PAL SVCD to NTSC DVD - Tricky!

[Blue_MiSfit]

Hey all...

So I've got a lovely 3 disc PAL SVCD. I am trying to convert it to an NTSC DVD so that It will play nice with my set-top DVD player. Actually the player will play the SVCDs, but I get ugly blocking artifacts occasionally (Bad media? Burned too fast?), and I dont like swapping discs. So it looks like I'm going to have to do some serious work.

I tried following the SVCD->DVD guide here on Doom9, but when I get to the part where I have to export the Title Set in SpruceUp, it gives me a Pal/NTSC mismatch. I assume this is because I am trying to make an NTSC dvd out of a 480x576 (PAL) SVCD?

Anyway, I am looking at some other options.

1) d2v/avs the SVCD and re-encode it properly with some nice processing in CCE, then author with an AC3 and burn that properly

2) Trick SpruceUp?

I need some feedback!

Thanks,
-MiSfit

[jshumate]

I have read posts about people using AVI Synth to do PAL<->NTSC conversion with excellent results. A web search might provide some help on how to do this. Yes, you are correct that SpruceUp is complaining about trying to make a NTSC DVD out of a PAL source. The resolutions are different, not to mention the frames per second. Procoder, which is VERY expensive, is a commercial encoding program that many have said does excellent PAL<->NTSC conversion.

[Trahald]

Moving to dvd authoring since the question is about making the dvd (you already have the svcd)

[violao]

Originally posted by jshumate
I have read posts about people using AVI Synth to do PAL<->NTSC conversion with excellent results...
Right. Basically you need to resize to 720*480, do a framerate conversion to 23.976 (very simple in avisynth) and re-encode to DVD compliant mpeg video. If SVCD is letterboxed than you might also want to get rid of the black bars and encode as 16:9 anamorphic. Here is a little discussion. (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=89985) You can open your mpeg files in avisynth with Dgindex/DVD2AVI .d2v project file or with directshowsource() filter.

Audio is a bit more tricky, but everything can be accomplished with besweet in one step. You need to:
1. decode to wav
2. resample from 44100 to 48000
3. stretch (slow down) audio by a factor 25000/23976
4. reencode to ac3
Since there are some issues re besweet ac3 encoding (:readfaq: ) you might want to use some other ac3 encoder. If your source is mono then besweet is not appropriate. Use lame to decode, some audio editor to resample (CollEdit, Audacity...) and finally soundstretch (http://sky.prohosting.com/oparviai/soundtouch/soundstretch.html) for 3.

Finally you need to author and AFAIK rejig is used for NTSC. Probably muxman can be used too. I make PAL dvds so I'm satisfied with Ifoedit.

[Abond]

Probably easiest way is to reencode the video to 720x480 (I would prefer 704x480) at 25 fps and after that to apply dgpulldown for pulldown 25->29.97 fps. Then you can use the original audio - no need for speedup or slowdown. About the dgpulldown approach look here
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=88031