Need help with NTSC / PAL / SECAM conversion

[bdgbill]

I have been all over the net looking for a solution to what I thought would be a simple problem:

My girlfriends sister is staying in Paris for a few months and is begging us to send her DVD's of "Lost".

Does anyone know if NTSC DVD's I burn in Canada will be viewable on French equipment? Is it possible to convert NTSC to PAL/SECAM?

I have been googling this question but keep running into ads for hardware solutions or mail in sevices.

[groover km]

It depend's on your girlfriend's sister's DVD player.

The majority of DVD players don't distinguish between PAL or NTSC - or rather, they switch automatically. I used to reencode all our (NTSC) home movies to PAL to send to the family in the UK (PAL), until I forgot one time and found that they can play NTSC DVDs in their equipment. I have also ripped UK DVDs (obligatory disclaimer: that I own) for use here and they have worked fine on all 4 players. I would start by googling the intended DVD player to see if that sheds any light on it.

Caveat 1: This is obviously not the same as region-coding, but I'm guessing that this is not an issue for you and your burned DVDs will be region 0.

Caveat 2: My experience has been with PAL-I which is the UK standard; France uses SECAM-L which sync's differently, so again, google. You may want to ask if your girlfriend's sister can play PAL DVDs? If so, I reckon you have a good chance it will work.

Alternative 1: You may want to look at VCD or SVCD compatibility with her player.

Alternative 2: <cough> bittorrent? <cough>

Hope some of this helps.

[capone]

I convert PAL DVDs to NTSC xvid files, so there's probably no reason that you can't do a NTSC mpeg to a PAL DVD.

I imagine something like this may be built into programs like Nero and other DVD creators. Or, you should be use a program like tmpeg and a plugin to make it happen, I imagine. If I'm not mistaken, it's mostly a matter of getting the ratio and framerate changed. If it's a setting that needs to be encoded into the disk, then I still think a DVD creator can do it.

You could also use somethign like virtualdub to convert the ntsc to pal, and burn divx files of videos, if her player can play non-dvd files.

If none of these work, or to check the cpecs of her player, you will find an answer here: http://www.videohelp.com/

[Old Dog]

Does anyone know if NTSC DVD's I burn in Canada will be viewable on French equipment?

The short answer is: Probably not.

For a better answer go here http://www.alkenmrs.com/codefreedvd/

[groover km]

The DVD players listed on that site have built in conversion for NTSC / PAL - Not SECAM-L for France.

The difference between NTSC and PAL is basically bandwidth (lines and frequency); so this can be manipulated relatively simply with software authoring.

SECAM uses a different system completely with sequential colour transmission; if there is a software method of doing this, I'm unaware of it.

(obviously, that doesn't mean there isn't one )

However, as far as I know, most consumer equipment in France (camcorders, laser disks, s-vhs, etc.) handles PAL internally and then transcodes to SECAM for broadcast. That was why I suggested either trying a PAL disk in the player, or googling the player itself.

[LilY0da]

I lived in France for a while... Most TV sets are PAL/SECAM, the high end ones are PAL/SECAM/NTSC
I'd say roughly half of the DVD players are PAL/SECAM/NTSC Region free ones, with the exception of the ones you buy at "best buy" over there (called Darty or Fnac) which are PAL/SECAM and sometimes NTSC

So in short, if you make a plain NTSC DVD, it's possible it'll work, depends on the hardware
Make it a PAL, and it'll play on 95% of the recent hardware out there

[colin]

The majority of "cheap" DVD players in Europe can be hacked to play all regions. And they should be able to do the NTSC/PAL conversion internally. Some are good, others are not. Best bet is to ask what the DVD player is, then jump over to videohelp.com and check the player out,

Cheers,

[bdgbill]

Thanks everyone.

As I said I googled this for quite a while and found lots of conflicting information (and quite a few scams).

I cannot get the model number of her player (long story) but I know it and her TV are brand new. I have seen LilY0da's information about most newer equipment being able to handle multiple formats while googling.

Think I will hope for the easy solution and send her a few NTSC DVD's to test.