Standards Conversion PAL->NTSC Audio Sync

I have a customer who brought in 12 hours of PAL footage on DVD, and I'm doing a 17 minute edit from all that footage. I ripped the MPEG files off the DVD using MPEGStreamClip. I cut the project together and am rendering the Standards Conversion filter now. However, the audio is not even close to being in sync, and I noticed on the Nattress website that audio is not affected by this filter. For this project, fortunately, none of the natural sound is going to be used. However, the customer would like us to do a full conversion of the master discs, and I was planning on using this filter, but NEED the audio to match up.

Does someone have a formula for adjusting the audio to match the video...especially for 2 hour long clips?

Thanks!
Casey Petersen
www.unitedvideoinc.com

Nattress doesn't change the length of the show. At least the version we have doesn't. If you had five minutes before the conversion, you have five minutes now.

.......

Hmmmm. If you're piling all these tasks one atop the other, there may be an interaction problem. What happens if you export the 17 minute show as a self-contained movie, reload that into a fresh project (at the other frame rate) and try to convert it?

You may find that the exported movie has problems way before the conversion.

You did fully render and audio mixdown, right?

Koz

That's exactly what I did, I exported to a self contained movie and then applied the filter. My project then ended up being the right duration, but the last two minutes of my project was gone. The video was slowed down and the duration remained the same, but I had to work around it to get my last two minutes back, and then render that whole thing as a self contained movie. Then I edited it, and am finished...pending customer feedback.

I cannot get the audio to match, and it's in Indian, so I can't even recognize it to help sync it up.

Actually, after the whole project was rendered with that filter, it ended up being 23 minutes. I sped the footage up 150% to make it look normal.

Weird, but at least I made it work out for me, but it doesn't appear that converting the 12 hours of footage is realistic through this method, with the audio not matching, the speed change, or the truncated footage.

Other than that, it looks GREAT! The filter looks really good, though!

Thanks,
Casey Petersen
www.unitedvideoinc.com

<<<it doesn't appear that converting the 12 hours of footage is realistic>>>

That's where you investigate houses that can convert real time to The Other Standard and hand you new tapes.

I think Riot in Santa Monica can do that

Then, when you find out how much that costs, buy a new, smaller Mac, move the Nattress license over to that one and pay one of the neighborhood kids to sit and convert it all.

Koz

<<<a full conversion of the master discs>>>

Did you accept this job yet? That one sentence could cost thousands.

Koz

There is a place locally that uses a $95,000 machine to do the transfer. We had them do one of the DVDs to see how it looked, and honestly, it didn't look as good as what the Nattress did.

Maybe it's a poor PAL transfer to DVD in the first place, I don't know.

Do you know what they use in Santa Monica? We're in Minneapolis.

We haven't committed to doing the transfer yet, but if we can, we'd like to.

Thanks,
Casey Petersen
www.unitedvideoinc.com

<<<There is a place locally that uses a $95,000 machine to do the transfer.>>>

That's what real time television converters cost. Did you get a name? We had an ADAC that would go back and forth between all the world's standards and we had the software modified so it would produce 24.02--real time television at live film speeds.

ADAC was bought by Techniche which I believe still makes standards converters.

You're looking for an Alchemist or Mac1 for conversion work that you can't tell.

I stand corrected, Riot doesn't do that any more. They send all their converter work to Encore in Hollywood.

You understand you are trying to do impossible things right? PAL has really good sharp pictures and terrible motion. NTSC has excellent motion, but the pictures are low rez. OK, now convert between them. I'll wait.

The dividing line between just really, really good (Nattress) and top broadcast quality (Alchemist) is motion. Conversions took a giant step forward when they got the computers powerful enough to guess where the football was going to go between frame one and frame two. Non motion compensation converters produce a fuzzy football and hope nobody notices.

You do know that Compressor has a full, motion compensation, television standards converter inside, right? We're still using Nattress because the one inside Compressor takes weeks to work. You can start a job and maybe your children will see it.

Koz

Are you using Graeme's conversion filter correctly?

I haven't heard of this problem before - have another look at the process you are doing or the original footage could be out of sync?

G has done some nice little videos showing a simple step by step [www.nattress.com]

I would highly recommend using Nattress converter for PAL>NTSC or via versa in fact I've just made a short 16min film in NTSC from PAL and a Music video too and not long ago ran an hour long documentary through it with perfect results.

Ben

PS if you have any more problems email Graeme directly he's a top bloke and will sort you out! graeme@nattress.com



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Actually I followed the video step by step as I did it, since it was my first time. Maybe there's something with the MPG video having been stripped off the DVD that's making it out of sync. It might be different if it was captured in FCP the right way, instead of the way I did it.

Thanks!
Casey Petersen
www.unitedvideoinc.com

That's why I recommended exporting the show as one whole movie and then bringing it back in again.

To really isolate the original show, export it as a stand-alone PhotoJPEG with the quality all the way up. While not completely lossless, it's darned close and none of the original show formats should follow you. It's going to be big. Leave room.

Also remember that Audio Mixdown is completely different from Render. One doesn't do the other and if you have anything odd about the sound, errors will follow you right to the end of your project.

Could there be an MP3 sound clip hiding anywhere in the show? Those kill you.

Koz

Or I could play the DVDs in a $25 DVD player that will play PAL DVDs and do a straight dub from that. It's a little blockier and not quite as smooth. It's not quite as nice as what Nattress would do, but there's no audio problems and it's in real time.

Casey Petersen
www.unitedvideoinc.com

Or email me if you get really stuck!

I'd not recommend converting MPEG's on the FCP timeline. Render the MPEG to ProRes or something and convert that instead.

Graeme

[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

I think for what it's for, the quality is all right. If we were doing this with the intent to broadcast it, with there being no evidence of it having been PAL at all, that would be a different story.