Is there any Linux application that can convert a US NTSC DVD to PAL or 
MPEG4?

Apologies if this is a dumb question: I really don't understand video DVD 
formats.


-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

In article <he6qop$rk4$1@localhost.localdomain>,
	Martin Gregorie wrote:
> Is there any Linux application that can convert a US NTSC DVD to PAL or 
> MPEG4?

What do you want to play it on?

-- 
Paul Martin

In <he6qop$rk4$1@localhost.localdomain>,
Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:

> Is there any Linux application that can convert a US NTSC DVD to PAL or 
> MPEG4?
>
> Apologies if this is a dumb question: I really don't understand video DVD 
> formats.

The usual conversion tools such as mencoder can do it, but as Paul
Martin implied, are you sure you need to? DVD players and TVs that can't
do both NTSC and PAL are quite rare. I think you'll need to increase
your understanding of the formats before you can manage it, because I'm
not aware of a simple "NTSC to PAL wizard", you need to build up your
own filter chain.

The fundamental difference between NTSC and PAL DVD is that the former
is 720x480 @ 30fps and the latter is 720x576 @ 50fps. Both are
interlaced, but are usually mastered from 24fps progressive sources
(film). A process called telecine or pull-down is used to convert film
to NTSC (it's a bit too complicated to explain here, Wikipedia it). A
player can detect this and reverse the process for a computer monitor or
"24p" TV. For PAL the film is simply sped up slightly to play at 25fps
instead of 24fps and both fields of each interlaced frame come from the
same source frame. Clever audio processing can prevent the pitch from
being altered when the sound is sped up.

So to convert it you'd need to get mencoder or whatever to do inverse
telecine (I think that's more or less automatic), scale up to 576 lines
(not really necessary if you use MPEG4 as your output) without changing
the aspect ratio and speed up to 25fps, resampling the sound.

-- 
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

On 20/11/09 20:56, Tony Houghton wrote:
> In<he6qop$rk4$1@localhost.localdomain>,
> Martin Gregorie<martin@address-in-sig.invalid>  wrote:
>
>> Is there any Linux application that can convert a US NTSC DVD to PAL or
>> MPEG4?
>>
>> Apologies if this is a dumb question: I really don't understand video DVD
>> formats.
>
> The usual conversion tools such as mencoder can do it, but as Paul
> Martin implied, are you sure you need to? DVD players and TVs that can't
> do both NTSC and PAL are quite rare. I think you'll need to increase
> your understanding of the formats before you can manage it, because I'm
> not aware of a simple "NTSC to PAL wizard", you need to build up your
> own filter chain.

[snip]

There's hardware to do it I think, ISTR Maplins sold a device to do it, 
or was it PAL to NTSC, I don't remember, worth asking.

Ivor

Tony Houghton wrote:
> In <he6qop$rk4$1@localhost.localdomain>,
> Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> Is there any Linux application that can convert a US NTSC DVD to PAL or 
>> MPEG4?
>>
>> Apologies if this is a dumb question: I really don't understand video DVD 
>> formats.
> 
> The usual conversion tools such as mencoder can do it, but as Paul
> Martin implied, are you sure you need to? DVD players and TVs that can't
> do both NTSC and PAL are quite rare.

I've got one. I got given a DVD from my brother in America for my 
birthday. It almost sort of played, but was in black & white.

> I think you'll need to increase
> your understanding of the formats before you can manage it, because I'm
> not aware of a simple "NTSC to PAL wizard", you need to build up your
> own filter chain.

I tried to find a way to do this. I /think/ the closest I got was by 
copying it to the hard drive as an mpeg or avi or one of those things, 
then making a DVD with DeVeDe. But the result jerky... as you would sort 
of expect from what Tony Houghton said.

Eventually came to the conclusion that it's not possible to convert the 
disc.

So I just watched it on the computer. The seats are not as comfortable, 
but at least the film worked OK.

