Hi everyone. I'm new to these forums. I guess for the most part i'd consider myself a newbie for this kind of stuff. A while back I made an ntsc dvd from a pal dvd, and the result was great quality, except that the aspect ratio was a little messed up. The original dvd is 16:9, anamorphic and though the dvd i made was still widescreen and preserved pretty much the entire picture, the picture was stretched quite a bit, but not to the point of being stretched to complete full screen. Its watchable, and if i'm watching with a tv that can stretch or squeeze the picture to different aspect ratios, then it can look fine. What I was hoping I could do is possibly make a new dvd, using the one i made, and have the stretched picture fixed to the way its supposed to be, and hopefully being able to preserve the sound and video quality that the dvd has now. I'm assuming there is some way to do this. If it is a little complicated, thats fine, i'll give it a try. If anyone can give me any info as to how to go about this i would really appreciate it. Thanks!
@EDM317 You can try vobblanker. I have used this to convert pal to ntsc w/ good results. You can also change aspect ratios and resolutions with it. How it will turn out I don't know haven't played with those. Here's a link to download it: http://jsoto.posunplugged.com/vobblanker.htm Now rerip your disc to your hardrive. Create a folder where you want vobblanker to store the processed files. Next under 'input video manager' open the video_ts folder where the dvd is. Next in 'output folder' pick the newly created folder. Vobblanker will have all the files listed under title set - in here you can preview what they are and edit them. Right on each one that you want to change and click on video attrib. Here is where you ratios, resolution etc. When finished will all the files click process. Now let vobblanker do it's thing. When done burn the processed files. Here's a basic guide for vobblanker that may help some: http://dvdr-digest.com/articles/article_vobblanker_page1.html
Hello Binkie7 You answered a query I had in another thread. Just a quick question I have,although it may sound a little dumb. (I am new at this) Do I have to rip the DVD on to the hard drive. I usually import the files directly from the DVD itself in to the program I am working with. Does it make a difference? If so what is the difference?
@ianmerc Yes you will need to rip to your hard drive first (btw not a dumb question!). Vobblanker needs to 'convert/manipulate' the files. What program are you using to import the files?
Binkie7 Maybe I misunderstood the post when you stated rerip the files. What I did was open vobblanker. I then imported the vob files directly from my Pal disc in to the vobblanker screen. Then I followed your instructions about changing video attributes and vobblanker processed the files in to a folder on my hard drive. At the moment they are in that folder. I have not had a chance to burn them from there (any recommendations for that?). Have I done it right so far? Much appreciate your feedback once again.
@ianmerc You can use Nero or any other burning prog to burn them. If they need to be compressed you can use shrink or nero recode. Shrink will autoburn w/ nero or decrypter. Try burning and see what happens. I have always ripped the disc to my hd then burned the processed files. I'd be interested in knowing what happens with the way you tried - though you may to rip them first to your hd if it didn't turn out well. Keep us posted!!
Thanks for the reply! I will try that today. I was trying to do it in tmpgenc xpress 3 and i actually got it to work pretty well, i even synced up the sound better than it was before, but it keeps having errors in the middle of making the file. and my computer is a fat 32 so tmpgenc couldn't first make an mpeg copy to the computer before making the new files because the dvd is over 4gb. So I will try what you said! Thanks.
Okay I just finished burning the VOB files on to a DVD-R. Played it back in my DVD player and lo and behold it played and converted beautifully. The only drawback, of course, is the lack of menus. Other than that it was perfect. No jumpiness, audio and video was perfectly in sync. Here is how I did it. I opened vobblanker. I imported the files from my PAL DVD disc directly in to vobblanker. You only need to click on the first file and it imports all of them. I then did as binkie7 suggested (see 19 february posting). I then burned the files from the folder on to the blank media using clonedvd2. The result was a magnificent copy. Thanks again Binkie for opening the door for me. Just wondered . Do you know if this works in the reverse going from NTSC to PAL. I cannot test it as I do not have a PAL DVD player.
@EDM317 Let us know how it turns out - hopefully good! @ianmerc Tks for posting your results! I have a pal coming shortly so maybe I'll skip the ripping to hard drive part. I would think that the opposite holds true too - I have a pal player but doubt I'll convert one to try it. Check out this link about the menus - somewhere in this thread someone explains how to do the menus - I never tried. http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/167922
I just wanted to post updated info on my experience with vobblanker. As I said previously my conversion worked fantastic and played back beautifully in my Broksonic DVD/VCR. However when I tried to play the same disc in my son's DVD player (Sony) it had green shadow/light at the top and the bottom. When my neighbor tried it on his DVD player it did not even play back> Message said "Check disc". It appears that the end result depend on the DVD player being able to read the disc. Pretty strange but I thought I would just keep everybody informed.
@ianmerc Make sure your using quality media like Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim and don't burn at max speed. Also make sure your drive's firmware is up to date. As you just experienced players can be picky - so it's best to cut out all of the variables!
I must admit my discs are not exactly top quality so that could be an issue. My burner burns up to 8x. Would it be better if I used 4x media? Sorry to sound ignorant but what is firmware?
@ianmerc With an 8x burner I would burn at 4x using quality media like Taiyo Yuden or Verbatim. You don't necessarly need 4x media - harder to find instore - you can always burn slower than the rated speed. In store you can buy Verbatim or Made In Japan Sony or Fuji - these will usually be Taiyo Yuden. If in the US try this store for Taiyo Yuden & Verbatim: http://supermediastore.com Now the firmware is like a software for your drive - it helps your drive with read and write strategies with media - esp. the newer stuff. If you go into Clonedvd on the last step it will list your drive with the firmware version - something liek this LiteOn SOHW 1633 rev 1.02 Post that and we can go from there. Oh and your don't sound ignorant - better to ask!
Binkie7 Thank you again for your input. Might be a day or two before I get anything further results posted on this. By the way I am doing a couple of trials with media/DVD converter software. Do you have any good recommendations? Preferably one that does the burn as well. Does anyone know if Nero does both?
@ianmerc Not a problem! Nero does alot - rips,encodes, converts and burns etc. For dvd's w/ copy protection to use Nero only you'll need something like AnyDVD running in the background.
>Vobblanker will have all the files listed under title set - in here you can preview what they are and edit them. Right on >each one that you want to change and click on video attrib. Here is where you ratios, resolution etc. When finished will >all the files click process. Now let vobblanker do it's thing. When done burn the processed files. Could you tell me if vobblanker can turn a finished pal-m dvd into ntsc? Because I did the above procedure (on video attrib) to try to convert to ntsc and when I test the files in the output directory they continued in the same format by the mediainfo program (PAL-M)... Do you have any additional procedures?