Convert NTSC to PAL

[Mitchell Lewis]

I have a client who has an NTSC DVD (standard definition) and would like us to convert it into a PAL DVD. It doesn't have to be perfect quality.

Anyone have experience doing this?

Should I play the DVD and capture it using a PAL capture format? Then how do I burn it to DVD? I see that you can change the Project Preferences in DVD Studio Pro 4 from NTSC to PAL. But I don't see any DVD settings in Compressor for PAL.

Finally....how can I test the DVD to make sure I've done everything correctly?

Thanks in advance.

We have Final Cut Studio 2, Adobe Creative Suite 4, Toast 10 an AJA Io HD and a standard DVD player.

[Pedanes Bol]

Hi Mitchell,

Here is a simple conversion method I use to convert my home movies to PAL format. I make a movie using iMovie in NTSC (I am a not a video professional and I don't have FCP or FCE). Then I export and save it as AppleTV format (.m4v). I use this file to create both a NTSC DVD and a PAL DVD in iDVD. I start the iDVD application, import the .m4v file and finish the iDVD project. First, I burn a DVD for myself which, by default, is NTSC. Then, I switch the VIDEO MODE in the PROJECT INFO menu to PAL and burn another DVD for my family and relatives who live in a PAL country. The resulting NTSC and PAL DVD products are excellent quality. The PAL DVDs I made so far played well on my PAL DVD player as well as on my relatives' DVD players. (No problems at all).

I hope this helps...

P.

[Robert Lane]

Mitchell,

Based on your post I'm assuming you don't have the original video assets to make another final output from FCP and as you say, are going to capture the NTSC DVD then re-encode it into PAL?

If you have to copy the original NTSC DVD the best way to do that is use MPEG Streamclip; you'll need the MPEG-2 playback module installed from FCP if it's not already on your system. You can then have MPSC output a near lossless MPEG2 (compared to the files on the DVD) and AAC/Dolby audio. Then use Compressor to make PAL conversions, drop those assets into a DVDSP4 PAL project and recreate a new DVD image ready for burning/replication.

I believe Toast 10 can make a direct-conversion to PAL right from the original disk but I don't think the quality will be nearly as good as the above workflow.

[Mitchell Lewis]

Thanks guys. I appreciate the replies.

I do have the NTSC DVD, I was going to digitize from it using our DVD player and AJA Io HD. I could use DVDxDV software to ingest it as a FCP MOV. But I could us MPEG Stream Clip (I think I have a copy of that at work) to RIP the disc into a MPEG-2 file. But how do I "use Compressor to make PAL conversions"? Do I use Compressor to convert the MPEG-2 file to PAL DV file?

I could try all this stuff and do enough testing to figure out the most efficient workflow myself, but I thought someone else had already had success doing this and could share. :)

[Robert Lane]

I've done exactly what you're attempting to do using the workflow described above; there's no benefit to capturing the DVD content with external devices, you won't get any better quality than just having MPSC copy off the files.

[Mitchell Lewis]

Okay Robert, I'll give it a try. I told the client I "think" I have a viable workflow and I'm picking up the DVD from them today. Hope this works! :)

[Cassie Holmes]

Hey everyone. It seemed as though my question applied to the general drift of this thread, so here goes.

There are so many questions that I could ask but here's my basic need:

I have to convert NTSC to PAL in DVCam format. I'd like to keep it pretty high quality. My company would rather do the conversion here before we send the programs overseas. What I'm looking for is a list of hardware I need to do this, because I'm pretty much starting from scratch. It seems as though using hardware vs. software gives you better quality, but I'm open to suggestions. Again, I just need a list of required hardware, so I can start doing some research.

Thanks for your expertise!

[Mitchell Lewis]

Just use Compressor and convert from DVCam NTSC (same thing as DV) to DV PAL. It's one of the Compressor presets, or it's easy to create you're own. If you've got hours and hours of footage, it could take a while. In addition, I think you'll get better results if you turn the Frame controls on, and play with the settings to determine what will yield decent quality without taking too much additional rendering time. I assume you'll be going from 30 fps to 25 fps, so the Frame Controls will help increase the quality quite a bit.

Just import some test footage (with some hard lines/detail and camera movement), mark an IN/OUT so you're only compressing about 30 to 60 seconds worth of footage and start testing.

Let me know if you need additional details about Compressor.

[Cassie Holmes]

Originally Posted by Mitchell Lewis

Just use Compressor and convert from DVCam NTSC (same thing as DV) to DV PAL.

Compressor is a good suggestion--thanks!

I've talked with my people a bit more, and it would help if we could find software that doesn't tie up Final Cut, and that can convert in non-real time, but keep the digital quality that we need.


Anyone have some thoughts?

[Mitchell Lewis]

Video Equipment Video Processors NTSC to PAL Standards Converte at Markertek.com