Best way to convert an authored NTSC DVD to PAL?

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hi Everyone,

Just from looking a bit deeper into Creative Cow posts, it looks like we may have to re-build the Scenarist project in PAL.

The motion menus where built in After Effects. Does anyone know if it is easy to convert After Effects motion menus to PAL?

I have not spoken with the person who will be converting the AE menus, but I’m trying to understand it myself first.

Thank you for your thoughts and feedback about the best way to convert the motion menus and other DVD elements into a PAL Scenarist DVD project.

Khashyar

[Roman Melekh]

Re-render menus – this is simple….

question is “how you can transcode your video”
do you have 23.976 + pulldown or “original” 29.97 fps video?

and – YES, you must re-author all from A to Z 🙂
you can copy pre-post-cell commands from NTSC scenario to PAL

[Max Kovalsky]

We do dual format projects all the time. We’ll typically author NTSC, export the script out of Scenarist, hack the script to make it into PAL and import it into a new PAL project. One you have your PAL scenario, just relink to the PAL assets. This way there’s no need to reauthor and re-QC the programming.

Max
—
Blu-ray producer
New York
Area4.tv

[Roman Melekh]

…hack the script to make it into PAL….

and how to hack 29.97fps video and subtitles? )))

[Max Kovalsky]

You can’t. Gotta reencode the video and resize the subs. That’s what I meant by saying “relink to new assets”.

[Khashyar Darvich]

Thank you both, Max and Roman, for your advice and thoughts about how to create a PAL Scenarist project from an NTSC version.

Since the motion menus and video transitions were created in After Effects in 30 fps video, what is the easiest to convert those AE menu clips to PAL? Does AE have a fps conversion option? Should our DVD author use compressor? Or, will we need to convert the menu video files to PAL in the same way as our video feature and special features? (I know that the menu buttons will have to be replaced).

Also, since the video clips for the NTSC Scenarist project were already digitized to Quciktime files, is there an easy way to convert them all to PAL? Is there software that can do this, or should I take the clips to a lab like Lightening Media in Los Angeles for the conversion. The most time-consuming way would be to reassemble the clips on a timeline, export them to tape, and have the lab convert the entire tape to PAL, and then redigitize each clip individually in the new PAL format, but that seems like the long way of doing this. Thank you for any suggestions for converting the QT project clips.

Thank you for all of your thoughts and advice,

Khashyar

[Khashyar Darvich]

Hello again,

I just received a message from our DVD author, and he said that he received a recommendation that he could use “visualhub” to convert the menus to PAL.

Has anyone heard of how effective visualhub is?

Thank you,

Khashyar

[Roman Melekh]

IMHO you can just set composition option to PAL@25, and re-render menus to PAL

Video….you have 23.976+pulldown or native 29.97fps ?

If you have 23.976fps videos, you can speed-up your video and audio without “Lightening Media in Los Angeles”…I know how to do this “hack” on PC/Windows – try to use Canopus ProCoder or Carbon Coder.

Audio – any audio editor, you must to apply “time stretch” filter and speed up to 25 fps (multiply speed to 1.042709)

[Roman Melekh]

…a recommendation…
ufff….the best way is re-render in AE, but not convert “from-to”

[Max Kovalsky]

ProCoder will do a good job transcoding from NTSC to PAL if you’re in a crunch.