PAL to NTSC
 

Just for your interest, I have been converting a Canon XH/A1 16x9 SD 85 minute PAL production to NTSC via Canopus ProCoder 2 and so far it has taken well over 8 hours to convert 5 of the 8 chapters. I think it will take a further six hours or longer to complete.

I am using the highest quality setting which can take 15 to 20 times longer, but the quality from my first tests showed that the NTSC conversion was nearly as good as the original PAL footage.

I have tried several options including exporting as a NTSC from Premiere, the quality was very poor.

Has anyone had the PAL/NTSC conversion doe to their camera, if yes, then how good is it?

Just as an update, my 85 minute video shot in PAL and converted to NTSC took 15 hours 10 minutes - using Canopus ProCoder 2. I have a very fast computer with 2 gb RAM and seven hard drives etc.

Vincent Oliver
www.photo-i.co.uk

I got the upgraded pal & ntsc XHA1. No problems at all. I think the $ spent was worth it after hearing how long you take to convert. electricity bill isn't cheap and the down time of not being able to use the computer.

I bought my with ZGC (christine) she got it upgraded to pal for me. It works out cheaper for me to fly over to N.Y and pick it up then to buy it in the E.U. Take it as a holiday cum camera purchase.

Thanks for your reply David, if I read your message correctly, you purchased a NTSC camera and had it converted to include PAL. I pressume you can still switch between PAL & NTSC at any time?

Just as a postscript to my mamouth render times. After viewing the footage on a Sony Bravia TV, the Procoder conversion wasn't good enough for my production, I have rejected it. However, I did create a new NTSC project and just dropped the PAL m2v files straight into it (the m2v files were created by the Adobe media encoder) and then resized the file to ensure that there wasn't any cut off. I then rendered it out as a NTSC DVD. The quality of this method was much better than the ProCoder version.

I will look into having the camera converted, or purchasing an NTSC unit.

Thanks

Vincent,
the dual standard upgrade (PAL & NTSC) is $500.
Works perfectly (BTW: thanks Chris @ ZGC!).
But you can also try to convert with Atlantis
(http://www.dvfilm.com/atlantis): it's around $200;
fairly slow & fairly good
(I first tried Procoder, then I switched to Atlantis)

Vasco

I may be wrong but the only advantage of getting the camera option is to record in Pal or NTSC. I don't believe the camera will convert prerecorded Pal to NTSC and vice versa.

Thanks, I just want it to record future productions in either PAL or NTSC. At the moment converting takes too much time.