Reliable conversion of NTSC to PAL

[bluesdave]

Has anyone found a program that will do an *excellent* conversion of NTSC to PAL? I have tried Nero Vision (Premium 7), which does do the conversion, but the frame loss is noticeable (ie. very jumpy). For those who do not know NTSC is just under 30fps, while PAL is 25, so the conversion means dropping frames. I found that Nero Recode did a pretty good job of converting to MP4, but this would not play in any of my stand-alone DVD players. I then tried converting the MP4 back into video format using Nero Vision, but again there is a frame problem. MP4 is only 23.x fps (I forget the decimal value).

I can't find any *free* program that states it will do NTSC to PAL. Any ideas?

Thanks.

[varunb]

I would advise u 2 check if your source video is a pure NTSC material or telecined. Before that just tell us everything about what kind of conversion u want to perform, the source video format, etc....Only after that can v provide u some solution.

[UncasMS]

ProCoder 2 is the best i could think of for this task

[bluesdave]

I would advise u 2 check if your source video is a pure NTSC material or telecined. Before that just tell us everything about what kind of conversion u want to perform, the source video format, etc....Only after that can v provide u some solution.

I said that I want to convert from NTSC to PAL. The source material is various DVD movies, recorded in NTSC format. I also said that I can do it in Nero 7, but the results are not acceptable (too jerky).

[bluesdave]

ProCoder 2 is the best i could think of for this task

Thanks, but I have already paid for Nero 7 Premium, I do not want to pay for another program, only to be disappointed. From the number of NTSC videos available for sale down here (Australia), where we use PAL, I assume that no program does a perfect job of it. Otherwise, the movie companies would be doing their own NTSC to PAL conversion, instead of releasing the NTSC version of a movie.

Thanks for your help.

[blutach]

I can attest that Procoder 2 does a great job but can understand why you wouldn't want to pay for it.

But, down here, we are pretty fortunate. Most, if not all, players and TVs can play NTSC stuff. Have you tried your player?

Regards

[varunb]

Bluesdave, I have a rather better solution which requires u to download only 2 free softwares: Auto Gordian Knot & AVI2DVD. As i stated before, check if the native frame rate of the dvd is 23.976 or 29.97. U can do this by feeding ur vob files to VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.2 or 1.6.0.0. Then go to Video -> Frame Rate-> Source Rate Adjustment. The frame rate of the DVD will b listed there. If its 23.976 then open Gordian Knot, just input the ifo file in Auto Gordian Knot. Before that read its manual; it wont take u too long to understand the functioning of Gordian Knot. Start the Gordian Knot execution after u have understood everything & u will get a final AVI(Divx or Xvid) file. Feed this AVI to AVI2DVD, check all other options (encoder, frame rate, sound, etc) & start its execution. Finally u will get a VOB file ready to b burned. I hope thats sufficient to solve ur problem.

[blutach]

Not quite sure I understand why you want to encode twice - to DivX and back - simply to do a framerate conversion.

Regards

[varunb]

Alright Blutach, if u asking for a single frame rate conversion method, then this is the best procedure: Create D2V of the VOB files using DGIndex(Force Film option if the frame rate is 23.976) -> Create avs from d2v with assumefps function -> HCenc to create DVD. Ofcourse, Procoder 2 is an all-in-one software but one must have his pockets full then.

[blutach]

Indeed - good method.

This is why DVD Rebuilder is so suited to doing framerate conversions - it has all the necessary steps there and encoders referenced. I hope jdobbs can one day see to do this for Pro users.

Regards

[bluesdave]

As i stated before, check if the native frame rate of the dvd is 23.976 or 29.97.

And as I have already stated, the frame rate is just under 30 fps for NTSC, which I have verified many times using MediaInfo. The 23.x fps only came into the equation when I tried converting to Mpeg4 (as I stated in my first post). I do not want to go down to 23 then back up to 25 fps. The whole point of my question was getting a successful conversion of NTSC which happens to be just under 30 fps, to PAL which is 25 fps. As I stated, I have already done this in Nero Vision, but the results were unsatisfactory.

Blutach, thanks for your tip on DVD-Rebuilder. I will look into it. To answer your question, older TVs usually do not have NTSC compatibility, and this is the case with one of my TVs. The main TV in our family room does handle NTSC. Thanks.

BTW, it is not just a case fps. The conversion has to handle the screen size as well. NTSC has fewer lines per screen than PAL, so lines have to be either subtracted or added (depending on which direction you are converting in). In my case, Nero had to add lines because PAL uses 625 lines. There is also the refresh frequency which is 60 hz for NTSC, and 50 for PAL. You can read all the details on Wikipedia if you wish to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntsc#Li...d_refresh_rate. There is a lot more to the technical differences if you read the whole article. It's pretty dry reading unless you are really interested in this stuff.

[2movie]

I have an other problem, we have an originally PAL (25, avi) need to convert to NTSC (29.97 DVD)

do it any stable and good quality program, which suply a stable image ? (not nessesary free, but FREE is always nice...)

[blutach]

Have a look in the stickies in our Authoring & Editing forum.

Regards

[Rickles]

I have used DVDSanta for converting PAL DVD's to NTSC and been told the results are very good. the program also does the reverse process.

https://www.dvdsanta.com

R.