I recently picked up one of my bad movie holy grails: The Girl I Want. Unfortunately, this movie was only released on VHS in PAL format so if I actually want to watch it I need to find a way to convert it to NTSC first. Does anyone have any advice?
Never saw it. It looks dreadful from the IMDB page. I don't know anything about doing it yourself, but you could always go to a service that does that kind of thing. iMemories is an example of a service that converts analog video to digital for a fee. I'm sure there are plenty of others.
My mother keeps threatening to look into converting an old Beta tape of my high school performance of Salieri in Amadeus in 1986. Oy.
That depends on whether you mean you want someone to convert it for you, or you want to convert it yourself. I've been working on the subject of converting PAL to NTSC myself, but only with already-digital stuff from region 2 DVDs and the like.
A thing I discovered from Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs is that most of the time, the professional "conversion" simply consists of slowing down the movie from PAL's 25 frames per second approximately 4% to deinterlaced NTSC's 23.976 frames per second, and then slowing down the audio track to match. Any number of programs can do that, but something I'm developing right now is a means of frame populating-and-purging that keeps the running time for audio and video the same while increasing the frame rate to the interlaced NTSC's 29.970 frames per second. So far, it's proving to be a very complicated procedure.
Know anyone with a digital capture card? If so, capture to digital and re-render into whatever format you want.
If you are really wanting the movie, and maybe anticipate doing this again, you might want to invest in the capture equipment yourself. It's not that expensive, but you may consider getting decent gear, not the cheapest on the market.
Quote
A thing I discovered from Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs is that most of the time, the professional "conversion" simply consists of slowing down the movie from PAL's 25 frames per second approximately 4% to deinterlaced NTSC's 23.976 frames per second, and then slowing down the audio track to match. Any number of programs can do that, but something I'm developing right now is a means of frame populating-and-purging that keeps the running time for audio and video the same while increasing the frame rate to the interlaced NTSC's 29.970 frames per second. So far, it's proving to be a very complicated procedure.
Am I missing something?
Kdenlive, for example, has in the "Render" feature to render down to PAL or NTSC or whatetever digital format you want. If you have the digital file in the system, it takes care of all that (though it is configurable) at render time.
If I recall correctly, Cinellara is the same way.
"Hand" transcoding with something like ffmpeg might require these kinds of details...MIGHT, because that can handle pretty much any format, too, but the graphical tools I've used swept all of that under the rug. I've done rendering from HD video files, captures from NTSC TV signals, etc.
What tools are you using that requires this degree of manipulation?
Quote from: ulthar on March 10, 2012, 11:52:59 PMWhat tools are you using that requires this degree of manipulation?
VirtualDub, the Frame Merger plug-in, AutoHotKey, and Cool96. Changing the frame rate isn't all that difficult, but keeping the motion from looking too jerky and the frames from getting too blurry while doing so is. First I increase the frame rate from 25 to 50 frames per second using VirtualDub's frame rate conversion subroutine. This leaves the video with double the frames, half of which are drop frames. To fill these gaps, I then run the Frame Merger plug-in on the video in VirtualDub, which melds each frame with the next frame, turning all the key frames into merged frames and all the drop frames into key frames. Then I employ an algorithm I've developed for AutoHotKey which selectively purges only the merged frames in order to drop the rate from 50 frames per second to 29.970.
Once this is done, I can dub the sound (which I've extracted earlier, and boosted and normalized using Cool96) back into the video and work from there. I suppose at this point, if one meant to burn the movie to DVD, the next step would be to use another program to convert the movie to an MPEG-2 file. For me, the next step is to have VirtualDub deinterlace it down to 23.976 frames per second, and then compress it.
Quote from: ulthar on March 10, 2012, 11:52:59 PM
Know anyone with a digital capture card? If so, capture to digital and re-render into whatever format you want.
Oh, I didn't realize it was that easy. Thanks, I'll have to give it a try. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the best quality possible wouldn't it be better to not convert it at all, but just burn it to a PAL DVD?
