PAL to NTSC

[Allen Zagel]

Do a search on PAL to NTSC. there’s be many posts about this subject here.
Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxvideo.com

[Mahesh Upadhyaya]

Thanks Allen for responding.
I have made 2 or 3 successful conversions in the past. I was really looking for confirmation to
1- Can I use the default NTSC template to PTT
2- Do I need to use broadcast color filter for broadcast use.

TIA

Regards
Mahesh
https://www.crestvideo.co.uk

[Allen Zagel]

I would say to use a PAL template to print to tape then but I haven’t done it. I have a program something call Atlantis or something like that that does PAL to NTSC conversions and corrects the frame size too. They got a web site..
https://www.dvfilm.com/atlantis/

I have a friend who produces videos in PAL format and I was going to partner with him and make NTSC versions. I was goping to get a small used PAL camcorder and capture the video into DV Film Atlantis to convert to NTSC before bringing it into Vegas for editing. But I haven’t had the time to do all that. I’m retiring in 15 months so then I’ll ahve time for that stuff.

2. If it’s going to be broadcast or shown on TV, then yes I’d watch the broadcast colors very carefully. I had a few post on that subject a while back and those post got quite big. Like use 16 for black and 235 for white. I had them for red and blue also because the VHS tape I was producing for a company had bleeding on the red’s and blues. They didn’t notice it but I did.

I also have some guidelines for other colors as I printed the posts. I’d have to find them. Do a search on broadcast colors and see if some of my old postings show up.

Allen

My web site features;
China, China Railways and music.
https://www.azagel.com

Video site;
https://www.asxvideo.com

[Mahesh Upadhyaya]

Thanks Allen for a detailed response.
I have successfully used PTT using the default NTSC template to convert a PAL project to NTSC once before so I know that method works. I would just use the default NTSC template again to PTT.
I have an analogue Standards Converter which I normally use for analogue NTSC/PAL/SECAM conversions.
I could always use this to convert. This entails feeding Vegas to a PAL DV device – output of PAL DV device to Anlogue input of converter- Analogue output of converter to analogue input of NTSC DV device. This will ofcourse produce some quality loss.

I have decided to use Vegas to convert. I know that means much longer render times but hopefully the quality will be maintained.

I was goping to get a small used PAL camcorder and capture the video into DV Film Atlantis to convert to NTSC before bringing it into Vegas for editing. But I haven’t had the time to do all that. I’m retiring in 15 months so then I’ll ahve time for that stuff.
Don’t you believe that Allen. I took early retirement to persue this hobby/profession, 7 years ago, and I have less and less time to do things I would like:)

Next problem: How to make an NTSC DVD from a PAL master tape of a wedding I did 3 years ago!
Do I capture analogue converted NTSC, or convert to NTSC AVI, or see if Mainconcept can render PAL AVI to NTSC MPEG2.

Regards
Mahesh
https://www.crestvideo.co.uk

[Chris Young]

We have done quite a few broadcast jobs going from PAL > NTSC. Whilst Vegas isn’t bad at conversion the solution we have found that works the best when looking for a software answer was to use Canopus Procoder 2. Do the entire edit in PAL, render to PAL observing all the necessary broadcast video and audio requirements for PAL and then convert that render to NTSC in Procoder. The results are very good plus it’s quick. Short of going to a hardware solution using a high quality standards converter this is the best quality/price solution we have found.

We tried the Atlantis software and it was quite impressive. The downside for us was that they have a novel approach to conversion in as much that they use a unique proprietary method to create new frames to interpolate with which creates a different look. It’s cunning, but the results were more of a 24p/25p look, which is not what we were after.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Mahesh Upadhyaya]

Thanks Chris for a very informative post. Looks like Procoder is the way to go. Unfortunately I would not be able to handle the learning curve at this stage. I have a stand-alone G2 standards converter (cost $2000 seven years ago). It is good but its temporal (movement) interpolation is only 2 frames. Subjectively, Vegas is just as good but I can work in DV domain all the way thro’in Vegas.
I think I will go with Vegas for this batch of jobs, but definitely explore Procoder 2.

