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Rendering NTSC output from PAL source?

That One Guy

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I'm finishing up a couple of projects using Vegas Studio & I'm putting together DVDs for them using DVD Architect. I've been using a PAL Lagarith AVI for my sources, and have output a PAL m2v & ac3 file that DVD Architect is quite happy with.

However, when I've rendered an NTSC m2v from Vegas the length is the same as the PAL version. Which I don't understand. I have a short clip that I've rendered separately as an extra and the NTSC-rendered version seems to have some glitching (I haven't seen it yet in the NTSC render from the main movie, but haven't checked it extensively yet).

I've read boon23's guides on PAL-NTSC conversion and I'm entirely prepared to accept that the approach I'm trying won't work without substantial losses, but I figured I'd post the question since the guides I've seen are all 5+ years old and thus it's possible that the conversion engine in Vegas has improved. Basically I don't want to have to create a new NTSC-friendly sourcefile and recreate the edit, so I'm trying to figure out whether it's possible to convert the end product without a noticeable quality drop - and if so, how to do it.
 

Captain Khajiit

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There are two ways to change frame-rate. First, you can speed up or slow down the video; this changes its running time. Secondly, you can add, drop or blend frames; this keeps the running time the same. I suspect that Vegas has done the latter, which is almost always the wrong way to handle PAL movies: in the vast majority of cases, the studio has sped them up, and the editor needs to slow them down.

Ideally, PAL-to-NTSC conversion occurs before editing; however, it is possible to perform the conversion afterwards. If I had to convert afterwards, I would render a lossless AVI from Vegas, write an AviSynth script to perform the conversion, and feed the script to a third-party encoder such as HCenc. (This almost invariably produces better results than Vegas' built-in encoder.)

If you decide to convert this way, I am willing to help with the script. Be advised that others have reported that the version of Architect bundled with Movie Studio has a limitation that results in its re-encoding soft-telecined video streams. TV's Frink knows a work-around.
 

That One Guy

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Captain Khajiit said:
There are two ways to change frame-rate. First, you can speed up or slow down the video; this changes its running time. Secondly, you can add, drop or blend frames; this keeps the running time the same. I suspect that Vegas has done the latter, which is almost always the wrong way to handle PAL movies: in the vast majority of cases, the studio has sped them up, and the editor needs to slow them down.

Ideally, PAL-to-NTSC conversion occurs before editing; however, it is possible to perform the conversion afterwards. If I had to convert afterwards, I would render a lossless AVI from Vegas, write an AviSynth script to perform the conversion, and feed the script to a third-party encoder such as HCenc. (This almost invariably produces better results than Vegas' built-in encoder.)

If you decide to convert this way, I am willing to help with the script. Be advised that others have reported that the version of Architect bundled with Movie Studio has a limitation that results in its re-encoding soft-telecined video streams. TV's Frink knows a work-around.

Thanks for the advice and information, it's much appreciated :)

I've done a PAL to NTSC conversion using VirtualDub before with some instruction from TMBTM. I could encode a Lagarith AVI from Vegas, put that through the same PAL-to-NTSC routine in VirtualDub, and end up with an NTSC AVI. Is there any reason this would be significantly worse than doing the conversion through Avisynth? (I've not used it before so I'm assuming it'll take me longer to get to grips with it). Also, am I right in assuming that I can use HCEnc to encode my Lagarith AVI as an m2v file?

I've run into the Architect Studio limitation of forcibly re-encoding 24FPS files as part of the authoring process, it's quite irritating. I shall contact Tv's Frink and ask if he's willing to share his secret recipe ;)
 

TV's Frink

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Captain Khajiit said:
TV's Frink knows a work-around.

While I was able to successfully implement the workaround, I don't remember it and would have to dig through the guide plus multiple PMs. I'm willing but be prepared to wait for a window of my time to come open, which is less and less often these days.

A specific guide for this process would be most welcome....just saying. ;)
 

Captain Khajiit

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That One Guy said:
Is there any reason this would be significantly worse than doing the conversion through Avisynth?

Others use VirtualDub successfully. It's just that I don't trust anything other than AviSynth to accomplish certain tasks.

Also, am I right in assuming that I can use HCEnc to encode my Lagarith AVI as an m2v file?

Yes.

^ It appears that my attempt to pass the DVD Architect buck on to Frink has failed. :p:lol: Unfortunately, I have as little time as he does, so it might be a while before I am able to help with this.
 

