PAL to NTSC

If a client gives you a video clip that they want on DVD you'd do well to check that it's NTSC before you convert it to DVD or something, especially if it's something long.

Recently a client handed me a .mp4 file of a long interview that they received from the interviewer. I let it encode in Compressor to DVD only to find out that it was PAL when I went to import it into DVD Studio Pro.

The quickest way to check if something is PAL is to open it in Quicktime and then hit Command + I to open the HUD Info Window. If you see "FPS: 25" it's likely a PAL video.

In compressor, after you've brought the video in, and set it's settings and destination(s) in the Inspector hit the Encoder button (second from left) and you'll see this:

Hit the little lock/gear button to the right of the grayed out PAL drop down and it should default to NTSC like this:

You should be good to go with your NTSC encode/conversion.

PAL to NTSC DVD Conversion

Here's another reason to lament VisualHub's passing.

A client needed a PAL DVD of dailies converted to NTSC that day. Looking at the structure of the DVD I saw that there were luckily no menus, just four VOB files.

I launched VisualHub, dragged the VOB files into it, told it NTSC, Author as DVD, Burn When Done and popped in a blank DVD. About an hour later I had an NTSC DVD for them.

So if you need a fast simple way to convert a PAL DVD to NTSC (that's not copy protected) and don't want to worry about 720x576@25fps vs. 720x480@29.97fps, VisualHub is a pretty straight forward route.

You can also name the DVD in the Advanced window and tell it to create chapter stops every 5mins or so if you'd like.

Here's looking forward to Transcoder Redux in the future world of tomorrow as a VisualHub replacement.