DVD2SVCD: PAL or NTSC for Best Pic Quality ?

Paulus · #1 10-06-2003, 04:22 PM

I live in PAL country (Holland).....

I was just wondering.....should I use NTSC for my DVD backups to KVCD or PAL ?

I've read somewhere that with NTSC you can use higher CQ values (?)

As most moderd DVD players and TV sets (as do mine) can play NTSC with no problem this might be better or not ?

Dialhot · #2 10-06-2003, 05:58 PM

You read this from me in a post I did today.

Yes, in NTSC you will have a significantly bigger CQ as soon as your movie is in film framerate (23.97) and not in video (29.97).

In these case, by encoding in MPEG2 with "3:2 pulldown while playback" activated, you will need far less bits than if you where in PAL.

For instance, one second of SVCD video in NTSC represents 480*480*23.97 = 5522688 pixels to encode
The same in PAL : 480*576*25 = 6912000 (25% more !)

All this is totaly false for NTSC video in 29.97, be carefull !

Paulus · #3 10-07-2003, 05:54 AM

OK, I'll try encoding in NTSC to see if quality will be better......

Only thing I don't quite understand is the "3:2 pulldown while playback". What does this do ?/ Why is it needed. (I am at work right now so I can't check. Can't remember seeing this option DVD2SVCD ?.........)

incredible · #4 10-07-2003, 06:17 AM

The "Pulldown while playback" option with encoding set to 23,97fps first lets your authoring appl. accept the 23,97 stream for building a SVCD or DVD compatible Disk. Second, ... the "Pulldown while play" gives the DVD Player an information to do the pulldown to 29,97 internally of the Player on the fly.
By doing this the result is that the player finally offers 29,97 interlaced stream to a NTSC TV. But if you set your Players output a PAL signal, he just converts this 29,97 stream again to an interlaced 25 FPS signal which will be accepted by your PAL Tv. Thats why most PAL DVD Players can play back NTSC DVDs

DVD Player are little technical heroes.

So in your case to safe Pixel amount by choosing to convert a PAL 25fps to for example 480x480 23,97 to encode with Pulldown while play, ... the best way is to do it using Avisynths AssumeFPS() Command.

For your PAL movie add the following lines at the end of your script generated by moviestacker using resizing to NTSC 480x480 when your source is for example a 720x576 .d2v file:

AssumeFPS(23.976, true)

Now you can onvert your avs File using 23,97- pulldown while play in TmpegEnc.

But you also have to convert the audio afterwards using Besweets NTSC/PAL audio presets so choose (25.000 to 23.976) this will give you a well audio synced stream.

Ill at Work so I hope I explained this correctly

Ive done this a lot of times when I wanted to fit an ex-PAL for example 140min Movie to one CD

Dialhot · #5 10-07-2003, 07:29 AM

And to answer your question about D2S Paulus : this option is automatically set by D2S when you encode a 23.97 NTSC source.

Paulus · #6 10-07-2003, 07:50 AM

Ah, great info !...

...

As I don't use moviestacker but DVD2SVCD I assume I have to use "edit as part of encoding" to ad the "AssumeFPS(23.976, true)" line to the end of the script.......

About the audio part I think I think DVD2SVCD can also handle this (right Phil ?)...Will have to try this at home later.......(still at work

).

[QUOTE/DIALHOT]"And to answer your question about D2S Paulus : this option is automatically set by D2S when you encode a 23.97 NTSC source.[END QUOTE]

...........My source will be a PAL DVD Phil, so it will not be automatically set I think ?........(edit .avs script with "assumeFPS" line......?).

Dialhot · #7 10-07-2003, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulus

As I don't use moviestacker but DVD2SVCD I assume I have to use "edit as part of encoding" to ad the "AssumeFPS(23.976, true)" line to the end of the script.......

You're now a wizard in D2S

Quote:

About the audio part I think I think DVD2SVCD can also handle this (right Phil ?)...Will have to try this at home later.......(still at work

).

I don't think so. In fact, if I were you, I do not do such transfo with D2S ! But if you want to, you can reencode the audio by hand while D2S is doing the video (you can pause TMPGEnc in order to have all CPU avalaible and resume it at the end). I suggest you to DL BesweetGUI taht is the graphical interface for besweet.

Quote:

...........My source will be a PAL DVD Phil, so it will not be automatically set I think ?........(edit .avs script with "assumeFPS" line......?).

Now, you will have to change that also by hand in this case.
Lot of things to do by hand finally !