23.98p NTSC to PAL dvd, what's the best way?

musman wrote on 8/9/2005, 1:19 AM

What I'm trying to do is make a PAL dvd from my NTSC 23.98p material (film originated and pulldown removed). I'm editing from DV25 copies as an 'offline' and have uncompressed 10 bit 'online' files (also at 23.98) for the final edit.
There seems to be some confusion as to whether NTSC material will play on PAL TVs. Some say they play back fine on all PAL TVs made in the last 20 years, other say it plays back but at 4% faster speed, still others say only certain PAL TVs will play the stuff back. So, I was wondering if:

1- I should just make NTSC 29.97 60i DVDs;
2- I should make 23.98p DVDs;
3- I should render out it in Vegas to either A) an interlaced PAL MPEG-2 or B) a progressive PAL MPEG-2;
4- Doing any of the above might yield a better-looking result if I used the uncompressed 10bit material;
5- How I should set the properties in DVDA.

Sorry for the long post, but I've never done conversions of this nature before and am pretty perplexed despite my research. So any help is greatly appreciated!

Comments

farss wrote on 8/9/2005, 5:10 AM

I can only speak for Down Under but I think the vast majority of systems down here will handle NTSC just fine, certainly all my DVD players, TVs and monitors will. The only bit of gear I own that will not handle NTSC is me trusty D8 camera.
However as your source material is true 24p why not make a 24p DVD, that'll play just fine here and everywhere. I think they do play 4% faster but so does all the film put to air down here, we're slow I know but I think we can hack running 4% faster.
Bob.

musman wrote on 8/9/2005, 12:51 PM

Thanks you, farss. You're always there when I need some help! I was just wondering, and this may be a question for the DVDA forum, but when I make the 23.98p dvd, should I adjust the settings in DVDA to make a PAL dvd, or should I just leave it on NTSC?
Thanks again!

farss wrote on 8/9/2005, 2:51 PM

I've never made such a DVD so I really don't know the answer but I'd certainly like to know!
The only downside I can see to making a 24p DVD is that as you say it's a NTSC resolution DVD ie 720x480 which is quite a bit lower res than PALs 720x576.
Your other option would be to have the film telecined to PAL and make a genuine PAL DVD from that. As I understand it that's one of the reasons a lot of US TV productions are shot on film rather than video, two passes through the telecine and you can get both NTSC and PAL at native res. In this case there's a 4% speedup but as I said that's not noticeable.
Bob.

ScottW wrote on 8/9/2005, 3:38 PM

DVDA won't let you create a 24p PAL DVD, it will recompress the video to be 25 frames.

I tried this with DVD Lab Pro as well - starting with 720x576 and 2:3 pulldown; it accepted the file, but the resulting DVD project appears to be 720x480 NTSC (even though I told it to build a PAL DVD) - since Lab Pro doesn't have any way to recompress the video, it apparently changed the project attributes; however, the actual video contained in the DVD is 720x576 - WinDVD plays it, but I'll bet set-top players would have fits.

--Scott

farss wrote on 8/9/2005, 4:19 PM

That's because the DVD specs as far as I can tell only support 24p with an NTSC frame size. You first need to encode as 24p with no pulldown, the DVD player adds pulldown for NTSC playback and adds 4% speedup for PAL playback, just what it does with the frame size though I haven't a clue.
Bob.

musman wrote on 8/10/2005, 2:31 AM

Interesting. Thank you both for the input. I'm actually cropping my material to 1:1.85, so I wonder if the frame size issue will be an issue to me.
But, I think my plan from here will be to make a 24p DVD and also a pal 50i DVD. Will take a long time, but hopefully that will cover the bases.
Never made a 24p dvd before and was concerned about how to set it up correctly. My plan is to keep the option selected to 'allow pulldown removal when opening 24p DV' and under 'Optimize DVD' to make sure the 'Recompress Settings' has the frame rate set to 23.976. Is this all I should need to do? Does it matter that I had to encode the mpeg2 files in a different program? Read something about the need for the 24p mpeg to have flags for DVD players to recognize and that DVDA didn't add these flags.
Sorry if this is getting off the thread here, but I do appreciate any help with this!!

farss wrote on 8/10/2005, 3:36 AM

Simple thought, which is what I always do when in doubt, make something very short using generated media. It's not a 100% foolproof test but if it doesn't work right with gen media it'll sure not work right with the real McCoy.
Bob.

Laurence wrote on 8/10/2005, 9:06 AM

To me, the 4% speedup is horrible. With the 4% speedup, the voices sound like munchkins. I don't have that deep a voice to begin with. Sped up I just sound puny!

4% slower, going from 25 to 24fps doesn't bother me nearly as much. The motion is slightly slower and maybe a little smoother in the process. Everything sounds a little more massive. Voices sound a little deeper.

The best thing is just a straight Vegas PAL render from NTSC. (or vice versa) Vegas 6 does this noticably better than Vegas 5 by the way.

Coursedesign wrote on 8/10/2005, 12:12 PM

SoundForge can lower the pitch without changing the timing.

Works quite well, I had to do it recently with a mixed voice and music soundtrack.

Laurence wrote on 8/10/2005, 2:58 PM

Yeah you can pitch shift it back, but that sounds kind of wierd too: sort of a wobbly chirpy sound. One thing I've done is just to pitch shift the voice over and let the pitch of the music change. It goes about a half step sharp and isn't too bad with the voices corrected. With Vegas 5 that was probably the best option, but Vegas 6 frame rate conversion is better and a straight PAL render looks great.

farss wrote on 8/10/2005, 3:06 PM

Can someone explain to me if this is all so problematic how us Aussies and the Poms watch movies on TV?
Same goes for most US TV programs that are shot on film.
Also Vegas will quite nicely handle the pitch shift, you even get a choice of algorithms.
Bob.

musman wrote on 8/10/2005, 9:34 PM

Thanks again to everyone for all the input. If farss has a little trouble figuring this all out then I think it's safe to say it's a complecated mess.
I wish we had some more white papers to cover things like this, or maybe a section on the VASST site devoted to more complex technical issues like this.
In the meantime, I think I'm going to rerender to pal mpeg2 all the NTSC files of my other shorts and compare them to what Vegas 6 can do. From what people have said here, it should turn out better.
As an aside from all this, I'd be very surprised if we'd be having this discussion if we used any other NLE. I doubt any other NLE could even begin to touch this kind of flexibility.