NTSC to PAL

Patryk Rebisz wrote on 12/2/2009, 7:38 PM

I have a client who's from France and i need to shoot some stuff for him. Right now he only want the footage but i'm trying to steer him in the direction of shooting and editing as this way i won't have to rent PAL cameras and deal with the hustle.

I'm thinking of shooting 24F with Canon XH A1. Is Vegas removing the pulldown authomaticaly or do i have to run the footage through some pulldown removal software? Then with pure 24fps on the 23.97 timeline i'll edit the project and output PAL 25p DVD. Am i missing something in my workflow?

Comments

farss wrote on 12/2/2009, 9:15 PM

Obvious questions that come to mind.

1) Where are you shooting it, France or USA
2) What are you shooting.
3) What lighting are you using.

Reason I ask is I've found issues shooting anything but 25fps in Region50 and anything but 30fps in Region60, I haven't tried 24fps in Region60.

I'm not certain if Vegas can remove pulldown on Canon's 24F, I recall come issues with that raised here.

Bob.

Patryk Rebisz wrote on 12/2/2009, 10:38 PM

All 3 issues are addressed. Shooting in NTSC land with 1/60 shutter.

BRC wrote on 12/3/2009, 1:26 AM

I came across your message in passing and, although I do not really have any input to the solution, thought it worth pointing out that the French TV system is SECAM, not PAL.

The power supply phase is still 50 cycles per second, as in the UK, so the frame rate would still be 25 fps. However I cannot find Vegas Pro as having the means to convert directlt to SECAM.

Just felt you should be aware of this.

farss wrote on 12/3/2009, 2:01 AM

As far as I know there is no such thing as a SECAM DVD. There were some SECAM VHS tapes around, what a drama finding a machine that'd play them!
As far as I know everything in France today can handle PAL.
Some explaination as to why at the bottom of this Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SECAM

Bob.

MarkWWWW wrote on 12/3/2009, 5:50 AM

Strictly speaking SECAM, PAL and NTSC are methods of transmitting colour video by RF. None of them have anything inherently to do with the number of fields/frames per second, or the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the picture. But it is just a fact that in the 30/525 part of the world NTSC was chosen for their colour TV broadcast methods, and in the 25/625 part of the world PAL (and SECAM) was chosen. Because of this fact it has become a useful shorthand to refer to the video standards used in the 25/625 part of the world as PAL and the video standards used in the 30/525 part of the world as NTSC.

As far as the video is concerned, there is no difference between "PAL" and "SECAM" - the same dimensions, frame rates, etc are used. Only if you were running a TV broadcasting operation would you need to know about the different methods the two systems use for transmitting the colour information along with the video (and other differences in how the video and audio are modulated onto the RF carrier).

In fact, just to prove the point that PAL and NTSC do not have anything inherently 25/625 or 30/525 about them, there a couple of countries in the world (including Brazil, I think) who use a version of PAL called PAL-M which uses the standard PAL colour and audio subcarrier methods, but with a video signal that is 30/525.

Mark

peteros wrote on 12/5/2009, 4:36 AM

IMHO, you should shoot 24/23.976 progressive (or progressive field) and then speed up about 4% to 25 fps. This method should give you the best quality pic. As far as the audio, if raising it by half a tone makes a difference to you, use Serato's pitch'n'time.