In need of a quick fix: How can I scale PAL video to NTSC dimentions/resolution for my Portable Media Center?

[CZroe]

I kinda wanted to show some guys at work the Citroën C4 Transformer car commercial (Link) but the squished video playback on a Portable Media Center really ruins the effect. It is a direct result of PAL vs. NTSC resolution.

The commercial aired in the UK, so it was a PAL source. I have another video that also squishes (I think it's from Sweeden, where they also use the European PAL standard). This seems to be a problem for all PAL videos when transfered to a Portable Media Center device, although they maintain their correct aspect ratio in Windows Media Player (Though when you disable all accelleration, even WMP WILL squish the video).

So, how can I simply ditch the added resolution and scale down these videos to NTSC for my PMC?

And yes, I know PAL and NTSC are actually transmission standards and that calling the different aspect ratios and resolutions by the name of their transmission source is technically incorrect, but I don't care.

 

[uOpt]

Well, what exactly is the problem if you just play it back, is the picture "jumpy"? What is "squishing"? (sorry not a native speaker)

I use "mplayer" to convert. The mplayer webpages have an excellent step-by-step for making DivX from DVD and that one includes instructions how to convert the frame rate when going PAL->NTSC so that the picture doesn't end up jumping around. Obviously converting the frame size is trivial.

I don't know how good the Windows version of mplayer is, but there is one.

 

[Dug]

The file will play fine in quicktime.

Or download Zoomplayer and use that as a front end for whatever media player you are running.
Zoomplayer has all the configurations needed to display video properly.

 

[CZroe]

The file plays fine in Media Player as long as accelleration is left at "Full". I'm not having a problem with media player. The problem is when I load it onto a Portable Media Center... The video becomes the same shape as the screen by squishing/distorting the video. This is something you can see in a single frame. "Squish" is just a word for squash or stretch without indicating which it is (It is in fact, stretched vertically). It apperas to me now that this is actually probably a 16x9 video being displayed on a 4x3 display and not a PAL vs. NTSC issue at all. I saw other widescreen videos were scaled down to fit on my PMC so I didn't think it was that at first but now I realize that they were extremely low resolution and probably didn't fill the screen in the first place. The Sweedish commercial that was also stretched sorta made me think that it was a PAL vs NTSC thing. That Sweedish video must be 16x9 also...

So now I just ned to scale the video down with letterboxes (Like a non-animorphic DVD). Is there something simple that can do that?

 

[Peter]

PAL is 4:3 aspect ratio alright. Your software is screwing it up, or it's indeed a widescreen aspect video.

 

[CZroe]

The PAL screen ratio is not 4:3. There are added lines of resolution. I did discover a neat little bit of information after I realized that my 16:9 PAL vid was the same resolution as a "4:3" PAL vid... Aspect Ratio can refer to the individual pixels as well.

Anyway, this did the trick nicely for me!