[dmegatool]

Ok no shit here. I'ts not illegal thing, it's the movie of my wedding (07/09/2006). It isn't protected or anything. The guy who did it said to me I can make as many copy as I want. No problem to make exact copy but...

My problem is that I'm in canada and my wife got fom family in France. She would like to send a copy over there.

1-Do I really need to convert to PAL ?
2-How can I do this ?

Thx. If you answer correctly, I send you a copy

[PKIDelirium]

Is it a DVD?

[initialsBB]

It depends. If people are going to be playing this thing on their computer, you don't need to convert it.

If, however, they will be looking at it on a TV, then yes, you will most probably need to convert it as very few people have NTSC compatible systems in Europe.

I'd just tell your relatives to watch it on a PC as NTSC to PAL conversion can be a bit tricky...

[dmegatool]

Originally Posted by PKIDelirium Is it a DVD?

Yes it is ! It looks very pro. The guy filmed in hd. He gave me the masters so when I will be able to burn a hd-dvd or blu-ray... boom !

Originally Posted by initialsBB [...] as NTSC to PAL conversion can be a bit tricky...

Hey thats why I'm asking here !

I could just make it a video file that iDvd could import and then select PAL in the options but I don't want to do this. There must be a easier way . Plus, I don't want to remake another menu since the one on the dvd is good.

[initialsBB]

Originally Posted by dmegatool I could just make it a video file that iDvd could import and then select PAL in the options but I don't want to do this.

So you want to keep the DVD intact (menus, butons, etc etc etc) but all in PAL format ? Forget about it man, really. The simplest thing you can do is just make sure the DVD is not locked for zone 1 and tell people to read it on their computer if it really doesn't work on their TVs... trust me, what you are asking is no small task, you have to transcode all your video from 720*525 @ 30 fps to 720*576 @ 25 fps, that's menus, transitions, and all that jazz !!

PS not to mention that changing the frame rate usually creates artefacts in transitions like fade, animated titles and text, stuff like that.

[dmegatool]

Thx for your encouragement initialsBB

[dmegatool]

And if I'm planning to extract the video to reimport it in iDvd to make a new menu, what should I use ? Can iDvd can import vob files ? What format should I target ?

[curiousuburb]

Uh... not to complicate things, but the French don't generally use PAL... they invented their own proprietary TV format... SECAM.

It may be that they've cleverly invested in multi-system devices (which might ideally also read NTSC and remove the necessity of a conversion at all), but it would be worth double checking first.

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by curiousuburb the French don't generally use PAL

Sure they do. Pretty much everything in France except analogue broadcast TV uses PAL, including DVD players. All TVs since at least 1993 support PAL (as well as SECAM, but generally not NTSC).

Originally Posted by curiousuburb they invented their own proprietary TV format... SECAM.

This is a strange way of putting it. SECAM is no more proprietary than NTSC, and was "invented" at the same time as the NTSC colour standard, so they couldn't have adopted that even if they were willing to put up with the poorer image quality of NTSC (both PAL and SECAM offer significantly better image quality than NTSC). PAL was "invented" much later.

dmegatool: converting from PAL to NTSC or vice-versa is for all practical purposes impossible. The frame-rate conversion in particular is impossible to do well and requires vast computing resources. A much better idea is to do what initialsBB suggested and get your French in-laws to watch the DVD on a computer.

[dmegatool]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray The frame-rate conversion in particular is impossible to do well and requires vast computing resources.

Did you look at my signature ! I got a Mac Pro !!!

All kidding aside, I'm kind of happy to not put any effort into this. It isn't my familly after all . Thx for help guys.

[curiousuburb]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Sure they do. Pretty much everything in France except analogue broadcast TV uses PAL, including DVD players. All TVs since at least 1993 support PAL (as well as SECAM, but generally not NTSC).

Ah, see... that's news to me... haven't been in Paris since 1984 and haven't actually transcoded between the formats since the early 90's.

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray This is a strange way of putting it. SECAM is no more proprietary than NTSC, and was "invented" at the same time as the NTSC colour standard, so they couldn't have adopted that even if they were willing to put up with the poorer image quality of NTSC (both PAL and SECAM offer significantly better image quality than NTSC). PAL was "invented" much later.

I suppose the proprietary thing was a bit unfair, but the fact that none of the systems are cross-compatible is a bit silly.

NTSC has always been jokingly referred to by my broadcast engineer friends as Never The Same Colour and has its clear flaws.
PAL is superior in many regards (more scan lines, better colour, integer frame rate) from learning the lessons post NTSC.
SECAM seemed like an experiment to improve on NTSC (with mixed results) but with the tag 'Systeme Élegant Contre les AMericains'.


Wikipedia's explanation of Why SECAM?

My reading of the wiki link is that it was at least partially a national-pride-stuff-the-yanks thing, as well as being partially practical technologically. As better standards evolve, old ones should be deprecated.

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray dmegatool: converting from PAL to NTSC or vice-versa is for all practical purposes impossible. The frame-rate conversion in particular is impossible to do well and requires vast computing resources. A much better idea is to do what initialsBB suggested and get your French in-laws to watch the DVD on a computer.

Scan lines (resolution) are different and frame rates are different, in addition to colour space. There are tons of services that offer conversion, and it doesn't take vast resources, although you are correct that is difficult and/or rare to transcode well without more gear and $$.

Digitize the footage and hook them up with VLC (there's even a French mirror).

Bring on the new standards... provided politics and or corporate lobbying doesn't enter into it. Technical Merit only please.


MPEG7 might be a good start given its strong support for metadata.

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by curiousuburb My reading of the wiki link is that it was at least partially a national-pride-stuff-the-yanks thing

The facetious interpretations of SECAM on that wiki link are kind of funny (if a little predictable), but the explanation of why SECAM was created is just a bit of typical Anglo-Saxon re-writing of history. The wiki link suggests the French didn't want to adopt the German PAL standard so soon after the war, when in fact the SECAM protocol was adopted years before PAL was even conceived and the alternative was to stick with black and white TV. Draw your own conclusions as to the authority of that source.

Actually, that's typical of the half-arsed and biased research that's very common on so many of the engineering articles in Wikipedia. Why is it that engineers of all people are the most rabidly xenophobic? Most of the engineers in the UK that I've met have been dangerously right-wing loonies much given to reliving the Cold War and bitching about De Gaulle. The airline industry (pilots, maintenance, etc.) too is bursting at the seams with these types. I really like engineering, but I couldn't possibly tolerate working with such people for a lifetime.

Anyway, the notion that France or any other country is running around wasting billions of euros on vast and ill-judged national prestige projects is absurd. People are sometimes proud of their country (though the overwhelming majority in Europe don't give a stuff unless it's about football), but governments have no incentive to drop a bunch of cash on creating new protocols that nobody except the odd passionate engineer cares about. National prestige is putting someone on the moon, not inventing SECAM.

Now then, let's see what this MPEG-7 stuff is. Never heard of it!

[curiousuburb]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Now then, let's see what this MPEG-7 stuff is. Never heard of it!

If you're skeptical of wikis, check the ISO version circa 2004...

the '7' variant is more about metadata and container format specs, while MPEG4 or MPEG2 might encode the audio and video

http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg/sta...g-7/mpeg-7.htm

see also http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september99.../09hunter.html or wiki or other.