My Content Is Pal, But Toast 9 Says It's Ntsc, And Makes Me Reencode It To Pal!

[rdvark17]

I live in France, and am trying to convert old Video8 tapes to DV, via a Canopus ADVC 110 and FCP7. The original tapes were made on a PAL camera, and I've succeeded in making DV-PAL format movies from them. I'm now trying to take those DV-PAL movies and make PAL DVD's from them, via Toast 9.0.7. When I try to do that, I get the attached error message, which essentially says that the TV standard is set to PAL (indeed it is, in the Toast Audio & Video Preferences), but that my content is in NTSC. The content is not in NTSC, it's in PAL, but my only choice is to write an NTSC DVD, or re-encode all content to PAL. I certainly don't wan't an NTSC disk, so I choose to re-encode what's already in PAL into PAL! That takes 3 hours for a 90 minute tape, but the resulting DVD works fine on my player and my computer. Well, at least it did for the first one. For the second one, there was a problem during the burning, so I had to redo it, and then I got the same PAL/NTSC error message, so I would have to re-re-encode the DV-PAL file! I have about 30 DVDs to make in three copies each, and I can't spend hundreds of hours doing it.

 

I was thinking of upgrading to Toast 11, but if I'm going to have the same problem that would be money thrown out of the window. Any suggestions?

 

Thanks.

 

PS: Thinking that it might make a difference, I downloaded the latest version, 9.0.7a (I had 9.0.7), but when I hit the "About Toast 9 Titanium" button the version still says 9.0.9, without the little "a" at the end.

[tsantee]

Tell me how Toast describes the specs of your video when it is in the Video window. If it says it is 25 fps I don't know why Toast would think it is NTSC. Since you are using FCP, what are the settings you used in exporting the movie for use in Toast?

[rdvark17]

Hi tsantee,

 

First, I should tell you that hoping to solve this problem and figuring that it was time, I went and bought Toast 11 Pro this morning. But the problem is exactly the same. So here are the answers to your questions, which apply to Toast 11 as well as 9:

 

In FCP7, I exported using QuickTime conversion. Under Options, I chose...

Video

Compression type: DV-PAL

Frame rate: Current

Quality: Best

Scan mode: Interlaced

Aspect ratio: 4:3

 

Audio

Format: Integer (Little Endian)

Sample rate: 48,000 kHz

Sample size: 16 bit

Channels: Stereo (L R)

 

In Toast, my movie is described as follows:

Video: DV-PAL, 720x576, 23.91 fps

Audio: 16 bit, Stereo, 48,000

 

One odd thing is that of the 6 or 7 movies I've made DVDs of so far, most caused the NTSC message to pop up, but a couple didn't. The other odd thing is that the fps rate varies from movie to movie. The one that's currently being treated is at 23.43 fps, and the NTSC message didn't appear. At the rate it's going, I would imagine that the encoding of the 90 minute movie will take a little more than an hour; with the NTSC problem, it takes over 3 hours. The two previous movies that I did were at 23.91 fps and 23.50 fps, and I had the NTSC problem with both.

 

I hope that information is useful.

 

I must say that I'm glad you've taken on my case, so to speak. In glancing through the forum, I could see that you're an awfully helpful person.

 

Many thanks,

 

Richard

[tsantee]

Hi tsantee,

 

First, I should tell you that hoping to solve this problem and figuring that it was time, I went and bought Toast 11 Pro this morning. But the problem is exactly the same. So here are the answers to your questions, which apply to Toast 11 as well as 9:

 

In FCP7, I exported using QuickTime conversion. Under Options, I chose...

