Outputting a PAL DVD

Suddenly my project needs to be exported to PAL. I accomplished this in FCP, but the clients client says the quality is too low, it's "jiggly and jumpy." Any suggestion as to a better way to convert.

Here is how I did it, I made a Quicktime file, self contained, I placed that into a PAL timeline. I then enlarged the file to fit the tv safe line. I exported that quicktime file and then I compressed it with compressor as a PAL file. I then created a DVD in DVD studio with it's default PAL settings.

I'm open to using other solution then FCP Studio. Correcting my methodology is good too.

Transcoding between NTSC and PAL can be done in several ways. One is to take a copy of your finished NTSC project to a production facility that offers real time conversion using dedicated hardware. The devices that do this have price ranges in the tens of thousands of dollars. This will produce a fast, good but not cheap transcode.

On the other end of the scale is to use your own system. You have already tried and had the Compressor option rejected. Try Graeme Nattress's solution. I have not used his product but other on this forum report great results. This will probably require significant render time.

-Vance

> You have already tried and had the Compressor option rejected.

No man! FCP rendering doesn't look a heck like Compressor's conversion! He expanded the frame size and rendered to a different frame rate. That should look pretty bad!

Here's an article:
[www.macworld.com]

The conversion takes quite long though (it took a full day to render on a dual 2ghz G5). If you can't afford that time, you could also try Nattress' standards conversion.

I reread Ethan's post, and followed more closely what he did. Your right that process should produce a substandard conversion.

Nice find on the article, that's a keeper.

-V

for what it's worth,

just about ANY PAL dvd player will play NTSC,
and just about ANY PAL tv will also play NTSC,

so making your PAL DVD may not be necessary.


nick

I explained to the client that they should be able to use the NTSC DVD's, but that wasn't working for them. My client has the client in Italy. So I don't get to talk to the end-user, and the middleman isn't so much help. I wouldn't say MOST dvd players play both formats, an informal poll of my apartment showed 1 out of 3 could.

Exporting to PAL just using compressor doesn't seem to give a real PAL file. In the documentation it says the file must be exported as PAL then Compressed as PAL. The NTSC format is smaller than the PAL format, so either it gets blown up or has a black box, the Nattress Filter takes care of all that, except the MPEG compression for DVD. It seems to do a good job.

It took approximately an hour to convert a 10 minute piece on my G5 Dual 2 GIG with 3.5 gigs of ram.

Any PAL DVD player or TV manufactured in the last ten years (or maybe more now) should play NTSC DVDs without trouble. I'm in PAL land and I have not had a single NTSC DVD that I could not play.

NTSC DVD players will not automatically play PAL DVDs.

> I'm in PAL land and I have not had a single NTSC DVD that I could not play.

I'm seeing region 3 and (maybe) 6 hollywood releases in NTSC. And yea, I'm in PAL land, never had problems with an NTSC disc, more with faulty dvd player heads.

> In the documentation it says the file must be exported as PAL then Compressed as PAL.

I'm curious. Which documentation?

>It took approximately an hour to convert a 10 minute piece on my G5 Dual 2 GIG with 3.5
>gigs of ram.

That's fast! It took me a full day to convert an hour on a Dual 2ghz G5 5 gigs of RAM on Leopard.