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PAL conversion
I’m not sure if this is the right place to post this but here goes. I am doing a wedding video for a friend and he needs to have a PAL copy for his grandparents. What is the best way to go about doing this? I am in L.A. so getting it professionally converted wouldn’t be a problem, just costly and there is not money to cover it. Is there any authoring software that can do it? That would also be great so i don’t have to make the DVD NTSC, and output the footage as ntsc, get it covnerted to pal, redigitize it PAL and then redo the menus and all that junk. If anyway has experience please fill me in. This is my first NTSC and PAL project, so i’m clueless.
Thanks,
-Joe -
7 Replies
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What software are you using to Author your DVD? Some packages will allow you to simply change the project from NSTC to PAL, and it will do the conversion for you (Titles, menus, chapter marks, etc…). NOTE: it might not be the “best” conversion in terms of video quality/smoothness, but it is handy for making those copies you need to send to friends/relatives where the CONTENT (i.e. bride/groom/family/etc.) is the most important thing to the viewer…
Also, most PAL DVD Players will play NTSC DVD’s — so you could try just sending them the NTSC version to see if they can play it properly (then you wouldn’t need to do any conversion).
Of course, mass/retail distribution would call for a quality standards conversion, but this type of need might be eligible for the “simple” solution…
Regards,
George -
I was planning on using Adobe Encore, but if there are programs that will simply convert it in the authoring i can use one of those. What are those programs? I think that the quality for what i’m doing would be fine. Thank you for the reply, that is very helpful.
-Joe
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[Joe Kaczorowski] “I was planning on using Adobe Encore, but if there are programs that will simply convert it in the authoring i can use one of those. What are those programs? I think that the quality for what i’m doing would be fine. Thank you for the reply, that is very helpful.”
A couple that come to mind are Corel’s Moviefactory 6 Plus, and Sony’s DVD Architect 4.x (either Studio or Pro version, but the Pro version only comes with Vegas Pro 8).
NOTE: some older versions of these packages can also do it (in case you find a good deal). I believe MovieFactory 4.x/5.x, and DVD Architect 3.x (maybe others too).
Regards,
George -
I’m from PAL land (UK). Pretty well all modern DVD players can playback NTSC disks. If the one your client has can’t then he can buy a new one that can (and upscale to 1080p) for about £50.
Forget about using a DVD authoring package to do the conversion for you, in my experience it’ll look terrible.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free! -
Daniel,
How does a pal dvd player play back NTSC? does it do a converstion on the fly or something? Will stuff stay in sync and look good? It doesn’t have to look good, just acceptible for a grandma to watch a wedding video.
Thanks everyone for the response.
-Joe
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This will explain it better than I could given the space here.
https://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/PALvsNTSC/PALvsNTSC.asp
And it all looks fine (taking into consideration the lower resolution of NTSC) and stays in sync etc.
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Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free! -
I think you have answered your own question, no money, doesn’t have to be good. Seems like a no brainer. Just send a NTSC disc. Remember every computer can playback PAL and NTSC DVDs.
Quality should be fine and it sounds like a new DVD in PAL would cost less then what you should charge for a PAL convertion.
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