1. Buy a PAL Region 2 dvd.
2. Rip it onto my hard drive (I use dvd-decrypter).
3. Change the format from PAL to NTSC
4. Re-burn onto a dvd that is Region 1 or Region 0.
Now, it doesnt matter if its dual-layer or not, my biggest concern is actually doing the PAL to NTSC conversion, along with audio and sub-titles stuff working correctly.
This is what I have:
Sony DRU800 dual-layer burner.
DVDDecrypter
DVDShrink
Are there any other programs that I need in order to do this?
P.S. I am aware I will have to change the region-coding on my dvd player drive in order to read the Reg 2 dvd, this is not a problem.
Yeah, I have seen the region screen in shrink, i figured that would not be too big a problem. My main concern is how to translate the video from PAL to NTSC. That is what I do not know how to do.
I have a similar task, though my PAL disks are region-free, to the best of my knowledge. I am a bit of a newbie, but will offer some information I gathered.
There are two basic methods of converting between NTSC and PAL (which as you probably know have different resolutions and framerates.) One is the "patch" method - you open the IFO file(s) in IFOEdit, modify the resolution, frame rate and aspect ratio appropriately (720x480, 30fps, 16:9 for NTSC), and save the IFO file. VOBs are not touched. This works in some DVD players. Did not work for me using a Panasonic F-65.
The other method involves actually recoding the video and audio stream during the conversion. I tried 2 programs I found: Avi2DVD and VSO DivXtoDVD (freeware version.) Both perform NTSC<->PAL conversion through recoding.
It worked for me for some PAL movies; however, most of the PAL disks I have are not recognized with the correct video stream resolution by these 2 tools. Specifically, the input video stream is seen as 352x576, instead of 720x576, as reported by IFOEdit. As a result, the video is "squished" in (about) 2 horizontally.
I just posted this question on this board; since both Avi2DVD and DivXtoDVD exhibit this behavior, there must be something wrong either with the disks, or with how I rip them. I tried both DVDDecrypter (IFO mode) and DVDShrink, with the same results.
I did not post links to the tools I mentioned or tutorials, but googling should point you to them. If not, post here and I will lookup the links.