PAL to NTSC

[h3nry1]

My apologies in advance for what is almost certainly a repeat question.

I have read several threads (mostly somewhat ancient) about converting PAL DVDs to NTSC. Each guide is riddled with disclaimers stating that the methods described do not always work, and may not produce output whose quality is as high as with some other methods.

Most of them are also pretty involved methods, using several different authoring/ripping/conversion tools in a concerted to get the job done. Also, none that I have seen so far will reproduce non-static menus (or extras, without a whole bunch more work).

I have a 25 disc box set of David Attenborough documentaries in region 2+4 Colour PAL UK (16:9 aspect ratio). I want to replicate these discs so that they play on any region player in NTSC (menus, extras, main video, and all). I know how to do the region free part already, and have successfully converted just the main video of one disc to NTSC. Now I want to go the final step and replicate the entire set. And, since there are 25 discs to do this to, I want the process to be as automated as possible.

Is this an unreasonable pipe dream or are there tools/howto's out there somewhere that I just haven't stumbled across yet?

[manono]

http://www.ntsc2pal.hostrocket.com/FramesetPOS2.htm

Have fun. As far as this particular subject goes, I believe that if you have to ask how to do it, you don't know what's involved, and you're not ready to do it.

My suggestion is to get a player that plays PAL DVDs.

And welcome to the forums. :)

[2Bdecided]

I want to replicate these discs so that they play on any region player in NTSC (menus, extras, main video, and all).I wouldn't know where to begin!

btw, across that whole boxed set, they'll be a mixture of interlaced and progressive content.

For an easy(-er) ride, you could just deinterlace the interlaced content and treat it as 25p (i.e. identical to all the progressive content). It's not a "great" solution, but it's good enough for most of the interlaced content that made its way almost accidentally into most of these series. (There might be one or two that are all interlaced - you should probably try to convert these properly).


And for an easier ride still, as manono said, get a player that converts PAL to NTSC on the fly!

Cheers,
David.

[h3nry1]

You're right, I don't really know exactly whats involved. But I am convinced that I can follow pretty much any instructions that exist - and can fill in the blanks where they are incomplete. Normally I would figure this sort of thing out for myself, but between school and work I just don't have the time at the moment.

I appreciate the advice about just using a PAL DVD player; that is currently what I am doing. However, my parents (and grand mother) have a NTSC-only DVD player AND a television that will not display PAL signals (it comes out black-and-white and half-scrambled).

[setarip_old]

@h3nry1

Hi!

For kicks and giggles, you might want to try the following "quick and dirty" conversion method (Despite the warnings and negative opinions posted by others, I obtained very acceptable results):

1) Open your newly ripped files with VOBBlanker. Under the title set block (center of program window), you'll see your VOB files. The center column says "video format". My example says NTSC 4:3 720x480. If you right click on the VOB's you want to convert, then select "video attributes", you'll see a new window pop up. In this window, you can change the "standard" from PAL to NTSC and vice versa. You can even change the resolution in this window

2) Use IFOEdit to open "VTS_01_0.IFO" and in "VTS Overview", change "Menu Attributes" to "NTSC". Save BOTH .IFO and .BUP (Although the IFOEdit screen will then look like it is still set to "PAL", it's not. Just load the revised "VIDEO_TS.IFO" into IFOEdit to see that this is true). Repeat this procedure for each Title

3) Use IFO Edit to change the Region to R1 and save BOTH .IFO and .BUP