That One Guy

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TV's Frink said:
While I was able to successfully implement the workaround, I don't remember it and would have to dig through the guide plus multiple PMs. I'm willing but be prepared to wait for a window of my time to come open, which is less and less often these days.

A specific guide for this process would be most welcome....just saying. ;)

No problem, I'm happy to see if I can find a solution myself. If not I can always hold back the NTSC release until such time as I can make it work properly.

Captain Khajiit said:
Others use VirtualDub successfully. It's just that I don't trust anything other than AviSynth to accomplish certain tasks.

OK, that's good to know. I'll try with VirtualDub to start with and switch to AviSynth if I get stuck. I completely understand sticking to the tools that you know and trust.

Captain Khajiit said:

Excellent, after reading one of the guides for it that part sounds pretty straightforward.

Captain Khajiit said:
^ It appears that my attempt to pass the DVD Architect buck onto Frink has failed. :p:lol: Unfortunately, I have as little time as he does, so it might be a while before I am able to help with this.

No worries, as I said above I'm happy to see if I can find a workaround myself, and can always wait for some help if I get completely stuck.

Thanks again for the advice, it's much appreciated :)
 

TV's Frink

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If you send me a reminder PM, I'll dig out what I can find when I have the chance.
 

That One Guy

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TV's Frink said:
If you send me a reminder PM, I'll dig out what I can find when I have the chance.

Thanks Frink, I appreciate it :)
 

Captain Khajiit

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The procedure is something like this. I've modified it slightly from what TV's Frink sent you.

  1. Encode your video with HCenc. We'll call the video stream Vid1.
  2. Encode your audio with whatever you like. We'll call the audio stream Aud1.
  3. Import the video and audio into DVD Architect, and use it to author the disc. Call the output folder Original.
  4. Create three new folders: Demux, Remux and Reauthor. Inside the Reauthor folder, create two new folders and name them AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS.
  5. Open PGCDemux. In the “Input IFO” section, click Browse. Go to the VIDEO_TS folder in the Original folder and select the IFO that has a running time that matches your fanedit. Your output folder should be the folder that you created called Demux. Check the box marked "Create CellTimes.txt" but none of the others. Hit Process.
  6. Open MuxMan. In the video section, import Vid1. In the audio section, import Aud1. Then change the language of that track to English. Next, go to File at the top and select Import Chapter and select the file named “Celltimes.txt” from your Demux folder. Set the preferences in the video box. Now select Remux as your output folder and click Start.
  7. Open VobBlanker. Import the DVD from the Original folder and set the VIDEO_TS folder that you created inside the Reauthor folder as your output folder. In the section entitled “TitleSet”, click on the VTS that contains your fanedit to highlight it. In the box below entitled “PGCs in Selected Title Set", click on the first line to highlight it. Click Replace and go to your Remux folder and select “VTS_01_0.IFO”. Now click Process. This will create your new DVD. After that, burn both the “AUDIO_TS” and “VIDEO_TS” folders to a DVD-RW using your preferred burning program and test it in a player.
I haven't done any trouble-shooting yet, so please report any problems. We can try to refine the steps to produce a working guide.
 

That One Guy

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I'm away from my editing machine until Monday, but I've spent some time trying to put the above steps into practice. Unfortunately I'm falling at the firsthurdle, in that HCEnc won't encode my video at all. 0.27 refuses to process it at all, and the last release before that (0.26 beta) makes a start, gets a short way into the encode and then crashes. I've checked my AVS script in 32-bit VirtualDub and it seems to be fine, so I'm currently at a loss as to how to proceed. I'm on Win 7 Pro SP1 64-bit. I can't recall the specifics right now, but as far as I could tell from GSpot the video I'm trying to encode seems to be ok.

Is it worth installing the 64 bit edition of Avisynth+ and trying with that? I assumed not as HCEnc appears to be a 32bit application, but I'm happy to try it and report back.
 

Captain Khajiit

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Stick to a 32-bit workflow. Try the version of 0.26 beta to which I linked in my HCenc guide with the latest non-MT version of AviSynth.
 

That One Guy

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OK, here's an update on what I've done so far and what's happening now. I'm following the instructions in this guide.

I initially had AviSynth 2.5.8 installed. I've since installed 2.6.0, but the behaviour is the same.

