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Converting NTSC to PAL
Hi,
I am researching the best way to convert a NTSC project in Final Cut to PAL at the best quality. The footage is 24p dvcpro and the output would be for dvd.
I would really appreciate any advice as far as what my options are. Both in terms of free programs out there or any other programs on the market.
Thanks!
Stella
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2 Replies
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Hi Stella – I do loads of conversion from NTSC/24/pal and the best I have seen in my workflow is believe it or nit compressor – some gotchas to look out fir is audio sync and duplicated frames -best practice is to find 20 sec of moving pictures and test that with different settings – hope this helps
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If your timeline/media is 24fps, you could consider exporting your final output at 24fps, then opening this Quicktime in CinemaTools and ‘conforming’ it to 25fps. It becomes PAL.
Mind that frame size in PAL is 720×576, so you need to do that scaling at export. In case your timeline/media is not ‘real 24fps’ but 23.98fps. (which in some parts of the world is the preferred method of expressing 24fps). You can take 23.98 fps and conform to 25fps in Cinema Tools too.
This conform method will speed up your video (and audio) by 4%, but in the PAL world it is the preferred method of converting 24fps to 25fps.
Just so you know, HDCamSR, D-5, DVCProHD, NLEs like smoke, flame, Quantel eQ, iQ, and many other systems can output 24fps video as PAL only by this 4% speed-up method. Only Avid and FCP systems can actually output 24fps as 25fps by the ‘frame’repeat’ or ’24+1′ method. Which preserves duration at the cost of a somewhat noticeable once-per-sec judder.
Using Compressor and with careful application of settings it is possible to make 24fps into 25fps without changing duration. Frame interpolation is done and looks quite clean, but it take a while to encode.
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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India
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