PAL to NTSC or NTSC to PAL Conversions

[msvideo]

My footage is aquired and edited in PAL DV. Edit in Premiere V6.0. Encoded to DVD with CCE 2.5SP frameserved via Avisynth, then authored to DVD.

My Question is:- Where in the above chain can the final movie be converted to NTSC, then authored to NTSC DVD? Is there any utilities or Premiere plugins that convert PAL to NTSC or vice versa? Want to keep workflow digital and not have to drop down to a VHS standards conversion deck that I use for VHS transfers.

Thanks
Mark

[ppera2]

I don't know about Premiere plugins, but give you some general advice.
For good quality PAL-NTSC conversion you need:
Change Framerate from 25 to 23.976 fps (AssumeFPS(23.976) in AVISynth ). Then perform 3:2 pulldown -

AssumeFrameBased
SeparateFields
SelectEvery(8, 0,1, 2,3,2, 5,4, 7,6,7)
Weave
- See AVISynth doc.

This methode requires audio timestretch by factor 25/23.976, but gives smooth output.
You can convert without speed change, with some frame repeating system, but it will result with choppy movement.

In this forum this was discussed many times, you may look back little...

[msvideo]

Thank you for your reply ppera2, I was hoping there was a simple method. The time involved re-encoding the footage and trial and error getting the qulity right is not commercially viable for my purpose. Thanks anyway.

Did a search as you suggested found this quote for anyone else interested in this topic.

Originally posted by Inwards
I have had some success converting PAL DVDs to NTSC. The process is fairly straightforward but you have to know what you're doing. BTW - this process only works for progressive material.

1 - Rip the main movie and load /save it in DVD2AVI.
2 - Resize the movie to 720x480 using your favorite method (TMPGEnc, AVISynth, VirtualDub, etc).
3 - Encode the movie. It's okay to leave it at 25fps for now.
4 - Run the movie through pulldown.exe. This will convert it to 29.97 NTSC.
5 - Convert the ac3 tracks into .wav files. If you just have stereo, this is easy. If you want to keep 5.1, you can use BeSweet to split the ac3 into 6 seperate waves.
6 - Load the wav file(s) into CoolEdit or somesuch program and change the length. Choose an option that preserves the pitch. In CoolEdit, you'll want to change the rate from 100 to 95.904. Save the new wav(s).
7 - Load the wav(s) into SoftEncode and re-encode them in AC3 format.

At this point you should have an NTSC-compatible m2v and ac3 which you can author in the normal way.