NTSC & PAL on the same project

[Walter Biscardi]

You’ll have to convert all the NTSC material to PAL for your final edit to tape. For just rough cutting and offlining, you can throw the NTSC footage into your PAL timeline and you’ll just have to render all the clips.

But when you’re ready for the final cut you’ll have to use Compressor or Graeme Nattress’s Standards Converter to convert all the NTSC footage to PAL. That will result in the cleanest possible video.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Accountclosed_no_realname]

Thanks for your reply… Yes i thought so myself… but that’s the only difference? You would maintain the same crispness of the image? Nothing will get lost when you convert it to another format?

I know it seems like a hassle.. but i’d rather save 3.000 dollars… 😐

[Stuart Simpson]

[angel breath] “You would maintain the same crispness of the image?”

Whatever you do you will notice a difference between the PAL footage and the converted NTSC. Even if it’s done at a conversion facility NTSC always looks slightly soft to me when compared with PAL. Remember – the formats have different resolutions as well as framerates:

NTSC frame size is 720×480
PAL frame size is 720×576

It’s probably really subjective though… I mean 29.93 frames per second – come on! That’s just silly! 🙂

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk

[Ben Holmes]

[angel breath] “I know it seems like a hassle.. but i’d rather save 3.000 dollars..”

Depends how you value the machine time in rendering and workflow interruptions. It’s not a nice solution by any means.

Do you really want to have two cameras working in different frame rates and standards on every project? If you’re pretty self contained, why not sell your PAL camera, and pick up two NTSC ones in the US. At least you could edit the entire project in an NTSC format, and just convert the final output. On the other hand, you’d need an PAL/NTSC monitor….

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.

[Peter Dewit]

Any cash you save on the camera you’re going to lose in post on standards conversions or rendering time.

[Ben Holmes]

There’s always this option:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home;jsessionid=G7XNyTJ7V2!-797930902!1178294157412?shs=AG-HVX200+PAL&ci=0&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=RootPage.jsp&A=search&Q=*&bhs=t

If you can get to New York.

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Simmie] “Whatever you do you will notice a difference between the PAL footage and the converted NTSC.”

Yep, I’ll second that. Even with a Terranex converter, there’s still a little something lost in translation.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[John Burgan]

If you’re based in Europe then you should go with PAL gear unless you’re producing exclusively for the American market and/or if the material will be edited in the US. Deliberately mixing PAL and NTSC for the reason you mention is thoroughly impractical.