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Activity Forums DVD Authoring Converting PAL to NTSC using FCP, Compressor or iDVD?

  • Converting PAL to NTSC using FCP, Compressor or iDVD?

    Posted by Geoff Bell on June 19, 2012 at 11:56 am

    Hi guys,

    I’m currently editing some PAL footage from a Canon DSLR which has been compressed into an Apple Prores which measures 1920 x 1080.

    I need to put my finished project on a DVD so it to play in the US.

    Should I export to NTSC in FCP, Compressor or simply setup iDVD as an NTSC project and hope that dropping my completed PAL is converted into NTSC?

    What are my options to convert my PAL footage into NTSC and at what stage should I do it?

    Finally what NTSC video format would be ideal for HD video on DVD?

    Thanks in advance!

    Juan Manuel replied 13 years, 10 months ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Jessica Mantheiy

    June 21, 2012 at 4:01 pm

    Geoff,

    There are many things wrong with this.

    If you have PAL footage and need to make a final DVD that it NTSC, you need to convert it from 25 fps to 29.97 fps. As one does this, you are adding a frame to about every 4th to 5th frame. This then causes interlacing. Even if you make your streams in PAL and author it as NTSC in your software, the extra frames will occur either way.

    If you have access to DVD Studio Pro or Adobe Encore, you can try to author it as PAL and set the region code to 1, which is Canada, United States, & Territories. You don’t have much flexibility with mixing with region codes and frame rates in iDVD.

    If you take your streams and convert it to 29.97 fps, your video will look absolutely terrible. I would suggest outputting your streams as PAL and have some do a hardware conversion to make it NTSC. My signature has my contact info if you want more information about this.

    Jessica Muth
    Production Operations Manager
    Video Labs
    Rockville, MD
    301-217-0000
    jmuth@videolabs.net

  • Eric Pautsch

    June 21, 2012 at 6:18 pm

    If this obviously progressive video why not just confirm your 25 to 23.98? This is easily done in Cinema Tools. From there you would author a NTSC “23.98” disc and it will play worldwide

    Someone had the same question here 2 days ago

  • Juan Manuel

    June 26, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    Well, unless he’s making a master for replication, he doesn’t need to care about regions. Any dvd burnt from a dvd burner will end up multiregion and without copy ‘protection’

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