Re: convert PAL video to NTSC video

On 2007-11-03 13:19:08 -0700, gsm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Geoffrey S. Mendelson) said:

After ripping with MTR, I drug the video_ts to Toast and indicated
output format NTSC. Once burned playing on my Panasonic DVD-F85
presented an image endlessly scrolling vertically, as if ye olde
"vertical hold" was way off. There are no method of changing PAL/NTSC
options on the F85, nor method of toggling PAL/NTSC on my Sanyo
television.

Did you get color? If that is the case, then you may be able to
adjust the vertical hold control to sync properly with 25FPS.

That is difficult to say as there is nothing in the front-end (warnings, and distrubtion companys), nor the movie itself that isn't B&W. And right now, I've already erased those (DVD+RW) disks. I have no mechanism on my "more-modern" TV to modify vertical hold anyway. It has a total of five buttons, one for setup with a very slim series of options.

I'm back to attempting to correct the situation at my Mac.

This information, I've finally found a partial use for. In attempting
to ascertain exactly which of these frame-rates are in use on the
European disc I currently have, I had find no way to "read the header"
as you mention. How would you suggest analyzing a DVD? Any preferred
utilities?

I use mplayer, but I'm not sure it displays that flag.

My next non-preferred attempt at a solution is to run the video_ts
through handbrake and re-encode the entire thing in MP4. It takes
something on the order of 20+ hours or so to produce an mp4, which
makes it a less than desirable option. Additionally when burning the
mp4 via iDVD I find no way to avoid cropping the last 8th or so on each
side of the frame. So that "solution" sucks, but I'm trying it
nonetheless. I still have between 8 and 12 hours to go.

This really does suck.

The best way to do it is to recode the video with MENCODER. It's command
line only but the flags are well documented and you really only need
to specify them once. The command line interface supports shell scripts,
so you can set one up and keep using it.

Mencoder is very well documented, there is a page which describes
exactly what video resolution, etc to use.

Mencoder will read the encrypted DVD files directly, which eliminates
MTR, and create a DVD format MPEG file. You then use DVDAuthor to create
the VOB and other files needed to make a DVD.

I only have experience to gain from the process, but I have some doubts it will do the trick. My primary fear involves the fact that the DVD in question is subtitled. In a number of the utilities i have tried for clipping, re-encoding and other video tasks (handbrake, mpegstreamclip, ffmpegx, etc.) I have found only handbrake provides options for the selection of subtitles. Of course it then burns the subtitles directly on to the video image, disallowing any future use of frame selection in which you could remove them, say for a jpeg reference image.

Additionally, though this disk has only English as a potential subtitle, others have 2 or 3 languages, so a simple "subtitles on" might provide the wrong subtitle. It would need to be subtitle=English or some such.

Once you have those files, you can use your favorite burning program
to burn them.

(sample Mencoder parameters)

mencoder
-mc 0 -noskip -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=dvd:tsaf
-vf scale=720:576,harddup -srate 48000 -af lavcresample=48000
-lavcopts vcodec=mpeg2video:vrc_buf_size=1835:vrc_maxrate=9800:
vbitrate=5000:keyint=15:acodec=ac3:abitrate=192:aspect=4/3
-ofps 30000/1001 dvd:// -o out.mpg

These are a good starting point. Note that it is all one long line. This
will fix the video to the correct size and frame rate, and fix the
possible problem that some PAL DVD's use audio encoding which is not
compatible with NTSC DVD's.

These options were chosen carefully because many DVD player programs
and the Chinese/Eastern European cheap DVD players will play almost
any file. The more expensive players (and Windows Media Player)
enforce these standards.

(sample DVDauthor control file)

<dvdauthor dest="dvdfiles/">
<vmgm />
<titleset>
<titles>
<video aspect="4:3" />
<pgc>
<vob file="out.mpg" />
</pgc>
</titles>
</titleset>
</dvdauthor>

Geoff.

I'll give this a shot over the next day or two--depending on much access handbrake allows me to my own computer!
--
Thank you and have a nice day.

.

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