I hope I'm posting this in the right forum, I'm sure this is a starndard problem people have, but is there an easy way to convert a PAL DVD to NTSC? Is there a good program that does this?

Thanks,

You basically have to re-encode it to get NTSC standard FPS and resolution. I use mainconcept for speed/ease of use/quality. Tmpgenc Plus is another good one although alot slower.

Thanks tigerman8u, I got mainconcept h2.64 Encoder, but as far as I can figure it will encode one video file at a time. Do I have to convert each individual VOB file? Has no one made a program that will simply read a PAL DVD and convert all the files to NTSC?

Thanks for your help.

H.264 isn't the current DVD standard - You're going to need an MPEG2 encoder, the best of which is known to be Cinema Craft Encoder.

If you use Mainconcept add each VOB to the click "file, add to batch list" to do batch conversions.

Ok, I get the hang of it. But one questions, Mainconcept seems to only want to open Mpegs or Avis. Do I have to rename my .vob files to .mpg? Would this work?

Thanks

I just now opehed a vob file and started encoding it. you could try using open all files or as you stated renaming the file extension from .vob to .mpg does work in some video applications

How does the "DVD zone" and "NTSC versus PAL" all fit together? I live in Australia and want to burn DVDs of home movies I can send to relatives in the USA and Canada for use in their DVD players.
Is the existance of the 2 different TV formats the reason for "DVD zones"? If so why are there not just 2 "DVD zones"?

some dvd players (especially newer one's) will play both PAL and NTSC format. It would be much easier if their was only one standard format, but do you think that will ever happen ?

You can do this with IfoEdit and you don't have to re-code, it takes less than a minute. You can get it here: http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/derrow/index.html
Copy the dvd to your hd first in file mode with dvd decrypter (if you have it )
Once you do this open up ifoedit and browse for the ifos. I would make a backup of the ifos just in case you mess up; the program will do this for you. When you open the ifo you will see a lot of text, what you're looking for is every reference to PAL, double click them and you will see a popup window where you can change the video attribute to NTSC. You have to do this for every reference and if there arent many chapters you can do it in 30 secs. I have done this with PAL movies i've downloaded so i know it works. You can also do this vobblanker. It will re-write the dvd for you if arent comfortable with ifoedit because at first its a little intimidating with the lines of text and all. In voblanker it shows the files with a PAL attribute, right click the file and you get the same popup window you see in ifoedit, check NTSC and then it will re-write the dvd for you. get it here: http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm This will not change the frame rate which is different, but the movies are watchable. I'm guessing this fooled my dvd player into thinking the movie was the right format, all i know is it worked so maybe you may want to give a try,

DVDs have "regions", not "zones". There are a LOT more than just 2...at least 7, I believe, covering various parts of the Earth.

The reason these regions were created was to satisfy the movie industry.

Sometimes a movie may still be in theaters in one part of the world, when it's already being released on home video in another.

The movie industry was afraid if, for example, a movie came out on DVD in the United States, people in other countries would somehow get copies of the DVD, and not bother to go to the theater to see the movie. They'd just watch it at home.

Create "region" differences, and a U.S. disc can't play on a U.K. DVD player (or anywhere else outside the U.S. or Canada).

NTSC and PAL (along with SECAM) are different TELEVISION formats, that mostly have to do with how the picture is converted to electronic impulses and then changed back into a picture again.

This means that if you bring a U.S. disc to the U.K., you're fighting both the TV format differences, AND the region coding.

Oddly enough, many DVD players will play both NTSC and PAL, and just put out the picture in whatever format you tell it you need. (Set it for "NTSC TV", and it'll put the picture out as NTSC. Tell it "PAL", and that's the type of signal your television will be fed.)

Well I finally got a good solution for my PAL to NTSC conversion problems. I just bought a new Nexxus DVD player that plays both PAL and NTSC. It was rather inexpensive and seems to be much easier then trying to convert my DVDs.