I\'m currently testing the Russian DVD now with DVDS. It is analyzing it and seems to be displaying the video correctly as it does it in the preview window.

Well, it analyzed it fine and is allowing me to edit for a Backup. I just don\'t have a DVD burner to make a test disc. I think I will try a small piece of the video and make folder and see how my player deals.

The movie is kind of an odd ball because it has 2 title tracks, for a total over just over 3 hours of movie. I am going to try putting each part on it\'s own DVD minus the menus to keep it\'s compression in a nice clean range, and since I can run it with no compression like that, it should result in a solid picture.

So far seems to be going OK. But I will poast my results when I actually burn a DVD from it.

Ok, my test \"backup\" is finished, and when I play it with WinDVD 4, it played fine. However it still tells me that it is PAL and not NTSC.

The player I am shooting for is a home theatre player and does not handle PAL.

BTW, the disc is Region free, so that isn\'t a problem.

Maybe I need to use a different utility to copy the movie to a file and reburn it as a NTSC disc. Can someone recommend a util that works as easily and nicely as DVDS?

I found some utils to do it in a round about way, but they all stink. Problem is that I need to preserve the subtitles on the disc -and- convert it.

The easiest way is to get a $20US PAL->NTSC converter box and run it thru there to watch, but even then that doesn\'t really solve the problem.

Another quick update. I discovered that my home DVD player plays PAL discs without a problem. A nice discovery! Oddly, my brother\'s home player which is similar to mine does not. It reads the disc, and spits it out with an error that it\'s PAL formatted.

On the conversion side of things, looks like he will have to try and find a NTSC version of the DVD. THe conversion he needs just doesn\'t seem to exist with going thru 10 different steps and 3-5 software tools to preserve subtitles and compress and recode etc.

If nothing else I discovered that my player at home does PAL and that DVDS copies PAL as PAL.

I think he should get a new player which supports PAL. He watches russian videos alot and it would be worth it I think but he thinks otherwise.

I did some research and found that 90% of the DVD players made in the last 2 years support PAL. Appearantly it was added to support VCD/SVCD playback and subsequently benefited DVD playback as well.

Wish I had known this, I had a video at one time that was PAL I never got to watch and sold.