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Old 2008-01-11, 12:19 AM
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tgunn2760 tgunn2760 is offline
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Canada, eh?
Re: Hack of the Year--PAL to NTSC in one minute!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kstyle View Post
I wanted to thank rherron for this in the PAL to NTSC thread at the top of the page where I found it, but I can't post on that thread, for whatever reason, so I'll to do it here where maybe a few more folks will be as blown away as I am by the incredibly quick, easy and effective hack rherron posted:

"You can use a program called IFOEdit to sort of trick your DVD player into playing PAL DVDs, and it is VERY, VERY easy to do.

Using IFOEdit, open .IFO files. The program will have two windows of information. In the bottom window there will be lots of lines of text. Look for the lines (there will be 1 or 2 or more depending upon which IFO file you are looking at) of text containing the word "PAL." Double click those lines. A dialog box will open. There is a button to select PAL or NTSC. Select NTSC. Save the file. It will ask if you want to change the .BUP files as well. Answer "Yes." You're done. Burn away.

This is not a true conversion (PAL to NTSC) but changing the info files like this will trick many DVD players into believing this is an NTSC recording. I have heard it will not work on all DVD players but it works great on mine. No problems whatsoever. It does nothing to alter the actual video files, so there is no deterioration of the quality. It is my understanding that many (most?) newer DVD players are capable of playing both NTSC and PAL though they are not sold that way (perhaps because of pressure from the movie industry because it helps make it easier for them to maintain its region encoding system -- just a guess).

The worst thing that could happen is that it wouldn't work on your player and you'd have wasted $.50 cents on a DVD+R. Back up every file in the "VIDEO_TS" folder that is not a video (VOB) file and if this doesn't work for you you can restore the folder to it's original state (this is also a good idea in case you ever wish to trade the show or reseed it, etc.)."

Man, it works perfectly. All my old PAL vids are now happily playing on my 2002 Sony dvd player, with better pic/sound than my NTSCdvds. This simple hack is so easy, so free, and so useful. Probably the best hack I've ever found for sheer usefulness. Makes you realize what a load of crap the region stuff is, just a simple line command, and just there to make our lives harder and the big boys richer. Times is a changin', boys!

Thanks again to rherron! (And the ifoedit folks for the freeware! It also deletes menus, FBI/HAL warnings, etc, and is here:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/IFOEdit.htm)

Another Happy New Year of endless fine music to all!

I just tried this with the Pink Floyd documentary and it works great.

I burned a copy of the originally seeded DVD in PAL format and then converted this with IFOEdit, burned it to a DVD-RW and am now watching it.

The entire conversion took less than two minutes.

Amazing! Thanks!
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Text file of over 1500 DVDs:

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