Hi all
I belong to a group in the US and we want to import a DVD from the UK. It will be PAL. I think we’ll be able to watch it on a computer, no problem, but it will be nice to convert it to an NTSC DVD so we can loan it to people to play without complications on any DVD player. We also want to do a public viewing and a local independent theatre owner is happy to play a DVD but he’s not sure if he can play PAL.
What is likely to be the easiest, most reliable and successful way to convert this to NTSC?
I’m quite experienced with computers so I’m not looking for step by step instructions, just some pointers.
I found some comments online suggesting that VLC can it.
Others recommend Auto Gordian Knot.
I’d appreciate any other recommendations, ideas or good or bad experiences.
Thanks
I can’t help you with the conversion, but I’m quite sure that most DVD players are able to decode both NTSC and PAL. Some time ago I had an issue with my DVD player not playing NTSC DVDs correctly (I’m in Europe, so PAL is the default), and after asking on this board, I found out that there is a setting for decoding with the options PAL, NTSC and AUTO. Since it’s a run-of-the-mill Pioneer player I bought some years ago for little money, I assume that this is possible with most modern DVD players, so maybe you should check your manuals.
Most Pal DVD players can play NTSC, but rarely is it so the other way around.
I would’ve thought that as most rippers recompress, it will strip out any NTSC or PAL factor and reset it to neutral. Then you can burn it to a playable DVD again, and it will in theory let you pick NTSC. Frame rate is the only factor, at that point.
But even though that makes sense to me, that’s probably not true.
So I’d suggest going here or here.
Nero can do it. Rip the files, then run the files through nero vision. It’ll give you the option to convert to NTSC.
My Philips DVD player can play PAL and according to the user reviews, this model on Amazon can also.
Also note that commercial DVDs have a region code. Players have to be authorized to play at least one code. Most inexpensive DVD players in the US are authorized to play region 1 DVDs only, though you can find players which support multiple regions.
Most players which can play both regions 1 and 2 DVDs also do the PAL-NTSC conversion for region 2 DVDs.
Thanks for replies. It’s a little more uncertain than I thought since I was trying to be a cheapskate and do it with free software but… good news… we’ve just learnt that the supplier in the UK is about to release an NTSC version.
There are three parts to this - as well as the DVD region and the capability of the player to work with PAL video, the TV also needs to be PAL capable (the DVD player won’t usually perform actual conversion).
But this fortunately is a description of most modern equipment. If the player and TV were made in the last five years, and especially if they were made in Japan, Korea, etc they will have been designed for multiple markets and will just work.
Ripping and converting the video is actually the hardest and worst option, because the frame rate is a little different (and this gives the footage a very uncomfortable sort of swim-jerk-swim effect), plus the process of ripping and decompressing will inevitably introduce degradation in quality, plus you might actually be breaking the law.