Converting PAL to NTSC

I have a number of DVDs on PAL format because they are not available anywhere else. Most of the time it's because I want a widescreen version of a movie. All my DVD drives under Linux and my BD-ROM can all read any region DVDs without having to use regionset, so ripping them is simple enough.

I use ffmpeg to convert them. Using -format ntsc-dvd is pretty much all you need.

Here's a general command:

ffmpeg -i pal.vob -target ntsc-dvd ntsc.mpg

And here is me spiking the bitrates for good measure:

ffmpeg -i pal.vob -target ntsc-dvd -vb 9000k -ab 192k ntsc.mpg