NTSC 5.1 ac3 to PAL 5.1 ac3

[PhillipWyllie]

I have some NTSC DVDs that I'd like to back-up to PAL as I can't play NTSC on my DVD player. I'm using Bewseet to extract to 6 mono wavs and then encoding the new ac3 in Vegas 7( using the time stretch feature). I've also tried not bothering with the LFE from BeSweet and letting Vegas make the LFE channel(using the low-pass filter). The problem is that when I play the DVD on my set-top box(sound is through a Dolby Digital 1 amplifier) the sound sounds a little distorted and echoy in parts( where there is explosions etc..). Normal PAL DVDs play fine, however(5.1 surround) and the resulting DVD seems to sound fine PowerDVD.

I'm thinking that some how the surround channels or the LFE have got mixed up in the L& R channels, but I don't know. I could just use a stereo mix, but thought this would be a good project to try 5.1 encoding as I haven't done so before. I could also use BeSweet's rate-change feature, but I find the sound is out-of synch and a different length to the PAL video( maybe doesn't take into account how I've IVTCed the video).

Any help would be a appreciated, thanks.

[magicclue]

I don't understand.
Every PAL DVD-Player is capable of playing back NTSC material!
Or is it the region protection preventing playback?
If you can get rid of that, then you don't need to convert anything at all.

Else use DGPulldown (http://neuron2.net/dgpulldown/dgpulldown.html)?

Get Video to 23.976 fps (eventually IVTC), encode to 720px/704px, 576px at 23.976 fps and then apply Pulldown to 25fps.
Done.
No need to apply audio conversion!

[Edit]
or as you said use traditional audio stretch to "25fps" and mux with
23.976->25fps sped up video (if you've got 29.976fps use IVTC!).
Have a look in the Avisynth section to get some ideas and scripts.

[PhillipWyllie]

My DVD player is the PS2, I know I could buy a £20 one that will but I'd like to solve this problem(like to get into 5.1 surround projects).

I've tried your idea, but resulted in the audio being out of sync as 25fps isn't the same rate as 23.976fps. Thanks for the reply though. I have an other idea, to encode stretched wavs and use another application to do the ac3 encoding(maybe it's because I'm not using Vegas properly).

[magicclue]

http://www.geocities.com/xesdeeni2001/StandardsConversion/index.html
http://forum.gleitz.info/showpost.php?p=57921&postcount=13

see links above,

cheers.

[PhillipWyllie]

I've cracked it! I was muting the speaker in the "surround panner" in Vegas( I thought that was to select it). I now have a new problem, I get this error "[00:00:44.330] W7: Downmix overflow (0: +1.0dB)" in BeSweet when I try to downmix the newly encoded ac3, resulting in overblown wavs.

[magicclue]

why don't you use Belight GUI for Besweet and encode your "NTSC AC3" to stretched "PAL AC3" (23.976->25fps) with Aften?

No need to decode to WAV files.

[PhillipWyllie]

Sorted the downmix overflow problem. I had the panner too near the speaker, in fact leaving it alone produced waveforms that are the same as the originals

[tebasuna51]

Sorted the downmix overflow problem.

Really Azid decoder send many:

"[00:00:44.330] W7: Downmix overflow (0: +1.0dB)"

but never must be considered a problem, only a Warning: a sample clipped by 1dB is a normal issue in lossy codecs, only is a problem if there are many and with high dB values.

BTW, stretch with BeLight-BeSweet a 5.1 is not a accurate method because soundtouch don't work with 5.1 (only stereo) and the ota method is not so good.

You can use BeHappy/SoundOut/Wavi-Avisynth method to use Soundtouch 5.1 stretch and encode with Aften without intermediate wav file.