I'm trying to convert an Apple Quicktime video of a European car
comercial (Honda's "Cog", if you must know) to .AVI for editing in
Adobe Premiere. I'm trying to edit it for use on an NTSC DVD. This has
turned out to be a big problem considering the .MOV is PAL.

Every conversion I've tried (including dumping the frames to
individual .TIF files) has a corrupt or damaged looking frame every
60th frame. The audio also skips at every 60th frame. However, when I
play the file in it's native format (.MOV) in the QuickTime player, or
even the Preview window of Premiere, it plays just fine with no
damaged frames or skipped audio. It's only when I play the converted
file that I see the artifacts. I'm thinking that the problem is the
slight difference in framerate. (PAL = 25 fps, NTSC = 30 fps)

Is there a way to properly convert, with decent quality, a PAL
Quicktime file to an NTSC AVI file? (I'm not worrying about the
video's on-screen size here, I'll fix that later.)

---

Clarification of Question by thegreatjackschitt-ga on 09 Oct 2003 00:38 PDT

P.S. I can provide a copy of the video in question, if needed.

Hello,

Framerate is definitely one difference between NTSC and PAL, but
it isn't the only one.  Other issues are vertical resolution
differences and vertical scan rate differences--I'm sure there
are more hiding in there somewhere, but the point is that you need
special software (or hardware) to do the conversion for you.  I
wasn't able to find any freeware that does the trick, but this
software is pretty reasonably priced considering the job it does.

DVUnlimited.com has some shareware that claims to be able to do
exactly what you need.  The nice part is that you can try it out
before you pay, to make sure it works.  The unregistered version
simply leaves a watermark on the DV frames.  This software costs
$98.
http://www.dvunlimited.com/

DVFilm Atlantis will also let you try a demo version which is
fully functional but puts a logo on each frame.  It requires
Quicktime 5 or 6 and runs on Windows or Mac.  It costs $145 plus
shipping.
http://www.dvfilm.com/atlantis/

There are, of course, other pieces of software out there, but
these look like they will work well for you.  You can also buy
hardware converters which convert between PAL and NTSC, but these
are even more expensive, and I don't think they would be as easy
to use.


Additional Links:

An example of a hardware converter:
http://www.converters.tv/products/converters/digital_video_system_converters/12.html

An article on the differences between PAL and NTSC:
Horrordvds.com - PAL/NTSC explained
http://www.horrordvds.com/extras/articles/palntsc/

A review of DVUnlimited's aDVanced DV File Converter:
http://www.computervideo.net/mar03-4.html


Search Strategy:

Google Search:
FAQ differences between PAL NTSC
://www.google.com/search?q=FAQ+differences+between+PAL+NTSC

Google Search:
convert quicktime PAL movie NTSC avi
://www.google.com/search?q=convert+quicktime+PAL+movie+NTSC+avi&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N

Google Search:
pal ntsc format
://www.google.com/search?q=pal+ntsc+format

Google Search:
software convert pal ntsc format
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=software+convert+pal+ntsc+format

Google Search:
advanced dv pal/ntsc converter
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=advanced+dv+pal%2Fntsc+converter


I hope this solves your problem.  If you have any questions,
please feel free to ask for clarification.

Best regards,
Bikerman

Still working on the problem here, but the software you pointed me to
(DVFilm Atlantis) helped me by dumping all the frames to .BMP files
and a .WAV file. It did so without any damaged looking frames.

I'll use a paint program that I have that has scripting capability to
resize frames (not stretch, but instead, add the black bars at the top
and bottom). Then I'll use Premiere to play the 25 fps video at 30 fps
(causes every 6th frame to be show twice). That should work. The main
problem I was having was the audio skipping and every 60th frame
looking damaged.