# Making a PAL DVD **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 24, 2013, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846 "2013-03-24T20:11:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2013, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/1 "2013-03-24T20:11:30Z")
We did a concert back around Christmas that a company made into a DVD for us. My organ teacher wants a copy for his brother back in the UK, and I offered to save him the money and do it for him. I followed these instructions here ([How to convert PAL DVD’s to NTSC and vice versa | Articles - Digital Digest](http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Convert_PAL_NTSC_DVD_page1.html)) to rip the video to my Hard Drive and then convert the files to PAL. Now I need to take the VIDEO\_TS folder–menus and all–and put it on a disc that will play in a standalone PAL DVD player. I don’t own Nero, and I was looking for free software to do this. I found Burnaware from an old thread on here, but it doesn’t differentiate between NTSC and PAL, and I don’t think what I burned will play in such a machine… Any advice would be greatly appreciated! ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2013, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/2 "2013-03-24T20:30:04Z")
I’ve never made a PAL disc but I notice that the open sourced (Linux/Windows) DVD authoring program I use, [DeVeDe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeVeDe), supports PAL. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2013, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/3 "2013-03-24T20:36:02Z")
It’s relatively trivial to do with professional stuff - I create PAL materials all the time from commercial work that has to go to both US and UK/German users - but I’d guess you’re in for some hurdle-jumping to do it with freeware. Even with a lot of experience, the freeware/video pirate/open source/hacker stuff can be head-bangingly frustrating to use and make work together. You can never tell what’s a bug, what’s a feature and what might have led to a failure; you just have to “know” how it’s supposed to work. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2013, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/4 "2013-03-24T20:46:34Z")
If it’s to be played on equipment made in the last, say, 5 years, it may not be necessary to convert it at all. PAL certainly is the standard in the UK, but most recently-made TV/DVD equipment can either automatically switch and play back NTSC format media, or convert on the fly. ---
**Author:** ![JerrySTL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e274bd/32.png) [@JerrySTL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JerrySTL)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/5 "2013-03-25T00:18:57Z")
As Mangetout noted, it might not be an issue with newer DVD players. Region encoding might be a little trouble. However it’s pretty easy to hack a DVD player to play all regions. I have some DVDs that are coded for Australia and England and hacked a cheap DVD player to watch them. Instructions are all over the internet. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/6 "2013-03-25T02:33:32Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > If it’s to be played on equipment made in the last, say, 5 years, it may not be necessary to convert it at all. PAL certainly is the standard in the UK, but most recently-made TV/DVD equipment can either automatically switch and play back NTSC format media, or convert on the fly. That’s what I thought. The DVD I burned says all the videos are PAL on analysis, but it works on my standalone player. I don’t want to question my teacher, however, since I don’t know how old his player is. ---
**Author:** ![antonio107](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ea924/32.png) [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/7 "2013-03-25T02:34:45Z")
Oh, and since this is something made for our community choir, I’m assuming the production company didn’t region lock it! ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-a-pal-dvd/653846/8 "2013-03-25T09:48:27Z")
PAL, NTSC and SECAM are (were) systems for encoding color with analog TV systems. A “PAL DVD” makes no sense except in a very indirect way to refer to the frame rate. PAL was used in Europe and the word came to be associated with 625 lines, 25/50 fps while NTSC was used in the USA and came to be associated with 525 lines, 30/60 fps, but either system can be used, and in fact, was used, with different line and frame rates. When TV was in its infancy the limiting factor was bandwidth and both systems used about the same bandwidth. In Europe you had about 50_600 lines per second and in America 60_500. Both systems have a 4:3 aspect ratio. When DVD players came out the defining factor was what fps and what kind of analog color signal they put out, PAL or NTSC, but the video encoded in the DVD is neither, it is digital MPG. DVDs are digital MPG and have no PAL or NTSC of any kind, what they have is a certain frame rate and aspect ratio compression. So-called PAL DVDs go at 25/50 FPS and so-called NTSC DVDs go at 30/60 FPS. Again, when DVD was developed it was decided to keep the bandwidth the same so that the same movie would take up the same space on disc. So American DVDs have fewer lines (480) while European DVDs have more lines (576). You can see that 50_576 = 60_480. The aspect ratio of these signals is wrong in both cases so they have to be stretched to the correct AR. > [@](#): > > [DVD-Video - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Video) > > DVD-Video discs have a raw bit rate of 11.08 Mbit/s, with a 1.0 Mbit/s overhead, leaving a payload bit rate of 10.08 Mbit/s. Of this, up to 3.36 Mbit/s can be used for subtitles, a maximum of 10.08 Mbit/s can be split amongst audio and video, and a maximum of 9.80 Mbit/s can be used for video alone. > > To record moving pictures, DVD-Video uses either H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 compression at up to 9.8 Mbit/s (9,800 Kbit/s) or MPEG-1 compression at up to 1.856 Mbit/s (1,856 kbit/s). > > The following formats are allowed for H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 video: > > At 25 frames per second, interlaced (commonly used in regions with 50 Hz image scanning frequency): > 720 × 576 pixels (same resolution as D-1) > 704 × 576 pixels > 352 × 576 pixels (same as the China Video Disc standard) > 352 x 288 pixels > At 29.97 frames per second, interlaced (commonly used in regions with 60 Hz image scanning frequency): > 720 × 480 pixels (same resolution as D-1) > 704 × 480 pixels > 352 × 480 pixels (same as the China Video Disc standard) > 352 x 240 pixels Being interlaced it is not really 25 frames but 50 fields per second and 25 frames per second. Two fields make one frame. So at 25/50 fps 720 × 576 pixels has an AR of 1.25 which needs to be stretched to 4:3 (or 16:9) while 720 x 480 has an AR of 1.5 and needs to be needs to be compressed (or streched in the opposite direction) to reach the same final AR. All this is becoming less of a problem as players and TVs can cope with more formats and convert between them. In any case, a DVD has a certain header and file structure and you need a program which will create or copy a DVD disc as such and just copying the files to a disc has a good chance of not working depending on the player. On the other hand I usually take the opposite path and just convert to DIVX/XVID/AVI which pretty much every player understands and where you have more choice and flexibility regarding bandwidth and other factors.