Frank

In ,
Frank Peelo  wrote:

> Tony Houghton wrote:
>
>> I think you'll need to increase
>> your understanding of the formats before you can manage it, because I'm
>> not aware of a simple "NTSC to PAL wizard", you need to build up your
>> own filter chain.
>
> I tried to find a way to do this. I /think/ the closest I got was by 
> copying it to the hard drive as an mpeg or avi or one of those things, 
> then making a DVD with DeVeDe. But the result jerky... as you would sort 
> of expect from what Tony Houghton said.

It's probably trying to match find the nearest frame in the input to
each frame in the output. If the source was progressive and DeVeDe
applies inverse telecine it's not too bad, you just get a frame repeated
once a second. If the source was interlaced or DeVeDe hasn't applied
inverse telecine you'll get a much more horrible juddering.

> Eventually came to the conclusion that it's not possible to convert the 
> disc.

It isn't altogether impossible, but getting a really good (smooth and
unblurred) conversion if the source was interlaced isn't really
possible.

-- 
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:34:23 +0000, Tony Houghton wrote:

Thanks to all for your answers, which give a good idea of what's 
involved. 

I asked because I'm interested in getting a copy of "The Sunship Game" on 
DVD when its released later this year. There is a crappy, YouTube quality 
transcript circulating, but as it was originally a professionally made 
film in 1970 and the DVD will only be available in NTSC, I was wondering 
if I'd be wasting $30 + P&P if I ordered a copy.
 

-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:

> I asked because I'm interested in getting a copy of "The Sunship Game" on 
> DVD when its released later this year. There is a crappy, YouTube quality 
> transcript circulating, but as it was originally a professionally made 
> film in 1970 and the DVD will only be available in NTSC, I was wondering 
> if I'd be wasting $30 + P&P if I ordered a copy.

Is the DVD formatting for NTSC different then, or is it just the region 
code that changes?

I purchased a region 1 DVD, and it played fine in my old DVD player.

Mark.

-- 
Mark Hobley
Linux User: #370818  http://markhobley.yi.org/

Tony Houghton wrote:

> In <he6qop$rk4$1@localhost.localdomain>,
> Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> Is there any Linux application that can convert a US NTSC DVD to PAL or
>> MPEG4?
>>
>> Apologies if this is a dumb question: I really don't understand video DVD
>> formats.
> 
> The usual conversion tools such as mencoder can do it, but as Paul
> Martin implied, are you sure you need to? DVD players and TVs that can't
> do both NTSC and PAL are quite rare. I think you'll need to increase
> your understanding of the formats before you can manage it, because I'm
> not aware of a simple "NTSC to PAL wizard", you need to build up your
> own filter chain.
> 

There are quite a few tools out there to do this but they all require a 
reasonable amount of knowledge to operate successfully. To the OP the 
chances are that any equipment you use for viewing is likely to be just as 
happy with NTSC as it is for PAL so I'd try playing it first to see if you 
need to do any transcoding.

If you still want to transcode it check out:
mencoder
ffmpeg
transcode (I have a script available at the transcode wiki to do this job)
avidemux
QDVDAuthor to format a video DVD.

Transcoding to mpeg4 can be painless but there's a lot to catch out the 
uninitiated like pixel aspect ratios, overscan compensation etc. Go to over 
to http://www.transcoding.org/transcode and have a look at the examples and 
tutorials. Unless you rally want to know about video and transcoding you'll 
see that sticking with the NTSC video is probably the best option unless you 
can't view it.

> The fundamental difference between NTSC and PAL DVD is that the former
> is 720x480 @ 30fps and the latter is 720x576 @ 50fps. 

NTSC plays at 29.97 *frames* per second and PAL plays at 50 *fields* per 
second which is 25 *frames* per second.

This means that to do a NTSC to PAL conversion with freely available 
software you have to drop nearly 5 frames a second. This is pretty much 
pathological for a good video but it can be done.

