Puzzled about something and need input!
 

So I mentioned in a previous thread that I am shooting a wedding here in Canada for an Australlian couple. They obviously want to be able to view this video in Australlia. Initially I thought it was as simple as editing a movie in Premiere and then when it came time to rendering it to an avi file I would choose PAL instead of NTSC.

I now realize I have to MAKE the movie in PAL format (please someone correct me if I'm wrong!!) and then render it the normal way. I'm wondering because I assumed I could make one movie and then render it first as PAL then as NTSC and give them two copies for each set of families. I believe now that means I would actually have to MAKE the movie twice (please again correct me if there is an actual way to do this!!)

NEXT...I was reading my GL2 manual hoping to gain further insight into this issue when I realize that my manual has NTSC written right on the front cover!!! Does this mean I would need a camera that shoots in PAL in order to make it viewable in Australlia?

I'm VERY puzzled by the whole thing and don't want to dissapoint this couple by discovering AFTER I've shot the video that the footage is useless to them!

Thanks for any help!

I haven't had to do this myself, but I do know that you can convert an NTSC video to PAL in post and it works fine. There are companies that charge for this service (one I used to work for) so I know it works. You don't have to shoot in PAL as I understand it. You just have to convert to PAL before you make the DVD.

Someone else on here probably knows the specifics better, though.

Meaning I could (in theory) edit the footage ONCE and end up with 2 movies...one that plays here and one that plays in Autrallia?

Exactly. For example, at this place I used to work at we would have people bring in videos that were in PAL on VHS or DVD and we would convert them to NTSC. So you don't have to shoot or edit in PAL to produce an NTSC video.

Now, that said, I don't know if there are advantages to doing it one way or another first.

Shouldn't you be able to do this in rendering in your NLE? I know in Vegas there's a pile of PAL rendering options... and you can set your project up different ways for ingest?

Obviously the "original" footage will be PAL or NTSC, but I should think that by setting either project or render properties, the software should allow you to create the desired final format.

Take some time to drill down in your NLE and do some test renders, and I think you'll find your answer pretty quickly.

PAL is just another video format with a different number of horizontal lines than NTSC. Your NEL of choice should be able to render out to the desired format. It does mean that the quality of your footage, when compared to footage shot native to PAL will be less, but I doubt the real differences will survive the massive compression down to MPEG2 and still be visible.

The specifics of your NEL will become the largest factor here. Fortunately for the Vegas world, Vegas is source agnostic, so you can throw any source, any size, any ratio, and it will give you whatever the project properties are set to and how you want it rendered.

You could also just render a PAL version of your MPEG2 file for your DVD. I use Procoder, and it has presets for PAL DVDs. So does Sorenson Squeeze.

So you shoot NTSC, edit as usual. Make an mpeg2 file for your NTSC DVD, and another mpeg2 file for your PAL DVD.

What are you using to render your mpeg2 files?

For video files to be viewed on the web, you don't need to worry about frame rates.

Thanks everyone!

All this info has actually prompted another question from me...

Currently I edit in Premiere Pro CS3 and once I've created the movie I chose FILE pick EXPORT which gives me some choices and I choose MOVIE. It then creates an file with an .avi extension. Should I be creating MPEG2 files instead? Are they smaller? My avi files are HUGE!!!

Oh, and Premiere Pro has a bunch of options at it's start-up where you can choose NTSC PAL or a plethora of other options, so I do have the ability to do that in Premeire (I can't remember who asked).

Those avis are uncompressed version of the project, and I'm sure Glen C. and others can jump in and tell you exactly how, but you probably do get some color or brightness information loss when rendering as AVI and then rendering again to MPEG2.

If Premier can output directly to MPEG2 (PAL and NTSC) that would probably be the best option to skip any information loss.

Shoot NTSC, render for NTSC, create your DVD for NTSC...

No problems playing back on a modern PAL DVD player. I've done it for Europeans, and haven't had a call back yet...
If this is just for the couples eye's only, future shop sells DVD players that are NTSC/PAL switchable..

You can achieve software conversion, but to achieve excellent results is a bit tricky..It requires a bit of finesse that i personally find running through DVD MPEG2 templates useless...

I've just had to go the other way. We use PAL in NZ and seeing the couple wanted about four copies to go to the US of A, I had to supply them in NTSC.

I use VEGAS and all I did was do a separate render using the NTSC option, and then in ARCHITECT, set the properties to NTSC.

I presume they worked - haven't heard otherwise.

However I notice that my DVD player will play NTSC disks and presume most relatively new players will do both PAL and NTSC.

Thanks everyone!

This has all been very helpful information...and I'm feeling better about my likliehood of success!!