on in that question! Lets see..

Can anyone please tell me if it is possible to view a VCD made in Europe (PAL) on an american computer, Dell, that is on NTSC standard?

In short - yes.

NTSC and PAL are really just methods of encoding colour (or color!) information onto signals for TV sets.
Computer monitors use seperate Red, Green and Blue signals whereas TV's use composite signals where the colour is mixed together.

VCD's hold MPEG-1 video, which I think stores the colour as RGB -
in effect the only difference between a PAL an NTSC disc will be the resolution and frame rate - PAL being 352X288 @25 fps and NTSC being 320X240 @30 fps.

You might, however, have a problem playing PAL VCD's on an NTSC stand-alone DVD player. But not a computer.

Even if you plug the computer into a telly using TV-out, you should still be able to watch it - the computer will choose the destination format of the MPEG video, not the VCD.

I believe I have the right software to eventually do a conversion from PAL to NTSC in order to play on a Region 1 American DVD player.

If you want to play the disc on a hardware, stand-alone DVD player, I think you will have to do some conversion.

However, the program I have says it can not open the particular VCD or file because it doesn't support that file type. The file type is an MP3.

MP3 is a sound-only file, so I think you must have the wrong file.
Look for a file called MUSIC01.DAT (i think!!) somewhere on the disc - or in fact just look for the biggest file on the disc.

The program is TMPGEnc. I've also downloaded about all the codecs I could find. Any insight or help would be greatly appreciated.

I don't think TMPEGEnc will open the .DAT file directly so you might have to turn it into a .MPG file - have a go with VCDGear.


Hope at least some of that makes sense...


Leo

[dbalentine]

Leo, thank you very much for the info and yes that helps some. Being new to all this is what's causing the difficulty. I did get the video to play correctly on the computer dvd (as you said) but I can't get the video or music to play on the stand alone dvd player. Definitely the type of VCD file created or the PAL thing. I will try using the program you mentioned to do a conversion and see what happens. Also, do you know how to determine which type of VCD file was created on this disc? Open up Properties? Once I know what type of file it is then I can better go about converting that file to something my stand alone dvd player can play. Thanks again for the time you took in replying and for the suggestions. I should get the hang of this in about a year or so.

[Leo_C]

Heh - it won't take that long...

I'm not sure how you would go about doing a *perfect* copy with all the scene selection etc, but ...

If you manage to get the .DAT file off the disc and turn it into a .MPG then you will be able to get the details from the file quite easliy (try opening it in media player, and then viewing file properties -> details). If the resolution is 352X288 then it's PAL, and if it's 352X240 it's probably NTSC.

Then all you have to do is open the file in TMPGEnc and use a preset to transcode it to the desired format, and then use something like Nero to burn a VCD.

Thats the quick and dirty method at least.
The problem with doing standards conversion is not actually the image dimensions (since both have the same aspect ratio when displayed) but rather the frame rate. Going from 25fps to 30fps (or 29.97) means constructing extra frames that don't exist in the source footage.
Now I'm not sure exactly how the different bits of software do it - I suspect that TMPGEnc simply duplicates frames as needed - this will result in a bit of jerkyness on scenes with a lot of movement (such as shots where the camera pans).
I recommend you play around with Virtualdub, which will allow you to alter the frame rate and add a temporal smoothing filter to compensate for this.

Anyway, I better add here that I've never actually done a standards conversion from PAL to NTSC VCD, i'm just going on what I think I know... Your mileage may vary...

Good luck!

Leo

[dbalentine]

Thanks Leo. I will give it a whirl this weekend and see what I can do. The vcdhelp site has been a good source of info as well. We'll see what happens!