Video

Compression type: DV-PAL

Frame rate: Current

Quality: Best

Scan mode: Interlaced

Aspect ratio: 4:3

 

Audio

Format: Integer (Little Endian)

Sample rate: 48,000 kHz

Sample size: 16 bit

Channels: Stereo (L R)

 

In Toast, my movie is described as follows:

Video: DV-PAL, 720x576, 23.91 fps

Audio: 16 bit, Stereo, 48,000

 

One odd thing is that of the 6 or 7 movies I've made DVDs of so far, most caused the NTSC message to pop up, but a couple didn't. The other odd thing is that the fps rate varies from movie to movie. The one that's currently being treated is at 23.43 fps, and the NTSC message didn't appear. At the rate it's going, I would imagine that the encoding of the 90 minute movie will take a little more than an hour; with the NTSC problem, it takes over 3 hours. The two previous movies that I did were at 23.91 fps and 23.50 fps, and I had the NTSC problem with both.

 

I hope that information is useful.

 

I must say that I'm glad you've taken on my case, so to speak. In glancing through the forum, I could see that you're an awfully helpful person.

 

Many thanks,

 

Richard

The problem is the frame rate. Toast presumes that 24 or 30 fps is NTSC and 25 fps is PAL. So I suggest you change your export settings from FCP. I'm attaching what I recommend are the settings when making a PAL disc. Instead of choosing Current frame rate choose 25 fps.

 

You also can choose DVCPRO25-PAL which is the equivalent of DV but if hard drive space isn't an issue choose the 50 which has 2:1 rather than 4:1 compression.

 

You may also note that I chose progressive scan rather than interlaced. This eliminates much of the shimmering around high-contrast elements (car chrome, wire fences and so forth). Toast, of course, will interlace the video for DVD.

 

I had a 16:9 HD video in the app when I accessed the QuickTime export settings so I'm not sure if the (768x576) next to dimensions is a result of that. The part in parentheses may be different with your source video so it doesn't matter.

[rdvark17]

Thanks for the info, tsantee. I'm re-exporting a movie right now now with DVCPRO50-PAL and with the other settings you suggest. I didn't see DVCPRO25-PAL; there is, however, DVCPRO-PAL. Could that be the same thing? I'll let you know how it goes, but everything you say makes sense, since the fps rate varying like that is extremely fishy.

 

Last question: in your suggested settings, you've put the quality at "High" rather than "Best". These are home movies, not a professional production. Is "Best" just time- and space-wasting overkill, or does it make a visible difference?

[tsantee]

Thanks for the info, tsantee. I'm re-exporting a movie right now now with DVCPRO50-PAL and with the other settings you suggest. I didn't see DVCPRO25-PAL; there is, however, DVCPRO-PAL. Could that be the same thing? I'll let you know how it goes, but everything you say makes sense, since the fps rate varying like that is extremely fishy.

 

Last question: in your suggested settings, you've put the quality at "High" rather than "Best". These are home movies, not a professional production. Is "Best" just time- and space-wasting overkill, or does it make a visible difference?

DVCPRO-PAL is the same as DVCPRO25-PAL. I don't think you can see any difference between the high and best quality. Maybe if the video is of high-speed motor boat racing with lots of splashing water drops you might discern a difference, but it would get lost when making the MPEG 2 video for the DVD in any case.

[rdvark17]

Thanks again. One last, final question. The problem with the mistaken NTSC has been solved, but for the DVD I just made according to your suggested settings for the export, the re-encoding still took over 3 hours in Toast 11. Is that normal?

[tsantee]

Thanks again. One last, final question. The problem with the mistaken NTSC has been solved, but for the DVD I just made according to your suggested settings for the export, the re-encoding still took over 3 hours in Toast 11. Is that normal?

The speed of the encoding is affected by the Mac's processor speed and the amount of RAM. Since you're using Toast 9 I'm guessing your Mac is a few years old so taking 1.5 minutes to encode 1 minute of video is probably correct. It used to take much longer.

[KClark]

The current version of iMovie does not allow you to change settings for sharing/exporting, i.e. cannot change the fps from 29.97 before the mp4 is created. Is there a solution to the video and audio being out of sync? I downloaded Toast today and burned a 45 minute mp4 video. Within the first 2 minutes the audio was already out of sync. I read your postings about changing the fps but since that option no longer exists in iMovie, is there another solution?

Thank you for any help you can offer to this new Mac user.

KClark