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Converting FCP project from PAL to NTSC
I have a project in PAL format. The DV footage was shot overseas in PAL camera and edited in FCP 4.5
I have done further editing to the project here in America on my PowererBook with FCP 4.5 and I want to convert it to NTSC format so I can play it in DVD players here.
I noticed that when you export the project timeline there is an option called exporting using “quicktime conversion.” Here I can set it to export as an NTSC file.
I also have QuickTime Pro and it gives me the same option.
Does anybody know if this works? I performed the operation and when I get info on the exported file it shows up as an NTSC file, as if it did work! Yet, when I burn it to a DVD using iDVD it doesn’t play back on any DVD players. I wonder why. The settings on iDVD are all set to NTSC it looks like.
Any thoughts?? Could it be that my SuperDrive is broken?Also, even if there is a better quality way to convert from PAL to NTSC i don’t want to invest in that software right now. I just need a quick and easy way to make an NTSC playable DVD that I play for people on their players.
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6 Replies
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Quick and easy? Two ways:
take the PAL movie, drop it into an NTSC project, make sure that FCP scales the video to fit, and export as NTSC. Quality will be stuttery, but it does work. If you go to Ken Stone’s I think he has a tutorial on it.
Much better is to export your PAL movie, de-interlace it to get 25p, stick it into cinema tools, conform to 23.98fps, take that video to an NTSC 23.98fps project, make sure it scales to fit, export as 23.98fps NTSC, and make a 24p DVD. Everything will run 4% slow, but the quality will be much better.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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Thanks Graeme, the first option you gave seems simple enough! Let me see if i got this right. Basically, I create an NTSC sequence and drop the PAL movie into it. It shows that it needs to be rendered because the PAL video is in an NTSC timeline. Then I render the sequence, and it is this rendering that converts the PAL to NTSC, right?
As for the second option, I would like to try that out since the quality you say will be better. But I didn’t quite follow what you were saying. After I export the PAL movie, where do I de-interlace it? Isn’t it already 25fps? Where do I find cinema tools? Is that a separate software program that I need to get?
Another question: After I perform the first option of just rendering the PAL movie in an NTSC timeline, is it better to export as a Final Cut Pro (Quicktime) movie or using Compressor and exporting it as an MPEG-2? My goal here is getting best possible quality, not the fastest encoding.
Thanks again in advance!
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But the quality from letting FCP convert is poor indeed. If you’ve got FCP5, you’ve got cinema tools and compressor 2. C2 will do a very nice standards conversion, and it’s so slow, it takes about 4h30m to convert 1 minute of footage, which is why people like my plugin for FCP which is about 40 times faster…….
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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hi Graeme!
I checked and I do have Cinema Tools 2.2. I made a regular QT PAL export of my 3 minute project (which I suspect is the best option in terms of quality export when the source footage is in mini-DV). So now do i import it in Cinema Tools? And how do I perform the conversion to NTSC from there?
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Did you de-interlace in FCP?
Open Cinema Tools, hit cancel.
Open File, select movie, hit conform, select 23.98fps.
Make a 23.98fps NTSC DV timeline in FCP, use an easy preset to do this.
Drop your movie from CT into it, scale it to fit, and now you have a 23.98, ie 24p movie you can make a NTSC DVD with.
G
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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OK, first I de-interlace. Do I do this by selecting all the clips in the timeline and applying the de-interlace filter to them from the Effects Tab?
What does the de-interlace do?
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