DVD Rebuilder and PAL <-> NTSC conversion

[powderkegz]

First, a big thanks to jdobbs for a wonderful tool :D

Although this topic has been touched upon in the longer threads, it's not been seriously discussed yet, and I for one would love a PAL DVD<->NTSC DVD option that didn't involve me having to learn DVD authoring (and to the folks who mentioned that there's a decrease in quality when you convert - well, of course, but that can be minimized, and a small decrease in quality is better than not being able to watch that movie you bought in Europe on your US player ;) ).

It seems like this should be relatively easy to do with Rebuilder, since it already uses AVISynth as its base. It has that Filter Editor option, and thanks to Xesdeeni, we already have some AVS scripts that (according to Doom forum members) produce results that rival $150,000 standalone digital converters (the scripts are here: http://www.geocities.com/xesdeeni2001/StandardsConversion/index.html, and the scripts are improved on in http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45459).

I'm no AVS or DVD mastering expert, so I was hoping that someone with more knowledge of AVISynth might take a look at Xesdeeni's scripts and the scripts that Rebuilder generates to see if there's a way that Xesdeeni's scripts can be used in Rebuilder's Filter Editor - make sure that they wouldn't mess anything up, that the order is right, and all that.

If that's not possible, then is it possible to edit the scripts manually at some point in the process? Or jdobbs, is it possible that Xesdeeni's scripts might be integrated into Rebuilder at some point in time? ;)

Thanks to anyone who thinks about this and replies - those of us who aren't AVISynth wizards appreciate it.

Peace,
powderkegz

[Xesdeeni]

Unfortunately, converting the actual video is only a small portion of the battle when converting a whole DVD. I'm sure I haven't considered everything, but here are the issues I've encountered:

First, all of the menus must be converted. The video/image part is the same as converting the content. But along with the video/image is a mask used for the buttons. This must also be scaled. I don't know how to extract this myself.

Next, all of the chapter timings must be adjusted. Menus and branches are linked to specific I-frames of the video. Even when rebuilding with the same standard (NTSC or PAL), re-encoded video should have an I-frame at the same point as the original, or the menus or branches will miss their marks. But when converting between standards, the timings must be converted between frame rates, and they can't line up exactly.

And finally, subtitles must be converted, and they have both problems above: They must be extracted and scaled, and their timings must be adjusted to the new frame rate.

I'd love a utility to do this automatically. I confess I don't know anything about DVD Rebuilder, but I suspect this is more than it has the ability to do at present. But maybe someone will look into this.

Xesdeeni

[powderkegz]

Ah, OK, thanks for clearing that up for me, why conversions are such a project, and why you can't simply plug the scrips into Rebuilder. Maybe something will come along sometime .....

~pk