• Avid Media Composer

  NTSC to PAL necessary for quicktime or mpeg-1?

  Posted by Colin Edelman on June 29, 2008 at 10:58 pm

  Hi,

  I have an NTSC Avid project that will be ending up in Powerpoint presentation (as an mpeg-1) which will then be projected. The kicker is that the presentation is in Hong Kong which is under the PAL system.

  However, because these are mpeg-1’s, does it matter if its in PAL or NTSC?

  To make a PAL mpeg-1, I had been exporting from the Avid: H.264 compression at 720×576 and changing the frame rate to 25 (they want a backup like this anyway in case the mpeg-1’s don’t work).

  Then in compressor, I convert them to mpeg-1’s as PAL 320×240, 25fps. The problem is that stutter every so often, which I attribute to the loss of frames.

  I know I can go to a dub house and get this converted, or use the After Effects trick of Andrew Kramer, but I want to avoid more work (yes, I’m an American) and my client doesn’t have any more money to spend.

  Are there any international representatives or knowledgeable Americans that know if quicktimes and mpegs really need to be converted to PAL to work internationally?

  Thanks,
  Colin

  Colin Edelman replied 17 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Michael Hancock

  June 30, 2008 at 9:55 pm

  It doesn’t matter if it’s going into a Powerpoint presentation.

  You only need to worry about PAL versus NTSC if you’re sending something for broadcast or playback through a VHS or DVD player, or Beta or Digibeta or someother tape based playback, because the hardware that plays it back (beta machine, VHS player, etc…) can probably only playback PAL or NTSC. A computer doesn’t care.

  Think of it this way–if it mattered to the computer, there would be youtubeNTSC and youtubePAL and youtubeSECAM sites. Thankfully, there isn’t!

  Michael.
• 

  Colin Edelman

  June 30, 2008 at 10:52 pm

  thanks for the response.

  I had forgotten to respond earlier to my own post, where I would have said:

  This has already been answered and with a better title too:

  https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/983202

  but thanks anyway!

  Colin Edelman

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