I've tried both HCEnc 0.27 and HC026_beta_16-06-2011 (the version linked in the guide); 0.27 wouldn't even start processing the file, 0.26 beta 16 starts processing the file but fails after maybe 30 seconds.

My input colour space is YUV, according to MediaInfo.

I'm now using VirtualDub to process the Lagarith AVI I've output from Movie Studio and convert it from 25FPS PAL to 23.976 NTSC and see if this makes a difference. (I have already spent some time experimenting with changing the HCEnc settings to allow for PAL rather than NTSC media, but none of the changes made any difference to the encoding behaviour).

I should have the 23.976FPS file ready in a while, I'll test it and post an update with the results.
 

That One Guy

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Further to the above - the only option that was unavailable to me when trying to use a 25FPS source was the 3:2 pulldown option (for obvious reasons).

Now that I'm running HCEnc 0.26 beta 16 with the 24FPS version of the Lagarith file, it's processing just fine. No idea why as of yet. I'm going to let it finish, check the logfiles for both operations and see if there's any obvious indication as to what's going on.
 

Captain Khajiit

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The guide assumes 23.976fps input because it is geared to NTSC. That might well be the cause of your problem. For the AVI that you output from Vegas, I would write a script like this and feed it to HCenc. (Rendering a second lossless AVI is/was unnecessary.)

Code:
AviSource()
AssumeFPS(24000,1001)
ConverttoYV12()
Spline36Resize(720,480)

The second line assumes that your AVI is RGB and that you expanded the luma range properly when converting your source files to RGB prior to editing.
 

That One Guy

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OK, so it has completed encoding successfully with a 24FPS version of the file.

Which is useful since it means I can at least get the NTSC encode ready, but still rather frustrating since my actual source is PAL and I'd like to also create a PAL release - I'm assuming that dropping down to 720x480, then back up to 720x576 is unideal in terms of loss of information, so I'd prefer to be able to render a PAL file natively if at all possible. Does anyone have any suggestions for further things I could try, or further sources of information/diagnostics to identify the root of the problem?

Edited as I've just seen Captain Khajit's post:

I'm starting to suspect there's something wrong with my initial Lagarith file, as even trying the script above still causes it to fail sometime shortly after the 500 frames mark - which corresponds to the point where the pre-film titles finish (the Fanedit Warning, FE.org intro and a static "Fanedit presentation" image with fadein and out) and the feature itself starts.

I'll take another look at the material on my timeline in Vegas and see if there's anything there that might be causing issues.
 

Captain Khajiit

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I see no reason why you should not be able to encode PAL from the lossless AVI that you rendered from Vegas. Few of the settings need to be changed. Obviously, 3:2 pulldown should not be checked. Apart from that, I would change colorimetry to DEFAULT and autogop to 15, but that's about it. Run MediaInfo on the AVI and post the log.

EDIT: Now I've just seen your post. :) Posting your Vegas project settings might help. You could also send me a sample rendered from your timeline. (Do this via PM.)
 

That One Guy

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I think I've hit upon the problem - I decided to go back to the m2v file I ripped and check each iteration of the file and see if this revealed any obvious problems. I've immediately realised that both my initial Lagarith source file and the final Lagarith output file have a display aspect ratio of 5:4 rather than 16:9, so I must have wrongly changed the pixel aspect ratio somewhere along the line - possibly when hardcoding the subtitles into the videostream.

For reference, checking these details has also made me realise my project settings are also subtly wrong (bolded items), as follows:
Template: Pal DV Widescreen
Width: 720
Height: 576
Field order: Bottom field first (checking MediaInfo confirms that this should be Top Field First)
Frame rate: 25.000fps
Pixel aspect ratio: PAL DV Widescreen (1.4568 rather than 1.4222)
Adjust source media to better match project/render settings is enabled, which I suspect it generally shouldn't be.

I'm recreating my source Lagarith file and will check that this has retained the correct PAR info after rendering. If that's correct, I'll replace the existing file in my Vegas project with the corrected file, re-render and test with HCEnc. If problems are still manifesting at that point, I'll ask for more help - but up until this point it's a textbook case of "user error", and I can only apologise to you, Captain Khajiit, for taking up your time and attention with a problem that was of my own making.
 