> Both are
> interlaced, but are usually mastered from 24fps progressive sources
> (film). A process called telecine or pull-down is used to convert film
> to NTSC (it's a bit too complicated to explain here, Wikipedia it). A
> player can detect this and reverse the process for a computer monitor or
> "24p" TV. For PAL the film is simply sped up slightly to play at 25fps
> instead of 24fps and both fields of each interlaced frame come from the
> same source frame. Clever audio processing can prevent the pitch from
> being altered when the sound is sped up.
> 
> So to convert it you'd need to get mencoder or whatever to do inverse
> telecine (I think that's more or less automatic), scale up to 576 lines
> (not really necessary if you use MPEG4 as your output) without changing
> the aspect ratio and speed up to 25fps, resampling the sound.
> 

Doing an inverse telecine will give you 24fps which is not what the OP 
wants. In fact I'd stay away from doing _any_ telecine work with free 
software.

-- 
Geoff

In article <he78lt$lj$1@localhost.localdomain>,
	Martin Gregorie wrote:
> I asked because I'm interested in getting a copy of "The Sunship Game" on 
> DVD when its released later this year. There is a crappy, YouTube quality 
> transcript circulating, but as it was originally a professionally made 
> film in 1970 and the DVD will only be available in NTSC, I was wondering 
> if I'd be wasting $30 + P&P if I ordered a copy.

You want a multiregion (region-free) DVD player, connected using RGB
SCART to a TV capable of handling 30Hz pictures (most, if not all,
those sold in the last 20 years).

The only difference between UK and US DVDs is the region coding (to
prevent UK viewers looking at US DVDs, or Australians looking at UK
DVDs), the frame rate (24 or 30fps for US, 25fps for UK) and the
resolution (720x480 for US, 720x576 for UK).

If you want to view it on the computer, pretty much any program that
uses libdvdcss (eg. mplayer, vlc, xine) will play it.

-- 
Paul Martin

On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:30:33 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:

> Is there any Linux application that can convert a US NTSC DVD to PAL or
> MPEG4?
> 
> Apologies if this is a dumb question: I really don't understand video
> DVD formats.

It is usually a bit of a disaster because of the different frame rates 
29.97 (NTSC) vs. 25 (PAL) which leads to audio sync problems on 
conversion.

see a few screen clips here: http://www.imageno.com/t9l3bghs3jb2pic.html

Fortunately I only have one NTSC region one DVD and by far the easiest 
way is to play it on a region free DVD player. If you don't have one of 
these or can't find a hack to 'de-regionalise' your player then FWIW 
(since for video work I still use windoze) my suggestions are.

1. Preserve your region setting on your computer dvd drive. 
I usually rip to hdd for speed.
The drive region can usually be set 5 times then its fixed. I don't know 
if any of the linux dvd ripping software such as dvd::rip bypass this but 
windoze DVDdecrypter running under WINE will.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD_Decrypter

The purpose of this is to 'de-regionalise' the video so it will play on a 
UK (region two) player. Then re-author with (maybe) DeVeDe.

Another windoze one to try using WINE is dvd shrink.- This might be the 
best bet since commercial DVD's are generally double layer. It removes 
the regionalisation, language and audio options and I think it does not 
affect the drive setting.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD_Shrink.

Both the above will keep the format as NTSC and if you have WINE 
installed use dvd shrink straight to .iso. You can check it out with VLC 
and if ok burn it. I'm still using wine v1.0.1 purely on the basis that 
it works.

2. Conversion to PAL or .mp4. Either from the DVD or files.
see:
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/linux-video-tools

In theory WinFF (front end for ffmpeg) has the presets you want for PAL 
DVD. I've just given it a try and it scrambles the audio but give it a 
try.
Never used it but Handbrake (front end for mencoder) should do a .mp4 
conversion, beware of audio sync.

For DVD specs see: http://www.videohelp.com/dvd



-- 
rich

On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:04:06 +0000, Geoff Clements wrote:

Thanks for an excellent summary.



-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

In <he8ogl$5ec$1@news.eternal-september.org>,
Geoff Clements  wrote:

> Tony Houghton wrote:
>
>> The fundamental difference between NTSC and PAL DVD is that the former
>> is 720x480 @ 30fps and the latter is 720x576 @ 50fps. 
>
> NTSC plays at 29.97 *frames* per second and PAL plays at 50 *fields* per 
> second which is 25 *frames* per second.

