Converting a PAL DVD to NTSC

[Mokona]

A friend of mine has burnt a DVD for me.
He used DVDShrink and dezoned the DVD so that my R1 players can play the originaly R2 media.
We tried the DVD in question on my computer, and it plays ok, but I can't get it to play on my Playstation 2 (canadian PS2... I read it's supposed to play DVD-R) or my JVC player (an old model, may not play DVD-Rs, I don't have the model here... I will check tonight and add it to the post!).

Edit: The JVC can't read the DVD at all... the PS2 gives me a message like "Video format not recognized" (can't recall the exact message, will update tonight!)

The DVD IS Region Free, but I think the issue comes from the fact that the original media is PAL and my TVs and players may just support NTSC...

Can anyone here tell me if there's a way for me to re-burn the DVDs into a format that will play on my players (either the PS2 or the JVC).

In other words, is there a way to convert a PAL DVD to NTSC? (I tried to look in the forums, but couldn't come up with a good answer yet. Most people seem to want to convert NTSC to PAL, not the contrary, I don't even know if the process is similar or not.)

Thanks in advance for your help.

[killingspree]

hi,
well sorry but there's nothing that can be done about your JVC player. since it doesn't support DVD-/+R (to make sure check at http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers ) there's no way to make it play them (except maybe a firmware update)

for your PS2: well honestly, i've never owned a PS2 and i never was really interested in them so i do not know in which way DVD playing capabilities are restriced in them. neither do i know If they do support DVD+/-R although i would expect them too.
anyway, as you said, it might be possible that there is a problem with the fact that it is dealing with PAL.

update: after checking on www.dvdrhelp.com ( link ) (http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdplayers.php?DVDnameid=445&Search=Search&#comments) i highly doubt that it is able to play PAL.

for PAL to NTSC conversations, please search the forum. there definitely are a couple of threads about it.

basically it goes like this:
slow down video from 25 fps to 23.97 fps
perform pulldown to 29.97 fps
crop/resize the video to a proper NTSC resolution (720x480)
slow down audio to prevent sync issues!

hth
steVe
PS: most of a time it is not legal to copy a DVD for a friend, so please make sure you are fully aware of forum rule 6 as well as all other forum rules (http://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm)

[Mokona]

Wow, that was fast, thanks!

When you say "slow down the audio", do you mean that I'll have audio that sounds different? That doesn't seem right. I understand about slowing down the video (i.e. probably losing some frame, but I can live with that). But I don't understand why I should slow down the audio...

Anyway, I'll then begin my crusade to find a solution to my problem... at least, now I know what to look for, thanks to you!

[killingspree]

well the video is slowed down by approx 1 fps or 4 %, therefore in order for the audio to stay in sync with the video you also have to slow it down a bit. the same 4% to be precise :)

anyway, you won't hear the difference - i can guarantee that ;)

and besweet will do it for you anyway - so not much work to do in this part!

steVe

[Mokona]

Great, I understand!

You've been a great help, thank you!

[smiller667]

Look at it this way: in the theater, movies play at 24fps ... on a PAL DVD, the movie runs at 25fps, i.e. it runs faster and the movie is shorter (that's were a lot of claims that a particular DVD is "cut" come from).

On a lot of titles, the audio is apparently sped up without pitch correction to match the 25fps of the video. Some NTSC fanatics claim they can hear the difference - I own both PAL and NTSC stuff and I haven't noticed personally. But then I haven't been desperate to notice a difference either.

Thus, to be super-precise, you could try to find out whether your PAL dvd was pitch-corrected or not - if it wasn't, you are simply restoring the original pitch when converting to NTSC. If it was, you would have to undo that correction.

But then again, most people would not notice a difference, as killingspree already said.