1080p 25fps to NTSC DVD and Bluray - more stuck than a stick, in sticky glue.

M

MattRozier

Member
Man oh man,
I hope some genius can help me. I'm stuck. I'm more stuck than a stuck thing in very sticky mud.

I have a 1080p, 25 frames per second, 16 minute short film which I need to convert to PAL and NTSC dvds for festival submissions and into Bluray for exhibition I'm editing in Premiere CS6, have access to AE CS6, AME CS6 and Encore CS6.

I know that to get to PAL I need to get to 720x576 and my frame rate can remain the same, so that should be pretty easy
But to get to NTSC I need to downsize and get to 29.976 (is that right?) - how do I do that??! Maaaaaan. Stucker than a stuck thing. I've tried
a few workflows, I've read about 3:2 pulldown, and I'm thoroughly confused. Can anyone help? I've also read that just sending the thing into Encore is a bad idea (or at least it was in CS5 but has that improved now?). I need a relatively step by step solution as I'm finding myself just going round and round in circles trying to figure out what M frames, GOP, pulldown all means. HEEEEELLLLLPPPP ! :-)

The thing that makes it all so much trickier is that I'm in PAL-land and all the DVD players here play NTSC natively as well as PAL, so I can't even test to see if it works. :-( I've asked around for a professional service, but it's crazy high money. I've been editing for years, just never really dealt with all the encoding to NTSC before - eek!

Then finally how do I get my original onto 24fps Bluray (as that isn't the 25p I shot in either). Jeepers I think I'm going to just shoot in 24p in future.
I desperately need a relatively fool proof answer pretty soon, as I need to get all these DVDs off by Tuesday (eek!)

I'm praying for an encoding god to help me out ! :-) In return I will be your best mate for life ! SERIOUSLY ! I will start an encoding temple in your name !
 
(sigh) I have a much simpler problem which is to generate a blu-ray for a 1.5 hour concert.

I use Sony DVD Architect Pro. I finally got BOTH the video and the audio to burn onto a blu-ray disc and if you click you can either play the video or the audio but never both. Grrrrrrr.

My AG-AC160A records both PAL and NTSC.

I will do a short clip in both, see whether I can get them to import to Sony Vegas Pro 12 and then maybe get back to you saying I was able to read both and convert one to the other.
 
No takers? You'd think this would be pretty easy converting a 1080p 25fps project into an NTSC DVD but I just can't work it out. I've tried a few things DGPulldown for example, but gives me the same finished film length - and for some reason I imagine I'll need a different film length if the frame rate changes - also when I tried the DGpulldown route my film ended up as just a red screen?
 
You could author it as a 24p DVD, resizing 1920x1080 down to 720x480, frame-for-frame, running the footage at 23.976 frames per second. You wouldn't need to deal with pulldown or anything like that. But the running time would change, and you'd have to stretch your audio to last 4.27% longer to account for the slightly slower frame rate.
 
MattRozier said:
You'd think this would be pretty easy converting a 1080p 25fps project into an NTSC DVD
Click to expand...

Actually, no; the differences in standard are pretty tricky, involving either a change in playback speed (as Barry mentions above), or in some slight choppiness or frame blending. There's no easy pattern to fit 25 fps material seamlessly into a 60i playback stream.
 
Matt, I changed to Vegas around CS2 but I don't think it's totally different. Everything everyone has said is true. There's no seamless way to do it. Hardware encoders can do a better job, AE probably does better than PP. You might be satisfied with just an acceptable job, in which case you are overthinking the problem. Just set your project properties to match your footage (should happen automatically). Then render/export in each of the formats you need (make sure frame blending is off). Have a look at the results in VLC or WMP and see if they are good enough, if so, burn with Encore.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top