PAL to NTSC footage conversion - need your advice

[Peter Sieben]

You will find some test results at www.orphic.nl/odm/test_pal2ntsc.jpg

I did what Rob suggested, rendering PAL AVI footage from a NTSC project to MPEG2 files, using NTSC interlaced and NTSC progressive. Also some other tests have been done. My results so far:

1) Render to NTSC progressive.
2) You lose some sharpness.
3) Don't use the special 24p render options, it gives strange "jump" movements in the output videos.
4) The aspect ratio doesn't (really) change.

Tomorrow I'll watch the NTSC material on a normal tv, where it is converted back from NTSC to PAL by a dvd-player. See what the NTSC material burnt to dvd will look like....

Greetz,

Peter

[Rob Lohman]

I think it's looking great Peter! Great shots of the Gershwin
"short" (heh) as well. Can't wait to see it. I will do my test again
today with the cirle, export JPEGS and put those up on my site
to see how much the pixel aspect is off.

[Rob Lohman]

I've re-run the test and posted pictures to see. Both pictures
have been readjusted for 1.0 pixel aspect web/computer viewing
which Vegas does automatically when exporting. So the PAL
frame is actually 786x576 and the NTSC 654x480. The logo in
the middle looks pretty round in both frames to my eye so that
still lets me to believe Vegas is doing a good job on this.

Vegas uses the following pixel aspects:
PAL = 1.0926 (thus 720 * 1.0926 = 786)
NTSC = 0.9091 (and 720 * 0.9091 = 654)

See original PAL frame
See converted NTSC frame

Both frames are being show at the full resolution only resized
for the correct 1.0 pixel aspect ratio for viewing. Files are in JPEG
format since compression artificats aren't important for these
tests.

[Peter Sieben]

Hi Rob,

I'm not an expert on pixel aspects as you are, but do I understand from your information that Vegas does the conversion automatic when converting PAL AVI to NTSC MPEG2?

Peter

[Rob Lohman]

I didn't test output to mpeg2, only to AVI, but it should be the
same (easily tested if you dump my PAL jpeg on your timeline).

Vegas seems to do the aspect ratio correctly if it knows the
footage is PAL, you set the project to NTSC and export with
an NTSC setting as well.