NTSC bypassed through PAL cam?
 

I have an NV-MX8 PAL camcorder, and all the rest of my gear is NTSC. I'm wondering if I can pass NTSC signal through the S-Video port on the PAL camcorder and capture it on my PC, or will it run through the same PAL image processors as the CCD and come out as garbage?

The S-video output is PAL. If your video capture card can handle both NTSC and PAL, then you can capture this way. However, why not use Firewire? You can capture to your PC over Firewire. It doesn't care if it is PAL or NTSC.

I may be missing a detail.

Flow is:

NTSC VHS tape -->SVideo-->NV-MX8-->Firewire-->Final Cut Pro or iMovie

Will the NTSC come through as NTSC, be converted on the fly to PAL, or come out garbled?

The camera probably won't even recognise the video signal - audio should be ok. There's one easy way to find out though.

If I understand, you want to take NTSC from a VHS deck and convert it to PAL via your camera's S-video input? Or maybe you want your PAL camera to send NTSC video over firewire to your computer?

Either way, I don't think it's going to work. NTSC and PAL are different frame sizes and rates. This would require re-sampling the video and rendering.

I think you will need something like the ADS Pyro box that can take both NTSC and PAL analog inputs and transcode them to firewire:

http://www.adstech.com/products/API-...sp?pid=API-555

But that box won't convert from NTSC to PAL although it can capture either. To convert you'll need some software like DVFilm Atlantis or Graeme Nattress' standards conversion for FCP.

Ok, I see now. You want to do DV passthrough. But, as several of us have said, you can't put NTSC into a PAL cam and expect it to convert it. The TV systems are different.

Thanks guys.

Yeah, that's what I thought. I wanted to know before going out to get a new VHS deck (I'm currently without one) and converting all those old non-replaceable tapes.

I like Boyd's recommendation of the Pyro. I'll look into that more.

Thanks again,
Brandt