Regards
Mahesh
https://www.crestvideo.co.uk

[Chris Young]

Mahesh ~

Procoder is well worth the look. Learning curve is virtually nil using the presets, especially for PAL>NTSC conversion. Choose source, choose target, encode, That’s it! What sold us on it was a doco on the history of steam, which had been shot, not by us thankfully, on various formats over the previous twelve years. It had heaps of those big traction engine big spoke spinning wheels with those big crank type connecting rods. An absolute nightmare to convert usually. The shudder and strobing even with good hardware conversion was still a problem. You had to use something like Snell & Wilcox’s Alchemist [very expensive] to get really good results. To give you and idea the Procoder conversions were so close to the PAL originals that most who saw them never realised it was converted footage. Very, very good motion interpolation.

A footnote: I know the two guys, Glyn & Greg from Farnham; hence the name G2, who started G2 systems, knew them well. I used to install G2 kit and train TV station techos on all the G2 broadcast graphics units and character generators. In fact I still have a G2 Manuscript CG in our linear suite. Glyn Powell Evans, one of the two G’s went on to found Omnibus Systems who are now one of the major suppliers of system automation infrastructures to broadcasters the world over. It’s a small world!

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Mahesh Upadhyaya]

Chris
You have nearly sold me on the idea. This project is going to be a series of, 6-10, 30 minute slots but most of the footage is a talking head (verrrry boring ). The SW is a bit pricey at 350 GB pounds.
Couple of questions:
What would be the transcoding time for NTSC/PAL conversion?

Have you used it for MPEG2, VBR/CBR encoding? How good and how fast?

TIA

Regards
Mahesh
https://www.crestvideo.co.uk

[Mahesh Upadhyaya]

A footnote: I know the two guys, Glyn & Greg from Farnham; hence the name G2, who started G2 systems, knew them well. I used to install G2 kit and train TV station techos on all the G2 broadcast graphics units and character generators. In fact I still have a G2 Manuscript CG in our linear suite. Glyn Powell Evans, one of the two G’s went on to found Omnibus Systems who are now one of the major suppliers of system automation infrastructures to broadcasters the world over. It’s a small world!
That is amazing. I do not know the 2 G’s. I think I met one of them at a video show, about 7 years ago, and I was sold on the converter system. Apparently they also made a plug-in module for it which would interpolate over 6 frames. As BBC held the patent, the plug-in was quite expensive and way out of my budget.

Regards
Mahesh
https://www.crestvideo.co.uk

[Chris Young]

Mahesh ~

Yes we have used it for MPEG2 creation. Procoder has a number of presets for DVD such as, standard DVD, fast DVD and Mastering Quality. In the advanced options you can change a myriad of settings, CBR, VBR, bitrates, number of passes, WAV audio, MPG audio etc, etc. To give you a pointer, at ‘mastering quality’ the encoding is about real-time 1:1 and the quality is very good. This is on a P4 3.2 Gig box. Depending on the complexity of movement in your file I find the encoding rate generally varies between .75 > 1.5 times but in the long run it comes out at about real-time. On the same box I find it faster than either Vegas or DVDA. Procoder produces two separate streams. The video stream produced is an ‘m2v’ stream which causes problems with DVDA. By renaming that stream to ‘mpg’ you overcome the problem. If you want an AC3 audio stream push that out of Vegas and bring it into DVDA along with your renamed.mpg stream and the whole DVDA process is vastly improved in terms of turn-around time. To date we have had no sync problems with this method. On the other hand you can get Procoder to render out a .wav audio file and pull that into DVDA along with the renamed.mpg file.

Procoder also has a myriad of WMV, Quicktime, AVI, HD, and VCD etc, etc export options. If you have a number of files to do you have a ‘watch folder’ option where any files that get dropped into that folder get encoded automatically with whatever profiles you have predetermined. All in all I find it a very useful and importantly a very stable tool to have in the arsenal. I reckon it’s worth the money just for the DVD side of things. Its standard conversion options just come in as a big bonus plus.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney