PAL DVD -> NTSC DVD alternative conversion way

Well, I converted a PAL DVD to NTSC WITHOUT using an Authoring Program!!!! It runs like it should, it jjust need minor adjustments so that the menus work well and the subtitles look complete (changing the bmps to 420 and putting them back to a .SUP file...anybody?) Here, I am going to explain how: I used this apps for the process DVDDecrypter VobEdit IfoEdit Main Concept MPEG Encoder Headac3he STEP 1: Rip the DVD using DVD Decrypter in File Mode STEP 2: Use VobEdit to Demux each and every VOB in a different folder; like this C:\My DVD\VIDEO_TS DO NOT CHECK THE 'DEMUX COMPLETE TITLE SET', instead go ONE BY ONE, if you dont know which Streams to Demux, then goto DVD Decypter and check your dvd by choosing Mode -> IFO I , Stream Processing and look which ones are there (Audio AC3, DTS, Subtitles: English, French, etc. so you can know which ones to choose in VobEdit) like: I have this DVD that has a DTS channel, but I don't know where is the stream, so I check it on the DVD Decrypt app and then choose it: 0x89 (my case), same with subtitles... STEP 3: Well... since I had only one language on my dvd it was pretty simple to convert, only thing is that the audio was AC3, and since I dont know how to convert AC3 PAL to AC3 NTSC, I just decided to change it to mp2, using Headac3he Ok..... so, now we have all our VOBs in a separate folder with all their streams inside, now we are going to convert the video and audio STEP 4: Open Main Concept MPEG Encoder ( I am using this because its FAST) and just choose your video (m2v) and audio (mp2, converted from AC3 with Headac3he) and choose in output format this settings: MPEG Type: DVD Video Mode: NTSC Stream Type: Video and Audio (NOT PROGRAM NOR TRANSPORT) Audio Mode: Layer 2 Convert the video and audio (for each and every VOB folder you have), this should take about 2 hours or less, depending on how big the dvd is STEP 5: Open IFOEdit and choose DVDAuthor -> Author DVD A new window will open: Video: Choose the outputted file from Concept MPEG Encoder, if its not shown there then choose all files (it has a .mpv extension) Audio: Choose the outputted file from Concept MPEG Encoder, if its not shown there then choose all files (it has a .mpa extension), cllick once on the audio and choose its language (not necessary, but maybe useful for further reference) Subpicture: Choose all the .SUP files (demuxed by VOBEdit) and specify a Language for each (please note that I don't know how to make these smaller, so that they can be shown complete on screen, I can only see the first line) THIS IS DONE FOR EACH OF THE VOB FILES Now..... choose a Destination Directory (please choose a blank directory) Press ok and wait Now, open that directory and delete all files except the .VOB file, and rename it as your source directory (if your source directory was VIDEO_TS then rename it as VIDEO_TS.VOB) and then move it to another folder (this is just to avoid confussion and to let IFOEdit do its job, without rewriting your VOBs) Do this step again until you have no more VOBs to create STEP 6: This one is my favorite, and also this is the tricky part All the information of the menus, track changes, etc. is stored in the .IFO files So, what we are going to do is take the IFOs from the DVD Folder (the original one) and take ONLY the IFOs, (forget about the .BUP files, they are only Backups of the IFOs) and put them on the folder where the NTSC VOBs are. Open IFO Edit and open the VIDEO_TS.IFO file and in the overview double click where Video says and change it to NTSC (leave everything else just the way it is (in that window)) Double click Audio to change Audio Attributes, since we changed greately the Audio, from AC3 to mp2, then we have to make some changes, in order to have them right, open the VIDEO_TS.IFO created by IFOEdit saved for further reference and check how it is, and copy it just like it is, to the Audio Attributes of the Original IFO Do that to all the overview data (VTS_1 Video: MPEG 2 ---> PAL to NTSC, etc.) until theres nothing more in that window to change. Save it and Open VTS_01_0.IFO or the next .IFO you have, and change it too to NTSC and the Audio to what it is. Now..... Save it and you are DONE! (well almost) I don't know how to make the menus to stay put, since the info of the menus are in the VTS_01_0.ifo of my dvd, but are uneditable, any suggestions??? The DVD is playable in NTSC, and when inserted you can even watch the WARNING and the whole other stuff, just the menus are very difficult to reach, no to say inoperable, also the subtitles are not shown correclty due to the screen changes, from 576 to 480 (PAL to NTSC) This is all I have done, please help me fine tune this so we can have this alternative way to convert PAL dvds to NTSC with menus, etc without having to buy expensive authoring programs.

I am new to all of this so forgive any trespass if I offend. I have some questions about your process. Why use VOBedit if DVDdecrypter can demux the video, audio, and subtitle, streams (either by individual vobs or to one big stream) for you? When a AC3 stream is converted to another format such as WAV or MP2 do you lose the 6 channels? What do you use to make the subtitles smaller? Thanks

Well, I didnt know that you could demux by VOB, so I proceeded to demux using VOBEdit Subtitles: I cant... I am thinking on maybe the possibility to use SubRip and resize the BMPs to NTSC size (480) and then send it to Scenarist or Maestro, mux it (with or without video, depending on how complicated the thing becomes) and then demux it in order to have a .BUP file AC3: Yes, maybe you could lose those channels, however, it is possible then to change it comfortably to NTSC, I have no idea in how to change it without losing quality Maybe if we use some kind of app that can extract each and every channel alone and then transform every channel to ntsc and then back to AC3 ....I mean, anything is possible, I am only thinking of a way to make this easy and fast.

What goal I would like to get to is the ability to convert to NTSC by having as few proggys to do it all. So far I can use one program to demux the video and audio, dvd decrypter, for each VOB or make one big one for each stream. Or I can use DVD2AVI and demux just the audio for each VOB. I use Main Concept to do the framerate conversion either from the demuxed mv2 stream or I can do it straight from the VOB(s). I then can then use TMpeg Author to remux the converted output of mpg and the untouched ac3 stream to create usable IFO/VOB files. These have perfect synced audio and the video looks pretty good. These PALs are usually 25p or 25i then I convert to 29.975 NTSC. I have tried to go down to 23.975 NTSC and I usually had a lot of video speed or banding issues. Then the audio would have to be slowed down and it usually sound like everyone was a chipmunk. My thing is I need a way to save the subtitles. If its easy I would save the menu too.

PAL -> NTSC subtitle conversion for IfoEdit 

PAL <-> NTSC Menu Conversion with NuMenu4U 

Well... now actually do something else... I do a DIF4U and add a script for conversion for CCE, which converts great the film. Then I subrip by text the subtitles and redo them on Maestro SBT The menus I do them manually: Take the vobs with the menus and extract each screen and convert it to NTSC, then I subrip the subpictures of the menus and resize them on DVD Menu Studio, finally I use Scenarist to re-make the whole dvd. This also works when you want to put 2 dvds in one dvd

In regards to AC3 audio, you can use Besweet to extract the 6 waves and simultaneously stretch them (25000 to 23976 framerate preset, I'm assuming film content). Then use Sonic Foundry Soft Encode to encode back to 5.1 AC3. A 2 line batch file will perform both steps. Encoding to 5.1 AC3 is slow though. I imagine that for DTS you can use besweet+surcode. As an aside, if the PAL DVD has been pitch corrected, the pitch will be too low and you'll get "slow mo" voices. Whether this will annoy you is another matter =)

Strangely enoguh, I have never had a problem with the audio, I just take the original audio and put it on the new movie, it seems that there is no need to touch the audio. This was done converting the video from 25 to NTSC 29.97 (using CCE to convert the video).

If the audio length is the same as the new video stream then you must be adding frames to pad out the stream. If you are dealing with progressive content (almost all PAL movie DVD are) then you should encode using 23.976 fps in CCE and then run pulldown on the output. The audio will need to be re-encoded like I said. If you are dealing with interlaced material then I have no idea about the best converison method.