[Ti] PAL to NTSC Conversion (made simple)

[~flipper]

Kaskudoo wrote:

>hi flipper,
>
>thanx for your reply .... i know ffmpegX and used to use it a lot 
>... and i have MPEGworks too (which uses the same mencoder i think) 
>wasn't it just a GUI wrapper ? anyways ..these apps never really did 
>it for me ... i think cleaner is the most professional os them. i 
>couldn't get my hands on the main concept yet, but i will look out 
>for it ...
>what exactly do you do in cleaner? do you convert into DV and 
>reencode into NTSC? maybe you could export the settinbgs and mail 
>them? (if possible) ....btw, tell me if i am getting a pain hehehehe 
>...
>
>i found this here too: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeschot/home.html#DEI
>it does a fabulous job i think.... well, as far as i can tell on the 
>mac - gotta get the picture on tv still ... and i think this guy who 
>wrote the app thought very well what he did ..... it is also 
>available on versiontracker, but so small - shouldn't be a problem 
>to download from the developer site.
>check it out :) ......the video cleaner is also very nice (same page)
>
>so i think that solved my problem - still interested in your cleaner 
>process though!
>cya
>william

William,

After a lot of thought here, in spare time, I remembered that whe 
projects I used Cleaner on, were all incorporating the export to DV, 
for sending back to tape. We used a pro camera for that. So, I 
wouldn't recommend Cleaner, unless you have serious industrial setup 
over there. Sorry about that.

The best way to convert is actually hardware-based, and can cost tens 
of thousands of dollars. De-interlacing is part of the software 
workarounds. There's also an app (or several, for all I know) that do 
frame-by-frame re-scanning (and also require Final Cut Pro, Premiere, 
or Avid, etc).

A workaround, worth a shot, would be to use ffmpegX to export to DV, 
send the output to a video cam, and stream it back into Cleaner for 
conversion to NTSC DVD. (You can select the NTSC to DVD setting, in 
"Settings", so there's no 'secret' prefs involved). But that system 
depends on having a two-way interface between the cam and the Mac 
(Hollywood Bridge, or whatever).

You say you have the MPEG2Wrorks... is it the latest (2004) version? 
If so, have you given that a shot?

I watch all my films on a 22" crt (or the 15" LCD if away from home), 
so i don't care about television compatibility issues, at all, so I 
prefer PAL 16:9 file formats for the highest quality. But, seriously, 
why not just convert your PAL footage to a high-quality .avi, and 
then run the resulting avi file through any of the avi-to-NTSC 
converters you already have there?

I just finished a 50,000 page Boeing pdf-to-XML project, and have a 
couple days off, so i'll try to find time to hook up my powerbook to 
the TV in the next room and see what 'gives' on the avi to NTSC deal, 
but can't make any promises on the timeframe. I am fried right now, 
and just want to catch up on Mac issues, a missed season of the 
Sopranos, and other important things...

brian s