[NBLUG/talk] PAL to NTSC DVD

Kyle Rankin kyle at nblug.org
Tue Jul 10 08:11:16 PDT 2007


On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 08:02:28PM -0700, Bob Blick wrote:
> Hey Kyle, your book "Linux Multimedia Hacks" is a great book. I've done
> some awesome things with the spells contained in it.
> 
> But now I'm trying to take a region 2 DVD I bought from England and
> convert it to play here.
> 
> I found out that merely taking the regioning off doesn't make it work -
> because it's in PAL format and my DVD player (and television) only
> handles NTSC.
> 
> The other ways I've examined seem like they will give me less than
> optimum video quality, because I'll be doing two conversions using an
> intermediate file.
> 
> I can rip the DVD to my hard disk, and I get multiple VOBs and such.
> 
> I don't mind losing the menus and special features, but I'd like to be
> able to convert it with only one transcoding process, and I can't figure
> out which spell will take the multiple VOBs and make "new" VOBs so I can
>  make a new DVD that'll play in my DVD player and TV.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Cheerful regards,
> 
> Bob
> 

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the kind words. I don't have a DVD handy to test this out with
right now (I can try that later on) but here is what I think will work:

Once you get the VOB files, use transcode with the --export_prof argument
to specify how to export the files:

transcode -i vob/ -V --export_prof dvd-ntsc -y ffmpeg -o file1 -m file1.ac3

Then you will need to combine the audio and video tracks back together:

tcmplex -m d -i file1.m2v -p file1.ac3 -o file1.mpg

Now you have a NTSC-compliant MPEG that you can then feed to a tool like
tovid to create a new DVD. There /might/ be a way to get tovid itself to
read from a DVD directly, or at least from the VOB files, but all of the
examples I've seen along with all of the documentation, don't seem to
indicate whether you can either way. It's worth a try.

Of course you could also get the $30 DVD player from Target that does play
PAL video :)


-- 
Kyle Rankin
NBLUG President
The North Bay Linux Users Group
http://nblug.org
IRC: greenfly at irc.freenode.net #nblug 
kyle at nblug.org



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