Evaluating Standards Conversion NTSC to PAL

[Martin Belleau]

Hi Eric,

The biggest things to look for in NTSC/PAL in my experience are:
– jerky motion
– single frame artifacts, in particular for motion compensated conversions. Brand new frames are generated and if the motion is not estimated properly, bad artifacts will appear. Not always visible at full speed playback.
– softness of the output. Happens for output with blended frames, or with motion compensation depending on the implementation.

For the telestream file, the output looks quite soft, in particular where these is some movement. This could be due to compression or other areas of the telestream pipeline, but most likely it’s from the conversion. I would double-check the settings for encoding and maybe try a different codec, as the softness is more than I could expect. I’ll try to upload some screenshots for this.

The Media Encoder file seems to re-use existing frames from the source. So, everything is sharp but looking frame by frame, you see a bigger time jump every 5th frame. Playing back at full speed, the pan and movements are more jerky.

I uploaded a file created by our software, Capella Cambria FTC. You can check it out here:
https://spaces.hightail.com/space/pYNmdNvDen

You’ll see some single frame artifacts but it’s both sharp and motion is fluid.

[Martin Belleau]

[Eric Strand]

Hi Martin, thanks for the screenshots, test clip, and information. Those are the same lines of thought I had as well regarding the Telestream clip and the Media Encoder clip. I had not come across Cambria FTC yet but the results do look very nice. I may be reaching out offline. Thanks again.

@ericstrand11

[Eric Strand]

**Moved this post over in the Broadcasting forum**

Hi, hoping someone sees this post. Would files converted from NTSC to PAL in Adobe Media Encoder pass QC from broadcasters like BBC or other European broadcasters? Thanks

@ericstrand11