PAL to NTSC Conversion?
 

Hi All,

Just wondering what is the best way to convert PAL footage to NTSC....

Currently the original footage is on VHS, but a client wants to put it to DVD and sent it to Canada... I'm assuming they use NTSC as opposed to PAL here in Australia.

TIA.
Jack

There are many mom & pop video shops around that will convert it for you, but just another VHS tape. If you convert VHS to DVD, the quality will be an 'eye sore.' Just check the Iranian and Indian areas for these kinds of shops. They shouldn't charge more than $7 per 1 hour of footage in Sydney.

I actually want to see if it's possible to do with software! I know there are places that can do this for me, but I do not want that.

I know that changing the frame rate in theory (from 25fps to 30fps) should not be a big deal, but how does one change the color system by software... to make it NTSC compliant.

Has anyone done such a conversion on PC? Either PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL?

Cheers,
Jack

Wow, I wish conversion was that cheap in LA. I have some old Dr. Who tapes from when my son was little and we lived in London. I wanted to surprise him and convert them to NTSC for Christmas. He would've been thrilled. But they wanted around $100 per tape (have three tapes), and that's a little pricey.

Here in Vancouver the going rate is $5.00 CAN per hour of footage, if you give them the blank tape. My brother-in-law in Sydney pays $7.00 AU.

A while back I purchased 2 AIWA MX100 VHS/VCR converters. They work like a charm.

Don't have any experience with that but soon will have to do something similar.

Just on theory you have first to capture the analog VHS tape on your hard drive.

Then if it's hardware converted to MPEG2 PAL I'm not sure if you can convert to NTSC - as I said haven't experimented yet as my notebook is weak. At least the quality will drop I think from the double converting to MPEG2.

I think if it was captured as AVI PAL there is no problem to convert to MPEG2 NTSC.

If the analog to digital capture use software codec for coding to MPEG2 may be you can save straight to NTSC. Just check the options of the software you use.

Does any body know more about that?

He's living in PAL land and has PAL VHS tapes to convert to NTSC DVDs. That is a major problem. And, this lower resolution VHS is going to higher resolution DVDs. I still think it would be better to just go to NTSC VHS.

Hi guys,

Thanx for the replies.

I have heard that going from PAL to NTSC is easier than NTSC to PAL as what I am trying to do. Just like Frank says.

However I know that PAL in fact is higher resolution than NTSC, not the other way around? BUT it does have less frames per second (25 PAL as oppsed to 30 in NTSC). Frank, is this what you really meant to say?

AND, although I haven't tried this, lets say I do all my capturing and editing in PAL and use TMPGEnc to encode the PAL AVI into a NTSC MPEG2... using the NTSC presets... would this work???

Jack

I think this is the only way to do it Jack.

Frank is talking about hardware conversion made from the VCR. I also have such worldwide model (Samsung) and although it's not a good VTR it's conversion is pretty good. I'm watching PAL tapes on NTSC monitor without any flickering with good color.

I've also recorded NTSC tapes (signal fed from NTSC video) out to PAL. Watching the double conversion (converted PAL tape on NTSC monitor) shows slight, almost invisible flickering and a bit shift in the colors. The result is satisfactory I would say.

Software re-encoding gives more possibilities I think as it is not real time and the software encoder can take it's time to do it right. Try it and check the result in the computer - you can watch both NTSC/PAL there.