# Copying NTSC VHS to PAL DVD (or vice versa)



## Baree (Jan 18, 2011)

Ok, gist of it is this: I collect (furry) animation and I would love to be able, as a European, to buy American VHS tapes and burn them to DVD. From what I understand, European videorecorders tend to be able to play NTSC tapes just fine, however they covert a NTSC signal to a PAL-60 signal. And Pal-60 is apparently useless, since almost no DVD recorder can record it properly. 

So, what I would need to have is either a set-up with a VCR that doesn't convert into PAL-60 but instead has true NTSC as an outgoing signal, and a DVD recorder that can record a NTSC signal flawlessly. Alternatively, a set-up where I could connect my VCR to my PC and record thusly (with proper software) might work as well. I just spend hours googling without finding anything that is explained good enough for me to understand and that is guaranteed to work. So I hope someone here has a working set-up that allows him to do this, can tell me what I need for it and where to get it, and if possible how to use it. Thanks in advance.


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 18, 2011)

Ya know... As much as I probably could think up a solution, it seems it'd just be easier to 'download' episodes of the shows you have on tape and then encode those to DVD.


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## Baree (Jan 18, 2011)

Yeah, as a collector, I always prefer original material. If something is not available on DVD, I try to get it on VHS. Regardless, there is also plenty of material out there that is not available in any means online, and has only been released as NTSC VHS. Or, it is available online, but for example on Itunes and is therefore not obtainable for people outside of the Unites States (Wakko's Wish would be an example of the latter).


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 18, 2011)

Whelp, you could always buy a video capture card.  Most of those readily support PAL and NTSC and are likely to work.


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## Leafblower29 (Jan 21, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> Whelp, you could always buy a video capture card.  Most of those readily support PAL and NTSC and are likely to work.


 This. You probably wouldn't need to buy any editing software either. Windows (depending on version) has Windows Movie Maker and Windows DVD Maker which should do the job. Also a great method to take old VHS movie you like to put them on DVD.


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 21, 2011)

Leafblower29 said:


> Windows Movie Maker


 
Ewwwww...  So many better ways to go about doing that.


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## Hir (Jan 21, 2011)

i see the title effects with the shitty blue background and white basic text in my very worst nightmares :[


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## LLiz (Jan 21, 2011)

Baree said:


> Ok, gist of it is this: I collect (furry) animation and I would love to be able, as a European, to buy American VHS tapes and burn them to DVD. From what I understand, European videorecorders tend to be able to play NTSC tapes just fine, however they covert a NTSC signal to a PAL-60 signal. And Pal-60 is apparently useless, since almost no DVD recorder can record it properly.
> 
> So, what I would need to have is either a set-up with a VCR that doesn't convert into PAL-60 but instead has true NTSC as an outgoing signal, and a DVD recorder that can record a NTSC signal flawlessly. Alternatively, a set-up where I could connect my VCR to my PC and record thusly (with proper software) might work as well. I just spend hours googling without finding anything that is explained good enough for me to understand and that is guaranteed to work. So I hope someone here has a working set-up that allows him to do this, can tell me what I need for it and where to get it, and if possible how to use it. Thanks in advance.


 
Pretty much every TV and DVD player solid in PAL regions is able to play NTSC signals, without having to use something like PAL-60 as well. In fact, your VCR might have an option to output to NTSC rather than PAL. 

I suggest that you buy a conversion kit from an electronics shop, shouldn't cost you too much money. 
Look for something like this: http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=XC4867&keywords=vhs&form=KEYWORD

Anyway, if you buy a computer kit, your VHS converting to PAL-60 shouldn't be an issue anyway, because your computer will just re-encode the colour into PAL or NTSC (whatever you choose). 

By the way, I don't recommend doing a straight conversion from NTSC to PAL, because of the differences in frame rate, (29.97 for NTSC vs 25 for PAL) you'll end up with choppy motion, you're WAY better off letting NTSC be NTSC, just as nature intended. 