That One Guy

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I just wanted to update this thread with confirmation that the problem I was having with HCEnc was definitely with my source, most likely in how I burned in the subtitles. I've recreated the source file with the subtitle addition as a separate step (ie m2v > Lagarith as step 1, Lagarith + subtitle burn-in from SRT as step 2), then re-rendered a new Lagarith AVI from Vegas with this source. Not only are both the new source and render half the size of the previous versions, the new render also works with no tweaking when following Captain Khajiit's HCEnc guide.

(I've learned from the mistakes I've made on this edit and now have a detailed workflow document for how to do various things, because at least this way I shouldn't fall foul of the same mistake twice...)

Thanks again for all your help :)
 

Captain Khajiit

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You're welcome. I suspected that something went wrong when you prepared your sources for editing.

I would point out that neither the DAR of your AVIs nor the field order is likely to have been a contributing factor. 5:4=720:576=1.25, which is what I would expect of a lossless AVI. (Widescreen DVDs have a DAR of 16:9 because of anamorphic encoding.) The field order does not really matter with progressive material, which I assume is what you have.

Correcting the PAR in your project settings was indeed advisable but probably more because of how Vegas is handling your videos internally than anything else. MPEG-2 streams do not contain PAR flags.

But I'm glad you have sorted out your problem. Let me know if you need any more help. :)
 

That One Guy

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Captain Khajiit said:
The procedure is something like this. I've modified it slightly from what TV's Frink sent you.

  1. Encode your video with HCenc. We'll call the video stream Vid1.
  2. Encode your audio with whatever you like. We'll call the audio stream Aud1.
  3. Import the video and audio into DVD Architect, and use it to author the disc. Call the output folder Original.
  4. Create three new folders: Demux, Remux and Reauthor. Inside the Reauthor folder, create two new folders and name them AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS.
  5. Open PGCDemux. In the “Input IFO” section, click Browse. Go to the VIDEO_TS folder in the Original folder and select the IFO that has a running time that matches your fanedit. Your output folder should be the folder that you created called Demux. Check the box marked "Create CellTimes.txt" but none of the others. Hit Process.
  6. Open MuxMan. In the video section, import Vid1. In the audio section, import Aud1. Then change the language of that track to English. Next, go to File at the top and select Import Chapter and select the file named “Celltimes.txt” from your Demux folder. Set the preferences in the video box. Now select Remux as your output folder and click Start.
  7. Open VobBlanker. Import the DVD from the Original folder and set the VIDEO_TS folder that you created inside the Reauthor folder as your output folder. In the section entitled “TitleSet”, click on the VTS that contains your fanedit to highlight it. In the box below entitled “PGCs in Selected Title Set", click on the first line to highlight it. Click Replace and go to your Remux folder and select “VTS_01_0.IFO”. Now click Process. This will create your new DVD. After that, burn both the “AUDIO_TS” and “VIDEO_TS” folders to a DVD-RW using your preferred burning program and test it in a player.
I haven't done any trouble-shooting yet, so please report any problems. We can try to refine the steps to produce a working guide.

I finally got to a point of being ready to use this part of the process, and the guide in its current form is quite straightforward. I haven't tested the burned copy yet, but test playback on my editing machine looks fine. (The only non-PC based DVD player I have is a PS3, and while I know that happily plays burned DVDs I don't know what it'll do with an NTSC disc, so I'll try it and see what happens).

A couple of things that I thought would be worth noting:
1) If, for some reason, you end up with an audio file (either WAV or AC3) at 44.1KHz rather than 48KHz, Muxman will not accept it, but the error message will not give any useful indication as to why. In my case I reopened the source in Audacity, changed the Project Frequency from 44100Hz to 48000Hz (bottom left corner), then re-exported the AC3 file and that was enough to resolve the problem. (In case you're wondering, this was for an extra rather than the main feature).
2) For DVDs with menus/multiple features, it appears the following is also required:
  • Repeat the step with Muxman for each feature, putting the output from each iteration into its own subdirectory.
  • In VOBBlanker, find the VTS file in the TitleSet section that contains the menus. Select it, then click "Menu" on the right.
  • A new window opens. In the "Language Units" section at the top, select the listing under "English". Click "Keep all" at the right, then click OK at the bottom.
  • If your menu has an introduction video, it will be listed in the "PGCs in Selected TitleSet". Highlight the PGC and click "Replace", then replace it with the VTS_01_0.IFO file you've created for this video.
  • For each feature, follow the steps to replace the PGC with the remuxed IFO.
 
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