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NTSC/SECAM coversion using a PC -- doable??

Z

zveruga

Senior member
Having tried most brands of under $1000 worldwide vcrs/convertors, i encountered rediculously low quality SECAM->NTSC and NTSC->SECAM conversion. I am talking brightness fading in and out, occasional frame freezing, poor contrast and dilution of image borders. In short -- it is suck!!!

So, here is my idea... why cant I do conversion on my PC? Should be a simple process:
1) Capture NTSC or SECAM video via a tv-tuner card from a vcr
2) Use some software to convert to the other format
3) record back onto a worldwide VCR (no conversion would happen here since video is already in needed format)

Can this work?? Has anyone done this?? Seems more cost effective than purchasing a $3000 converter.

thanks.
 
I have done this on a small scale going from PAL to NTSC. I hook up the PAL VCR that I have and play the video to the TV input of my Pinnacle PCTV card, create an avi, and then disconnect the PAL VCR then play the .avi out through the TV-out port of my GeForce4 card into an NTSC VCR. The quality is ok - but it's not amazing. The video looks mostly fine, but there were some cropping issues and there's a bit of a grainy quality to the film that's not ideal.

A co-worker has a converting VCR that he paid $400 or so for. That seems to do a better job than the approach that I use.

A technique that I have just started using is to take the avi from the computer, change it to SVCD format and burn that onto a SVCD cdrom that can played on my TV's DVD player. The quality of the output is higher and the process is a little less manual. On the downside, out of the 5 or 6 times that I have tried this, 3 of them didn't work - either the DVD player couldn't read the CD, or, in one case, the video was bad (audio was ok though).
 
there are a handful of DVD players that can really do burned s\vcds well, ask in the av forum.

as for the thread:
using a computer is very well possible especially since capture cards (for the most part) dont care what format the "input" is in. and you can output whatever format you want with tv out. though it's mostly pal and ntsc that i've seen. i keep forgetting what countries use what formats in europe, all i know is that pal and secam flavors are used there.
 
I used to do this with a highly propreitary system from AVID, the card alone was about $12,000(US) at the time. Quality wasn't that great in realtime, it worked best after rendering. Your idea would work assuming the output device (step 3) can support the different resolution and refresh rate of SECAM. That was why we spent $12,000, most of the NTSC cards couldn't do 50hz, and the PAL cards just plain didn't work.

Going from NTSC to PAL is easier, this link explains it best:
http://www.high-techproductions.com/pal,ntsc.htm
 
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