Yes, yes.
There'll always be some loss of quality even on the most expensive gear. Going PAL to NTSC is better though than the other way around.
To make the conversion from what I can tell and I've done it several times just render out using the NTSC template. Wait a LONG time and job done. You may get different result based on the de-intelace method you specify. To really see how good the results are I'd suggest you need a decent studio monitor.
I had a long thread about the reverse situation..I needed a PAL copy of an NTSC project. The Sony rep suggested using DVDA..which I did and all seems well..(I'll know when my German friend receives it). I opened my finished NTSC project in DVDA and changed the Properties to PAL and rerendered.
Hope this applies.
Bryan
I routinely do PAL to NTSC conversions. They way I do it is to render (based on PAL DV source material) to NTSC MPEG-2 in Vegas. Then create a DVD with this.
I haven’t tried it the other way to compare, but I think the quality may be better doing it this way (a single render from PAL DV to NTSC MPEG-2) than having DVD-A do it as you suggest (as that involves a second render from PAL MPEG-2 to NTSC MPEG-2).
The advantage of the DVD-A method is it is easier; if you render in Vegas as I suggest you will need to do some “rework” on the DVD-A side. See this thread
Bstanding - I don't have the statistics, but from my experience most DVD players here in PAL-land (I'm in the UK) can play NTSC DVDs, but that isn't true of NTSC players (in the US) playing PAL.
Not scientific, but I sent both PAL and converted NTSC DVDs to family in the US; only 1 in 4 players could handle the PAL DVD (all were fine with the NTSC conversion).
I've also used Canopus ProCoder Express to do the conversion; but I felt that Vegas's MainConcept encoder did a better job.
mbryant
a fellow forum member in Germany did a comparison between rendering from Vegas or doing the conversion in DVDA. His conclusion was the DVDA render was both faster and better , particularly on fast motion footage. I thought the same thing as you about rerendering an mpeg2 but both the Sony rep and my German friend concluded that DVDA was a good way to go and you do save DVD reauthoring.