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martythebrit wrote:I have to disagree again, the PAL to NTSC conversion is done in the DVD player, all 3 players are hooked up to regular NTSC televisions. No special televisions are needed. One of the DVD players is a really cheap $30 model and it plays PAL DVD's just fine.

How old are your dvd players and your tv sets?

I'm not saying it needs to be a special tv set or a special dvd player, just in my experience, and I churn out hundreds of dvds every week, quite a few to go to people in canada and the states, that it is this way.

Maybe it's different going from PAL to NTSC, but over here in UK land, I don't have a very new main tv set and it won't play an ntsc dvd properly, even though I can use the same dvd player and plug it into one of my new tv sets and get a decent picture.

I purchased a PAL DVD by mistake (Im in the US) and I decided to see if I could convert it to NTSC using VS 9. I did and it came out fine.

After using another program to rip the DVD to my hard drive, I "imported" it into Videostudio 9 by choosing "import" and locating the DVD folders on my hard drive. (As you know, VS will NOT directly import a "protected" DVD disc.) After dragging all the imported files into my VS timeline, I made any editing changes that I wanted. Using the "share" tab, I re-rendered the existing PAL project to an NTSC mpg file by using "share tab" to "create video file" section. When the save box comes up, choose mpg format then "options" and make sure that you have chosen NTSC as the format. It took a long time to render. Even though the PAL file showed "upper field first" as the field order and the NTSC file showed "lower field first", I did not notice any change in quality or sync or "jaggies" problems.

Next, start a new project and load ("add video") the new mpg file into your DVD authoring program.
I use Moviefactory 4 because it has more menu templates but Video Studio will do the same thing. Make your DVD with menus and scenes etc.

I use standard, single layer 4.7 Gb DVDs, so some "shrinking" to fit may be needed depending on the size of your video. I have not had good luck with VS shrinking so I prefer to save ("burn") my videos as folders and use another program to shrink and burn the actual DVD.

My method has several steps and is time consuming but it works! I have found that trying to make one program "do it all" by pushing one button often has it's problems.

Good Luck

My $30 DVD player is about three years old, which is hooked up to a five year old T.V. in our den.

bgamd, what is the other program you use to shrink and burn?

Once I use VS to capture and author my dvd files to my hard drive, I use the freeware program dvdshrink to shrink the dvd down to fit a 4.7G DVD. Save the iso file and use your favorite program to burn the iso file to disc.
DVDShrink does not include a burning engine but can often use an existing program on your computer i.e. Nero to do the burning.I admit it is a long way around but it gives you more control over each step.

It's an older program. I do not believe that it will work for the newer formats, i.e bluray etc. I am not sure it will work with windows vista either.
I use it successfully with Windows XP.

Another more up to date program that works well is dvdfab.
It is NOT freeware but my experience with it has been very good.

There may be those who would argue that you can accomplish all of these things in VS. I have not had good experience however. For example, currently, when I ask VS 9 to shrink my dvd, it crashes my computer!
I still like to use it for capture and editing.

Shrink definitely works with Vista.

I also use the latest DVDFab and find it is more forgiving than Shrink -- which is not always necessarily a good thing. Shrink will usually simply refuse to copy something it cannot read properly. However, DVDFab will often copy a minor error, which results in a jump in the finished DVD. It only comes up with an error message if the error is really serious...

The VS reduce-to-fit feature has never been particularly good. In my experience, it only works -- and even then not particularly well -- when the project size is only a couple of hundred MB more than the target size. If it is way over 5 GB for instance, VS simply stops working...

DVD Fab is certianly convenient, giving you a "one-click" option, but I find that DVD Shrink gives noticeably better quality if you select the "deep analysis" option in the quality settings. Of course that also slows it down.

As for reading bad sectors on discs - some burners are better than others at doing that. The one in my laptop is terrible, and will only read perfect discs.