*PS. Here's some (useless) PAL vs NTSC vs Theatre facts: *

* NTSC is 29.97 fps, PAL is 25 fps, motion pictures are 24 fps. The frame rate is a product of the electricity frequency of your country, eg. PAL countries generally use 240V/50Hz power, NTSC countries general use 110V/60Hz power. 

* Because PAL is 25 fps, and motion pictures are 24 fps, when the release a movie in PAL format, they actually just speed up the movie by 4%, which makes your average movie run about 3 to 4 minutes quicker than the original. 

* Depending on how lazy the production house is, when the release a movie in PAL, because the movie plays 4% faster, they will either drop the sound pitch down to make them not sound like chipmunks, or they'll just leave the sound at a higher pitch. Also, thats why if you're in a PAL region you might notice songs in movies sound slightly different than when you play them on CD. 

* NTSC is able to get around the movie speed problem because through fancy manipulation they're able to make a movie play at 23.976 fps, almost the same as the 24 fps in theatres. 

* In the past PAL video game systems used to be underclocked to 17.5% slower than the NTSC versions. When you played a PAL game, it usually ran 17.5% slower, and because PAL screen resolution was 720x576 compared to 720 x 480 for NTSC, they'd usually squash the image in the middle of the screen and put black borders on the top and bottom. 

* Some systems like the Sega Saturn, Playstation 2, N64 and Dreamcast spent some time converting their games, they'd usually switch on a frame skip, and adapt the game to take advantage of the higher resolution. Sometimes a good job was done and you'd have a superior game to NTSC, other times you'd have a full screen game that was slower and vertically squashed (despite taking up the full screen). 
Here's an example of what I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL5ZI9VJBDw&playnext=1&list=PL00C4544724334F72&index=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1W1hhntF8g - This guy has a mod switch that turns his PAL Mega Drive into a NTSC one

* Thankfully the new formats do away with this frame-rate rubbish, so these days if you have a hi-def TV you can just play the bloody game and watch the move in the way that they were meant to be enjoyed.


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## Baree (Jan 24, 2011)

Thanks for all the replies. However, every single time I do a search on the net its always the same problem: European VHS recorders convert a NTSC signal to a PAL 60 signal and recording devices can't deal with that. I think one of my best bets is to try and get an American VHS recorder and a recording device/card for my PC.


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## Leafblower29 (Jan 24, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> Ewwwww...  So many better ways to go about doing that.


 Yeah I know I don't like it either. I prefer Adobe Premiere Pro.


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## AshleyAshes (Jan 25, 2011)

Leafblower29 said:


> Yeah I know I don't like it either. I prefer Adobe Premiere Pro.



No, Premiere is overkill.  The real mistake is using any kind of NLE because those decompress their media and then it gets recompressed agian on export.  This is a lossy process so it's destructive.  The smart way to do it would be to capture the video using a hardware MPEG-2 capture card and capture it a DVD compliant MPEG-2 stream.  Then just use an MPEG cutter that can cut, join, crop, multiplex and demultiplex MPEG-2 streams, this way you can manipulate the MPEG-2 streams to cut out unwanted bits and export a stream which has not been decompressed and recompressed.


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## Leafblower29 (Jan 25, 2011)

AshleyAshes said:


> No, Premiere is overkill.  The real mistake is using any kind of NLE because those decompress their media and then it gets recompressed agian on export.  This is a lossy process so it's destructive.  The smart way to do it would be to capture the video using a hardware MPEG-2 capture card and capture it a DVD compliant MPEG-2 stream.  Then just use an MPEG cutter that can cut, join, crop, multiplex and demultiplex MPEG-2 streams, this way you can manipulate the MPEG-2 streams to cut out unwanted bits and export a stream which has not been decompressed and recompressed.


 I meant for video editing in general, but you're right.


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