NTSC to PAL

[Arber Davidi]

Hey guys.

I was wondering what you did for making PAL dvds with your NTSC 29.97 fps footage. Is there a particular set of steps you go through? I just didn't seem to have good luck with After Effects with doing the conversion so I've given up on it.

I was however able to use a third party software to convert the avi, import it in DVD Architect and then convert to mpg. I was also able to burn the files on a DVD with no errors. I haven't done this before and one thing that I notice now though is that my dvd player is not able to read the dvd but neither is the computer. The dvd is not accessible with explorer so I can't even see any files being there. Does this make any sense? If this question has been answered elsewhere, I apologize for double posting. I just did not come across a thread that would address this topic.

Thank you.
Arber

[Chris Soucy]

Can't help you with the tranfer from NTSC to PAL, but may be able to save you the bother of doing it.

Where are these DVD's destined for?

If Europe, Australasia and other PAL areas, be advised, most, if not all PAL DVD players will play NTSC encoded DVD's straight out of the box.

No conversion necessary.

If conversion is really necessary, you may be better off sending it/ them to a dedicated transfer/ conversion facility. Their fees are usually pretty reasonable.


CS

[Arber Davidi]

Hey Chris,

Thank you for your prompt reply. The DVDs are destined for Europe indeed. I am surprised that PAL players would be able to play the NTSC dvds. Frankly, that would make my life a lot easier. Are you sure that is the case though? Why the 2 formats then? Also, even if the players will accept them, what about the TVs? I was under the impression that the TVs might have an issue with the frame rate in itself. I just would hate to run in a situation where client gets the DVDs at the other end of the continent and then all they see on TV is static. :-)

Thanks again.
Arber

[Lee Matheson]

Originally Posted by Arber Davidi

Thank you for your prompt reply. The DVDs are destined for Europe indeed. I am surprised that PAL players would be able to play the NTSC dvds. Frankly, that would make my life a lot easier. Are you sure that is the case though?

I live in Europe and I can agree with Chris that most players in Europe will handle both DVD and NTSC. Its fairly common.

Originally Posted by Arber Davidi

Why the 2 formats then?

Perhaps a more 'worldly view' ? ... this is into the realm of the philosophical.

Originally Posted by Arber Davidi

Also, even if the players will accept them, what about the TVs? I was under the impression that the TVs might have an issue with the frame rate in itself.

When purchasing both a DVD player and also a TV, most will support NTSC (in addition to PAL). Typically its written right on the box, so before purchasing, one can check out to see if both formats are supported. If not on the box, then on the specification page on the users manual. Its very common to support both (but not all will support it, so one does need to exercise some caution).

What can be more difficult (when playing NTSC DVDs in Europe) is the region code.

[Chris Hurd]

Moved from XL2 to DVD.

[Gareth Watkins]

Hi Arber
Adobe After Effects does a pretty good job... I had to intergrate an NTSC clip into a DVD last year... AE worked just fine.
Naturally you lose a bit of quality and resolution, especially in my case as the clip in question was shot on a small handycam... but once on a DVD and viewed on a TV set they quality differences are less visible.

Cheers
Gareth

[Jack Barker]

Originally Posted by Lee Matheson

I live in Europe and I can agree with Chris that most players in Europe will handle both DVD and NTSC.

What can be more difficult (when playing NTSC DVDs in Europe) is the region code.

Yes. Don't forget to set the Region Code to 2 (Western and Central Europe; Western Asia; Iran, Egypt, Japan, South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho; United Kingdom, Turkey, French overseas territories), or 0 as in zero or zed, which is either no regional flags set, or all regional flags set - in other words, you can play it anywhere.

[Ervin Farkas]

The keyword here is "most players" - not all. The person(s) you are sending the NTSC DVD might be able to play it... or might not be able to play it.

Procoder is the only relatively inexpensive software that does a good job transcoding; After Effects handles the frame rate change fairly well but it's weak on resizing. I used VirtualDub to do the resizing, then AE to do the frame rate conversion (the order is important). It's a step extra but the quality is far better.

[Peter Manojlovic]

Arber, i've sent many DVD's to Europe...
I haven't had one complaint that NTSC material couldn't be played back...It'll work fine..

Good luck!!

[Arber Davidi]

Thank you guys. I will make sure that the region code is set correctly and then just have it delivered and go from there.

Do appreciate your quick responses!

Regards,
Arber

[Andrew Smith]

The only thing that I would warn you about is that our PAL DVD players will only give a rough conversion "on the fly" of NTSC disc content. Depending on your content, this can give you issues with movement such as the strumming of a guitar (if it was a 'how to play' type video).

Depending on how well the player does the standards conversion, you may find that the playback is vertically compressed on a plasma type screen whereas it will display correctly on a CRT screen.

This issue happens when the DVD player doesn't increase the line count on the frame, depending on the nature of a 'dumb' CRT screen to automatically expand the supplied image to the size of the tube. This doesn't happen on plasma/LCD screens where the processing for display is handled differently, hence the squashed image.