Yes, sorry, I meant to say 30/60fps and 25/50fps where the first figure
is frames and the second figure is fields. And I forgot about the
1000/1001 factor.

> This means that to do a NTSC to PAL conversion with freely available 
> software you have to drop nearly 5 frames a second. This is pretty much 
> pathological for a good video but it can be done.

[Snip]

> Doing an inverse telecine will give you 24fps which is not what the OP 
> wants. In fact I'd stay away from doing _any_ telecine work with free 
> software.

Isn't it quite easy to do inverse telecine on a DVD though because there
are flags in the data stream to tell you which frame each field comes
from? If he can't view it as NTSC and a PAL conversion is essential, I
still think this is the best way provided the source was 24fps
progressive and it isn't vital for the sound to be reproduced at the
correct speed and pitch. I've quite often watched 24fps AVIs sped up to
25fps on the fly for my TV (when I bought a new one recently I
accidentally got one without "24p") and it works quite well. The change
in the sound is subjectively no more noticeable to me than the slight
judder you get from watching 24fps films at 60fps NTSC.

-- 
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:20:24 +0000, Paul Martin wrote:

> In article <he78lt$lj$1@localhost.localdomain>,
> 	Martin Gregorie wrote:
>> I asked because I'm interested in getting a copy of "The Sunship Game"
>> on DVD when its released later this year. There is a crappy, YouTube
>> quality transcript circulating, but as it was originally a
>> professionally made film in 1970 and the DVD will only be available in
>> NTSC, I was wondering if I'd be wasting $30 + P&P if I ordered a copy.
> 
> You want a multiregion (region-free) DVD player, connected using RGB
> SCART to a TV capable of handling 30Hz pictures (most, if not all, those
> sold in the last 20 years).
> 
> The only difference between UK and US DVDs is the region coding (to
> prevent UK viewers looking at US DVDs, or Australians looking at UK
> DVDs), the frame rate (24 or 30fps for US, 25fps for UK) and the
> resolution (720x480 for US, 720x576 for UK).
> 
> If you want to view it on the computer, pretty much any program that
> uses libdvdcss (eg. mplayer, vlc, xine) will play it.

As this is a fairly specialised DVD but has a potential global audience 
(its about the 1970 US open gliding champs) I'm hopeful that it will have 
all-region coding. I've asked one of the distributors but not heard back 
yet.


-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

Hello Frank!

20 Nov 09 22:08, Frank Peelo wrote to All:

 FP> I've got one. I got given a DVD from my brother in America for my
 FP> birthday. It almost sort of played, but was in black & white.

 >> I think you'll need to increase
 >> your understanding of the formats before you can manage it, because
 >> I'm not aware of a simple "NTSC to PAL wizard", you need to build up
 >> your own filter chain.

Don't forget there are 2 different NTSC formats, ie, 4.43 and 3.58 (std US 
form), I am going by memory for the (3.58) one.  When I was shopping for a 
Sony Betamax and a Umatic VTR I had to be very specific for the beta to have 
both american formats as well as most Pal and Secam formats as I was prodcing 
tapes to a wide region of  the globe.  The 4.43 version of NTSC in for 
consumption outside of the US but both are very inferier to the PAL standard 
due to a range of factors including lines which is a lot less
than the PAL system. Very noticable on colour programming.

Regardless many TV's including my old Sony 28" CRT and v.heavy will playback 
all NTSC as well as PAL and Secam etc however some TV's will only playback B&W 
as they are NOT supporting the differing versions.

Hope it helps,

Vince

On 23/11/2009 15:53, Vince Coen wrote:
> Hello Frank!
> 
> 20 Nov 09 22:08, Frank Peelo wrote to All:
> 
>  FP> I've got one. I got given a DVD from my brother in America for my
>  FP> birthday. It almost sort of played, but was in black & white.

That was in response to Tony Houghton's saying thet DVD players and TVs 
that can't do both NTSC and PAL are quite rare. They are rare. But if 
you have one it's still a nuisance.



