NTSC to PAL Conversion Workflow

[Russell Lasson]

I haven’t tried it, but chances are your footage is going to be choppy because of how FCP will try to adjust the frame rate.

Compressor has some conversion settings in it, but I haven’t had much success with it.

You might try Natress Standards Conversion.

https://nattress.com/Products/standardsconversion/standardsconversion.htm

-Russ

[Gary Adcock]

[Dave LaRonde] “Have you ever done an NTSC to PAL coversion before? It may not be as straightforward as you think.”

Dave
better make that “it IS NOT as straight forward as you think”

there is a reason that the NTSC to PAL conversions cost a lot of money to do. first off there is the DF to NDF issue, 29.97 interlace to 25p / 50i and the size and colorspace differences.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows

[Walter Biscardi]

Your workflow is not that simple and the playback will not be correct when you ship the DVD, it will be very choppy.

What you want to do is capture all your footage. Run the Nattress Standards Converter on each shot. Edit the converted PAL footage into a PAL timeline. Now make your PAL DVD.

OR

Take your NTSC master to a conversion house and let them run the project through a Terranex converter and hand you back a PAL master. Again, capture that and make your PAL DVD.

I use the Nattress Standards converter and it works very well, but you need to use it on the original shots, not an exported timeline as you will get flash frames on each edit.

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

[Rick Bennett]

Thanks for all input thus far. I am thinking I might just ship this out to another facility
who handles these type of things. Accord Video in Miami is very good at standards conversions
and cost is not really an issue for me. I was just trying to broaden my scope a bit.

Some additional notes. The Master was edited on my DS Nitris and I will be either inputting
from Digital Betacam, OR I will export an uncompressed quicktime from DS and then import into FCP.
Don’t know if it will sense the edits or see the video as one clip.

As far as the “choppiness” (sp?) I have already alerted the client that there are some “gotchas” to
this process and they understand. Does it really look that bad or more like “film 24 fps”?

I might just send this nightmare away and concentrate on what I do best. Making coffee and taking out the trash.

Thanks for your input. Rick @ http://www.nakedeye.com

[Walter Biscardi]

[Rick Bennett] “As far as the “choppiness” (sp?) I have already alerted the client that there are some “gotchas” to
this process and they understand. Does it really look that bad or more lik”

NTSC is Lower Field First. PAL is Upper Field First. You get a very bad, jittery reversed field look if you simply try to render out the wrong format video. I.e. put NTSC footage in a PAL timeline, render and play out. It will look very ugly on a regular TV monitor.

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]

Just for the record, all modern European PAL DVD players, TVs etc will play NTSC DVDs, so sending a PAL DVD to Europe is not an absolute necessity. The opposite is not the case however – the great majority of NTSC machines do not play back PAL formats.

If you’re not sure, you can send over an NTSC DVD as a test…

Just my 2 Euro-cents (Danish Krone, actually)

[Tom Landon]

Just trying to find out if anyone has any insight as to whether a person in Nepal might be able to watch an NTSC DVD on their players. I hear that most European players can do both, but is that the case in Asia?
Thanks!

Tom Landon
Lucky Dog Productions
Roanoke, VA

[Rafael Amador]

Yes.
No problem.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Tom Landon]

Thanks so much!

Tom Landon
Lucky Dog Productions
Roanoke, VA