I have to finish a short movie within two weeks to send it over to the United States for a filmfestival/contest. Despite of earlier info of the festival, I only am allowed to send in an NTSC-dvd and not a PAL-dvd.

As I live in Europe, I have to convert my footage. The footage was shot with a DVX100 PAL camera, using the 25P (progressive) mode and widescreen (black bars). I understand that Vegas 4 (my NLE) can do the conversion for me. Please I would like to know:
1) what the best Vegas settings are to convert PAL to NTSC?
2) is there anything special on the NTSC DVX100 features in Vegas that I can use to enhance this conversion?
3) Would a PAL resolution blow up of the size of the video before I render to NTSC help to have a more accurate conversion?

Many thanks,
Peter

I'm particularly interested in the answer to this question as well. As I soon have to do something similar. I'm editing PAL footage for a friend but needs to be output to a NTSC compatable DVD.

Do I simply edit in Vegas under a PAL template then when I go to output the MPG2 choose the NTSC preset?

Will that handle all the changes that have to be made (ie Resolution and frame rate)?

Stretching it to 720x480 will give it a slight widened look correct?....any way around that?

How about frame rate- it's going to interpolate the extra 5 frames? Will this have a *noticable* negative affect on video quality?


Thanks inadvance!

I haven't tested it out, but it isn't as simple as a stretch (shrink
is actually the better word here) since you need to change the
pixel aspect ratio. BUT, the good news is (according to a quick
calculation on my part) that if you resize to 720x480 and export
that as 720x480 @ 0.9 pixel aspect you should be okay, why?

1.067 / (576 / 480) = 0.9 (roughly)

Rob I tried rendering some PAL footage out as WMV (which doesn't have a PAL template) so it took on the default NTSC attributes. The clips play fine but look a bit squashed vertically.

So simply rendering PAL footage out using an NTSC template isn't recommended? Say if I have PAL footage I'm editing in a PAL timeline- then want to make an NTSC DVD. What *exact* steps should I take?

Is there a way to maintain the dimensions and not "squash" the video in any direction even if it means cropping somehow?




*Sorry Pete, don't mean to take over your post- I figured we are both trying similar things and my questions might lead to answers for you as well*

I'll see if I can run some tests. At this moment my harddisk with
all my footage on it has just failed.....

Hi Rob and Glen,

I look forward to your tests. I did some small tests today with a five seconds clip from my current project. For rendering I used the DV NTSC and also the DV NTSC 24P-version presets. One of them didn't work, the others gave a reasonable quality, but one way or another it was like there was some kind of shadow/delay that was "behind" movements on the screen. I couldn't test it properly and only checked it via Windows Media Player.
I took 2 screenshots from the rendered files (via Power-DVD which gave strange aspect ratio's which I corrected a bit via Photo Editor). The NTSC footage looks a bit softer, but that could be caused by the fact that I grapped a different frame from the footage. Check them at www.orphic.nl/odm/pal2ntsc.jpg.

Looking forward to your suggestions!

Peter

See the NTSC looks squished (ie girls face looks fatter). It's obviously due to the resolution discrepency between PAL and NTSC....I'm wondering if there is a way around this- to convert it without the improper proportunes.

Glen, I did frame grabs with Power DVD and some way or another it sometimes gives strange aspect ratios on my pc (also with commercial dvd's), so don't judge the pictures on their sizes. It's more the softness that worries me looking at the NTSC picture.

The softness is most definitly due to interopolating to match the NTSC resolution and frame rate. It's gotta shrink it's height and *add* 5 fps to be converted to NTSC.

Hi Rob and Glen,

Any suggestions about the best Vegas settings for PAL to NTSC conversion?

Thanx,

Peter

Seems theres no definitive answer thus so far. No matter which way you do it your going to lose quality simply because of the difference in resolution and frame rate. It's gotta shrink it's verticle resolution to match NTSC which will cause a slight squishing. It's also got to add 5 frames a second to bring it from 25fps to 29.97. Just like image editing- any time you try and "add" information that isn't there (ie Frames in this instance) your going to see quality loss due to interopolation.

I did a small test and to me it looked good with the correct
aspect ratio for NTSC. What I did was the following: I set Vegas
to an NTSC project and loaded my PAL footage. I then exported
an NTSC DV AVI file from Vegas with the Render As option.

Both the pixel aspect and frame rate looked fined to me.

Rob when you do that it *does* automatically change the PAL res to the NTSC standard as soon as you drop your footage on the timeline. There is, however, a squeeze done- try it by taking a still from the PAL footage in the NTSC timeline and one from the PAL timeline. NTSC is shorter (vertical resolution less) than PAL.

I looked at a circle and it looked fine, if I have a chance I'll put
up some screengrabs later.

Hi Rob and Glen,

I'll do a test like Rob did.
Still a question that's unanswered: the 25P footage of the DVX100, has that any advantage in combination with the special DVX100 NTSC pulldown render templates within Vegas?

Peter

You will find some test results at www.orphic.nl/odm/test_pal2ntsc.jpg

I did what Rob suggested, rendering PAL AVI footage from a NTSC project to MPEG2 files, using NTSC interlaced and NTSC progressive. Also some other tests have been done. My results so far:

1) Render to NTSC progressive.
2) You lose some sharpness.
3) Don't use the special 24p render options, it gives strange "jump" movements in the output videos.
4) The aspect ratio doesn't (really) change.

Tomorrow I'll watch the NTSC material on a normal tv, where it is converted back from NTSC to PAL by a dvd-player. See what the NTSC material burnt to dvd will look like....

Greetz,

Peter

I think it's looking great Peter! Great shots of the Gershwin
"short" (heh) as well. Can't wait to see it. I will do my test again
today with the cirle, export JPEGS and put those up on my site
to see how much the pixel aspect is off.

I've re-run the test and posted pictures to see. Both pictures
have been readjusted for 1.0 pixel aspect web/computer viewing
which Vegas does automatically when exporting. So the PAL
frame is actually 786x576 and the NTSC 654x480. The logo in
the middle looks pretty round in both frames to my eye so that
still lets me to believe Vegas is doing a good job on this.

Vegas uses the following pixel aspects:
PAL = 1.0926 (thus 720 * 1.0926 = 786)
NTSC = 0.9091 (and 720 * 0.9091 = 654)

See original PAL frame (www.visuar.com/DVi/Test_PAL.jpg)
See converted NTSC frame (www.visuar.com/DVi/Test_NTSC.jpg)

Both frames are being show at the full resolution only resized
for the correct 1.0 pixel aspect ratio for viewing. Files are in JPEG
format since compression artificats aren't important for these
tests.

Hi Rob,

I'm not an expert on pixel aspects as you are, but do I understand from your information that Vegas does the conversion automatic when converting PAL AVI to NTSC MPEG2?

Peter

I didn't test output to mpeg2, only to AVI, but it should be the
same (easily tested if you dump my PAL jpeg on your timeline).

Vegas seems to do the aspect ratio correctly if it knows the
footage is PAL, you set the project to NTSC and export with
an NTSC setting as well.