Tony Houghton wrote:

>  >> I think you'll need to increase
>  >> your understanding of the formats before you can manage it, because
>  >> I'm not aware of a simple "NTSC to PAL wizard", you need to build up
>  >> your own filter chain.
> 
> Don't forget there are 2 different NTSC formats, ie, 4.43 and 3.58 (std US 
> form), I am going by memory for the (3.58) one.  When I was shopping for a 
> Sony Betamax and a Umatic VTR I had to be very specific for the beta to have 
> both american formats as well as most Pal and Secam formats as I was prodcing 
> tapes to a wide region of  the globe.  The 4.43 version of NTSC in for 
> consumption outside of the US but both are very inferier to the PAL standard 
> due to a range of factors including lines which is a lot less
> than the PAL system. Very noticable on colour programming.
> 
> Regardless many TV's including my old Sony 28" CRT and v.heavy will playback 
> all NTSC as well as PAL and Secam etc however some TV's will only playback B&W 
> as they are NOT supporting the differing versions.

Yup, that was my experience. I guess the line scan rates for PAL and 
NTSC are close enough that the telly can display NTSC frames. But the 
DVD player should encode the colour using PAL, and it just didn't.

Frank

As the bottle floated ashore we opened it and found the message that FP
had written:

> On 23/11/2009 15:53, Vince Coen wrote:
>> Hello Frank!
>> 
>> 20 Nov 09 22:08, Frank Peelo wrote to All:
>> 
>>  FP> I've got one. I got given a DVD from my brother in America for my
>>  FP> birthday. It almost sort of played, but was in black & white.
> 
> That was in response to Tony Houghton's saying thet DVD players and TVs
> that can't do both NTSC and PAL are quite rare. They are rare. But if
> you have one it's still a nuisance.

I really think I ought to come in here. After a decade and a half in 
broadcasting and a couple of RTS awards I think I'm entitled to say, "It's 
a bit more complicated than that."

1) PAL and NTSC are standards for colour encoding. They are commonly 
associated with 625/50 and 525/60 scan standards, but don't have to be. 
The BBC made colour test transmissions in 405/50 NTSC in the late 50s and 
early 60s.

2) Converting the geometry is quite easy. You just slap on some decent 
filters. A 32-point Bessel will do this for you.

3) It's the time domain that plays hob with what you want. Imagine a car 
being driven on the far side of the fence, and the camera panning to 
follow it. There is a number painted on the side of the car. The speed is 
such that on every frame the number is exactly behind an upright of the 
fence. Now convert that to 625/50. On every sixth frame in the output the 
number should be clearly visible. But that data is not available in the 
standards converter's input.

In short all standards conversion is an approximation, adjusting the 
display will always giver better results. When display meant hot glass and 
Miller integrators this was a real problem. It isn't any longer.

-- 
I am Robert Billing, Christian, author, inventor, traveller, cook and
animal lover. "It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book
as a woman is with child."
Quality e-books for portable readers: http://www.alex-library.com

In article ,
	FP wrote:
> Tony Houghton wrote:
>> 
>> Regardless many TV's including my old Sony 28" CRT and v.heavy will
>> playback all NTSC as well as PAL and Secam etc however some TV's
>> will only playback B&W as they are NOT supporting the differing
>> versions.

> Yup, that was my experience. I guess the line scan rates for PAL and 
> NTSC are close enough that the telly can display NTSC frames. But the 
> DVD player should encode the colour using PAL, and it just didn't.

That's why you should use RGB signals rather than composite with those
TVs.

-- 
Paul Martin

On 24/11/2009 17:44, Robert Billing wrote:
> As the bottle floated ashore we opened it and found the message that FP
> had written:
> 
> 
>>On 23/11/2009 15:53, Vince Coen wrote:
>>
>>>Hello Frank!
>>>
>>>20 Nov 09 22:08, Frank Peelo wrote to All:
>>>
>>> FP> I've got one. I got given a DVD from my brother in America for my
>>> FP> birthday. It almost sort of played, but was in black & white.
>>
>>That was in response to Tony Houghton's saying thet DVD players and TVs
>>that can't do both NTSC and PAL are quite rare. They are rare. But if
>>you have one it's still a nuisance.
> 
> 
> I really think I ought to come in here. After a decade and a half in 
> broadcasting and a couple of RTS awards I think I'm entitled to say, "It's 
> a bit more complicated than that."

