Got some NTSC Mpegs, from which I would like to create VCDs The glitch is that in my country, the TV system is PAL and not NTSC

Anyone knows how to convert the Mpegs from NTSC to PAL?

-- Bruno Neves (bneves@netcabp.pt), January 26, 2002

Answers

I am in the process of going the other way right now (pal to ntsc) did a test this morning and burned a small bit of what I converted. worked great!!!! only downside is that it is taking a long time. I have a P1 166 and its taking almost 9 hours for just 40 minutes of conversion. The program is tmpgenc and its great. the only one I have found that does what we both need. I use nero to burn it tho.... not for long, its shareware and about to run out. good luck. I dont have the link to where I found tmpgenc but do a search in the forum. its where I found it I think... good luck. ps hows the weather down there......lol

-- helpfulman (false@mail.com), January 26, 2002.

You can get TMPGenc from www.tmpgenc.com. I have also read that Media Studio version 6 will do this conversion. You may not have to convert though. A large number of DVD players in Europe can play both PAL and NTSC. Have you burned a NTSC VCD to see if your player can convert it to PAL for display? P.S. I should have said that Media Studio is Ulead Media Studio. It's an expensive commercial product. TMPGenc is free.

-- Jason (Jason.Shumate@equant.com), January 28, 2002.

Depends on type of your source video as to the quality but: - If the source is genuine 29.97 fps interlaced video, you'll have to resample to do the framerate conversion (this may result in blurring/ghosting and other strange things) - If the source is 29.97 which was converted from film source (i.e. has had 3:2 pulldown) then you can remove the additional interlaced frames (this is called inverse telecine), leaving you with 23.976 fps, which you can speed up by ~4% to 25.000 fps (this is usually the "best" way). You'll also need to compress the audio, use TWE (free from Yamaha) to compress the audio in the frequency domain (so you don't just make everything squeeky).

Either way, Tmpgenc is the best bet. It has automatic inverse telecine which works pretty well.

Don't forget to set your source and destination aspect ratios correctly, PAL pixels are about 10% wider than 1:1, and NTSC about 10% narrower than 1:1.

If you've ever seen the PAL DVD of Dune (TV Version), then you'll see how badly you can do a conversion to PAL :)

-- Conor McCarthy (conormc@ucd.ie), January 31, 2002.

One other factor you might want to consider is whether or not your tv is capable of displaying NTSC movies, etc. I personally bought a DVD player capable of displaying NTSC/PAL/Pal 60, but my tv is PAL only. Therefore, having a DVD player capable of displaying both NTSC and PAL is effectively pointless. The only answer being, of course, to buy a new tv. :-)

-- gorgeousgeorge (gorgeousgeorge@hotmail.com), February 27, 2002.

if this is of any use if you are burning your vcds with nero there is an option on the menu to select pal or ntsc this has worked for me

-- howard rollinson (h.rollinson@ntlworld.com), September 25, 2002.