Quote from: Nakuyabi on March 11, 2012, 08:18:52 AM
Quote from: ulthar on March 10, 2012, 11:52:59 PMWhat tools are you using that requires this degree of manipulation?
VirtualDub, the Frame Merger plug-in, AutoHotKey, and Cool96. Changing the frame rate isn't all that difficult, but keeping the motion from looking too jerky and the frames from getting too blurry while doing so is. First I increase the frame rate from 25 to 50 frames per second using VirtualDub's frame rate conversion subroutine. This leaves the video with double the frames, half of which are drop frames. To fill these gaps, I then run the Frame Merger plug-in on the video in VirtualDub, which melds each frame with the next frame, turning all the key frames into merged frames and all the drop frames into key frames. Then I employ an algorithm I've developed for AutoHotKey which selectively purges only the merged frames in order to drop the rate from 50 frames per second to 29.970.
Once this is done, I can dub the sound (which I've extracted earlier, and boosted and normalized using Cool96) back into the video and work from there. I suppose at this point, if one meant to burn the movie to DVD, the next step would be to use another program to convert the movie to an MPEG-2 file. For me, the next step is to have VirtualDub deinterlace it down to 23.976 frames per second, and then compress it.
Hmmmm. I've never noticed having to do all this, but then again, I do not typically render to PAL.
I cannot get to it right away, but I'm going to play with this a little to see what's happening on my end with this.
Quote from: Keir on March 11, 2012, 12:38:46 PM
but for the best quality possible wouldn't it be better to not convert it at all, but just burn it to a PAL DVD?
If you can watch a PAL DVD, sure, why not? I did say, "any format you want." :wink:
"Capture the video from the analog device" is the part being answered; the rest is your preference.
Quote from: ulthar on March 11, 2012, 12:46:11 PMQuote from: Keir on March 11, 2012, 12:38:46 PMbut for the best quality possible wouldn't it be better to not convert it at all, but just burn it to a PAL DVD?
If you can watch a PAL DVD, sure, why not? I did say, "any format you want." :wink:
"Capture the video from the analog device" is the part being answered; the rest is your preference.
Of course, one of the reasons I bother with all the converting is that the manual to my player is very specific on this point: it's strictly Region 1 and can't play PAL. Make sure you've got one that can play PAL before you go burning any DVDs, or they'll be useless.
Quote from: Nakuyabi on March 11, 2012, 07:45:13 PM
Quote from: ulthar on March 11, 2012, 12:46:11 PMQuote from: Keir on March 11, 2012, 12:38:46 PMbut for the best quality possible wouldn't it be better to not convert it at all, but just burn it to a PAL DVD?
If you can watch a PAL DVD, sure, why not? I did say, "any format you want." :wink:
"Capture the video from the analog device" is the part being answered; the rest is your preference.
Of course, one of the reasons I bother with all the converting is that the manual to my player is very specific on this point: it's strictly Region 1 and can't play PAL. Make sure you've got one that can play PAL before you go burning any DVDs, or they'll be useless.
Yes, my last DVD player could only play NTSC so I bought another one specifically for PAL DVDs. Might be worth getting yourself one to save you some trouble (they aren't hard to find or expensive, you just need to do some research first as they don't often advertise PAL compatibility).
Quote from: Keir on March 11, 2012, 08:17:49 PMYes, my last DVD player could only play NTSC so I bought another one specifically for PAL DVDs. Might be worth getting yourself one to save you some trouble (they aren't hard to find or expensive, you just need to do some research first as they don't often advertise PAL compatibility).
Well, that might make sense if I had a huge collection of Region 2 DVDs, but for the few I do have, it's far more cost-effective just to rip them to the computer and run them up to a laptop I have attached to an old analogue NTSC television. Besides, the conversion in and of itself is a worthwhile hobby for me. I'm thinking after this miserable lost decade of ours comes to an end, I may just take up digitizing and converting stuff for people professionally.