The people I work with always seem to find ways to make me think, search, and try. Although, as of late, it’s become quite hard to “stump the IT person”.

Guy came over and had a foreign movie that he wanted a duplicate created. Foreign to me is anything outside of the US of A. PAL happens to be outside the US of A. This DVD was created in the US of A, but then banned. So this copy was converted to PAL. I want it back!

Before I get too far into things, this is for WINDOWS OS COMPUTERS! I know there are plenty of Linux applications out there to do the same things (or at a minimum “very similar things”), but since I work on Windows machines all day, I decided to make it easy on everyone. You have a *nix post you want up here? Send it to me.

So basically you’ll need a few things (besides the obvious):
DVD Ripper – any should do, I use DVDFab though
VOB Blanker – free program
DVD Shrink – another free program

1. Rip the Movie (not to ISO format)
2. Open VOB Blanker, search for the IFO file
3. In the middle of the screen, find the chart with your VOB file listed
4. Right-click on the VOB file and select Video Attrib
5. In the window that opens up, select NTSC instead of PAL (or the opposite if you need PAL instead. Do the math)
6. On the bottom of the main window press the giant PROCESS!! button.
7. After about 10 minutes, your movie should be finished. Burn the movie – I used DVD Shrink to do this

It tested fine so far, and I’m not aware of any complications. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you.