cookinlover wrote: 
I found a Betamax deck in the attic!  It looks like a squirrel and some wasps fought over it.

 maryte wrote: 
It's always good to be on the cutting edge.

 Servo wrote: 

Um, wrong.  Look at the date of my original posting - almost a year and a half ago.  The region free DVD player arrived.  The PAL DVD of Riget arrived.  All hooked up fine and have been viewed. So much for expertise.

 maryte wrote: 
Then you're still not going to be able to view the DVD on your TV set {"I'm disinclined (and I suspect dionysius is as well) to sit in front of a 14" monitor in office chairs to watch a movie, when we've got a 34" HDTV downstairs with a reclining loveseat."}.  The DVD player is still going to put out a 576i/50 video signal that is incompatible with a 60Hz TV.  Many newer PAL TV sets are capable of displaying 60Hz PAL60 and sometimes even 480i/60 NTSC video.  But I haven't seen a TV for sale in the US (outside of specialty shops) that can play PAL or SECAM video.

If you want to view that PAL DVD on your 34" HD TV, you'll probably need a scan converter, which is not an inexpensive piece of equipment.  I've heard anecdotal stories of some HD TV sets that can display a PAL signal, but have never seen one myself.  Maybe you'll get lucky, but don't be surprised if it doesn't work.

I don't mean to be a wet blanket.  I've been dealing with standards conversion ever since I went to work for a PBS station that got the occasional PAL feed from the BBC.  IME standards conversion is trickier than it seems, unless you're using a computer.

 Servo wrote: 

No.

 maryte wrote: 
You do own a PAL TV, right?

 katzendogs wrote: 
You call a $40 massage cheap? Not to a homeless crackhead it's not.

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
But you just this morning asked for help! You gave up this afternoon! Yer easy! Prolly cheap and easy!

 katzendogs wrote: 
If I get them to do what I want, how can I freak out at them for screwing up? Jeez! Come on!

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
Wow. You give up easy.

Well, I dropped the disk of at the local video converting center and even tho the guy was a bit of a dick, I'll just let them deal with it and the client can pay for it. They're just really slow. The won't have it until wednesday and when I'm told them a large company was waiting o get this online to launch their web site, they wouldn't even expedite it by a day. I get to explain to them how much business they just lost. 

 TernaryBit wrote: 
I know, I had PM'd him asking if he had access to a PC. Isn't there a program on your Mac that runs Windows apps?

 miamizsun wrote: 
Only problem is this doesn't run on OSX.

X

 BillJ wrote: 
No, it's up to the client. He likes Insulin Man but he could go with a different super hero. Who knows in this shaky economy? Just Say No. 

 TernaryBit wrote: 
Thanks for you help!

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 

Do you get to pick which hero you would be? Can it be a super hero, like Henry Pym? That would be cool.

 manbirdexperiment wrote: 
Hmm well seeing as how you use Mac I can't be as helpful because handbrake and ffmpegx are the main mac tools for trascoding. I suggest perusing the download section of doom9.net for A) a vob splicer and B) an MPEG transcoder that will run on OSX 10.4. If it's really important, you can just spring for some commercial software—I searched google for "mac vob to mp4" and it came up with an option that has a free trial and a full copy for $35.

BTW you are right, all the video is contained in VTS_*.vob files. I believe the menu is contained in VIDEO_TS.VOB, and the .IFOs contain chapter, stream and subtitle information (I could be wrong, it's been a while since I authored a disc from scratch.)

 TernaryBit wrote: 
I tried imovie then I downloaded handbrake and ffmpegx. handbrake didn't open then I realized it's built for mac 10.5 lepeord. I'm still using 10.4 OS ffmpegx appeared to work except the files disappear after conversion - it's not working. I'll see if I can get another version of handbrake to work. I didn't convert the tape to dvd - I got the dvd from my client. Yes, it has those 2 folders. The audio folder is empty. The video folder contains the following files. 

VIDEO_TS.BUP
VIDEO_TS.IFO
VIDEO_TS.VOB
VTS_01_0.BUP
VTS_01_0.IFO
VTS_01_1.VOB
VTS_01_2.VOB

I can view the VOB files and it looks like the all the stuff I need is on VTS_01_1.VOB and VTS_01_2.VOB so I need convert them then splice them together. 

 TernaryBit wrote: 
Here is an idea.  It's not a simple matter but, it sounds like the work will be worth it.  They're using DGPulldown.

If you can RIP the DVD to any standard video format (it's the drive interfacing to the computer that the real issue), you can use Xillsoft or ABC-Soft products to convert it to MP4.