> 1) PAL and NTSC are standards for colour encoding. They are commonly 
> associated with 625/50 and 525/60 scan standards, but don't have to be. 
> The BBC made colour test transmissions in 405/50 NTSC in the late 50s and 
> early 60s.

yes, but in my case the colour encoding is the only problem. The DVD 
player is generating the colour encoding signal, whether PAL or NTSC. 
The mpeg files on the DVD disc aren't going to have a bunch of bits at 
the start of each scan line to represent the colour burst, are they? 
They're digital pictures, they will have pixels. So, the DVD could as 
easily send out a PAL signal -- even if it was 525/60 with PAL -- 
instead of NTSC. I sort of suspect that many can do that, from what Tony 
said.

But mine refuses to play a DVD with NTSC geometry unless I tell it that 
it is connected to an NTSC telly. If I do that, it generates NTSC colour 
encoding and I get a black & white picture.

> 2) Converting the geometry is quite easy. You just slap on some decent 
> filters. A 32-point Bessel will do this for you.

No, it's easier than that! Well, maybe not for people who can afford LCD 
tellies, but my old glass bottle has no problem. Just fire out the 
525/60 instead of the 525/50 and let the telly display it. CRTs don't 
really have pixels, just one "pixel" flying across the screen 15625 
times a second. Or 15750, if you're 525/60. And that's only a difference 
of 0.8% so the telly can handle that. And it adjusts the frame height to 
fill the screen, so that works fine too. No filtering necessary!

So, *if* I tell the player it's connected to an NTSC box, the geometry 
and frame rate are not a problem, but the picture is in black and white. 
If I tell it to output PAL, it refuses to play the DVD because it 
doesn't like the geometry or frame rate. If I convert the DVD so that 
the player likes the geometry and frame rate, then, as you say:

> 3) It's the time domain that plays hob with what you want.

So I continue to believe that the easiest thing to do is to play it on 
the computer. Or buy a better DVD player, but that's not going to happen.

Frank

As the bottle floated ashore we opened it and found the message that FP
had written:

> But mine refuses to play a DVD with NTSC geometry unless I tell it that
> it is connected to an NTSC telly. If I do that, it generates NTSC colour
> encoding and I get a black & white picture.

Which is mildly annoying.
> 
>> 2) Converting the geometry is quite easy. You just slap on some decent
>> filters. A 32-point Bessel will do this for you.
> 
> No, it's easier than that! Well, maybe not for people who can afford LCD
> tellies, but my old glass bottle has no problem. Just fire out the
> 525/60 instead of the 525/50 and let the telly display it. CRTs don't
> really have pixels, just one "pixel" flying across the screen 15625
> times a second. Or 15750, if you're 525/60. And that's only a difference
> of 0.8% so the telly can handle that. And it adjusts the frame height to
> fill the screen, so that works fine too. No filtering necessary!

If you have a multistandard display this isn't a problem. However 
broadcast 625/50 is in fact processed at the studio as bing 720x576, hence 
the pixels. I spent a lot of my life brewing up digital filters to make 
the conversions.

> So, *if* I tell the player it's connected to an NTSC box, the geometry
> and frame rate are not a problem, but the picture is in black and white.
> If I tell it to output PAL, it refuses to play the DVD because it
> doesn't like the geometry or frame rate. If I convert the DVD so that
> the player likes the geometry and frame rate, then, as you say:

Can you get RGB, YUV or YIQ out of the player?

> So I continue to believe that the easiest thing to do is to play it on
> the computer. Or buy a better DVD player, but that's not going to
> happen.

Agreed.

-- 
I am Robert Billing, Christian, author, inventor, traveller, cook and
animal lover. "It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book
as a woman is with child."
Quality e-books for portable readers: http://www.alex-library.com