I live in the US and have an NTSC Sony VX1000. Love the camera and the quality. I am considering building an NLE system -- maybe the DV Rex. At the end of the year I am moving to Australia. Since Aussies use the PAL format I am wondering if it will be difficult for me to convert my NTSC DV tapes to PAL analog. Is there a severe quality loss when converting from NTSC to PAL? Is there an easy (and preferably inexpensive) way to convert from one format to another? Any advice and/or ideas is welcomed.

-- Joshua Tickell (josh@veggievan.org), March 14, 1999

Answers

Well, currently the easy way is to use one of the cheap consumer NTSC/ PAL dual standards VHS machines. (<$1000) The problem is that it looks like shit. Going from NTSC to PAl is more difficult to achieve acceptable results than PAL to NTSC. PAL is a higher resolution format and motion effect from 25 to 30 are not as noticable. The principle problem with NTSC to PAL is that you have motion artifacting as it trys to cram 30 frames into 25. The cheapy solution simple drops the frames as needed. More sophisticated solutions use methods to compensate for these artifacts, but cost big buck at high end post houses.

For very small sequences that you absolutely must have (10 to 30 seconds), you could probably rig a conversion in After Effects using frame blending and scaling.

Phil

-- Phil Glau (circusredk@aol.com), March 20, 1999.

If you need to conver them then the above answers are pretty helpful. Alittle know fact is that the SONY TRV900 Pal unit has full NTSC Playback ability. Most Pal sets if you look carefully will support the NTSC frame rate and color system. SO if you only want to be able to pay and use them then I'd get a TRV900, convert over to PAL and then use this system to playback any NTSC DV I had. IT will NOT CONVERT from NTSC TO PAL only let you PLAY NTSC. John Ferrick

-- John Ferrick (Ferrick@postmaster.co.uk), April 20, 1999.

Is there any way to output a NTSC program from premiere or any other editing software to a PAL dsr-11 ?

Or : could it be more usefull to edit everything in PAL then convert to NTSC ? Considering that almost everything we produce could be sent in both system ?

-- Jean-Claude Tremblay (jcmages@hotmail.com), January 14, 2002.