[Veltliner]

I have several European DVDs and would like to burn a copy - only in the American regional code, so I can play them on my TV.

Does anybody have experience in this?

Somebody mentioned, that you can use DiscUtility. How do I do that?

Or does somebody have experience with ffmpegX?

[Uncle Skeleton]

If you just burn it, it will have no region code (you can play it anywhere). You have to try pretty hard to make a disc with a region code. I'm pretty sure DVD Studio Pro can do it, but you have to specifically set it.

If you use Disk Utility, make sure to rip the DVD as a disk image, not a VIDEO TS folder or mpeg streams. Otherwise you have to make sure you get a UDF volume on your new disc.

[Jacke]

You'll also have to make sure your American player & TV can play PAL video.

[Veltliner]

Is PAL and NTSC really an issue for DVDs too?

I thought the encoding would be the same (this is why there are region codes, or you wouldn't need them anyway for incompatibility).

I have heard you can play any DVD without a region code on a NTSC DVD player...

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PS: has anybody ever worked with ffmpex? It seems to be a pretty complicated program.

[red rocket]

Originally Posted by Veltliner

Is PAL and NTSC really an issue for DVDs too?

Short answer: yes.

Just because a film comes on a DVD, does not mean it's no longer encoded in either PAL or NTSC. You still need a player and TV set that's capable of displaying whichever format it's in, because NTSC and PAL devices expect different frame rates and resolutions.

For instance, I've got a multi-format DVD player connected to a multi-format television. Because both devices can understand either format, it doesn't matter whether the discs I insert are NTSC or PAL. However, if I connect the DVD player to my other TV which only understands PAL, it won't display the content of NTSC DVDs.

I thought the encoding would be the same (this is why there are region codes, or you wouldn't need them anyway for incompatibility).

DVDs are carriers of data files with compressed audio-visual information contained therein. This information can be placed on DVD in one of two resolutions; 720 x 576 pixels (PAL DVDs), or 720 x 480 pixels (NTSC DVDs), and with various frame rates (24, 25, and 30 frames per second are common). The DVD player itself takes this data file and formats it appropriately for display in either PAL or NTSC.

The thing is, DVD players labelled PAL can read NTSC DVDs with no problem.
On the other hand, DVD players labelled NTSC can't read PAL DVDs.

Region codes are an attempt by the motion picture industry at regional lockout for financial reasons, they have nothing to do with compatibility and there is no technical reason to have them, at all.

Here are some links about the issue of PAL and NTSC on DVD:

iMovie FAQ - NTSC to PAL DVD or vice versa
PAL vs NTSC
Television Standards - PAL to NTSC - DVDs and MPEG-2

The first link has some step-by-step conversion instructions, the other two explain the differences in detail.

[sanford]

I don't believe DVDs burned by, say, iDVD, have region codes and they will play fine on any region's players. As mentioned above, region codes just protect copyright licensing arrangements in various geographical markets, which were semi-arbitrarily decided by the DVD gods.

As for the NTSC/PAL issue, I swear there is some software, either free, cheap or semi-commercial, that will transcode NTSC/PAL but I can't remember. It may be Windows only. If I remember it, I'll post here.

Now if you want SECAM I think you'll have to move to France. Or maybe, what is it?, Peru? Argentina? (Does France even use SECAM anymore?)

[Uncle Skeleton]

If anything I would say that PAL DVD players are more likely to support both formats, since most blockbuster movies are from NTSC-land. NTSC players have little incentive to support PAL.