pal or ntsc
 

I am shooting a corporate training video that will have to be shown all over the place including New Zealand, Japan, throughout Europe and in the US. I have to provide about 100 dvds. I was wondering what is best to do in this situation, half PAL and half NTSC? Is there a preferred PAL country code when distributing all over the place? Most PAL dvd players can convert NTSC so is NTSC preferred?

Is shooting 24p problematic when considering dual formats?

Thanks for your help!

I would shoot in NTSC and produce an NTSC DVD - then render out / convert for PAL and make a separate PAL version if that's possible (don't know what your distribution method is).

Don't embed any country codes / regions. DVD is an 'opt-out' method rather than 'opt-in' region code system. If you don't specify regions then it will play everywhere (region free).

In terms of shooting 24p, you could do that then simply convert it to 25p later. The video will play about 4% faster at 25p than 24p though, which is what often happens with Hollywood DVDs in Europe.

As PAL is higher resolution than NTSC (720x576 vs. 720x480) wouldn't it make more sense to shoot & edit in PAL & when authoring first produce a PAL version then an NTSC version?

Shooting 24fps & then converting to 29.97fps will be more problematic than converting to 25fps.

i think that the most imortant thing is the power source during production. if if your shooting the video in a pal country its 50megahertz/ 60 for USA and Japan. if you shoot PAL under 60 megahertz lights you get a flicker that you cannot fix.
not a problem if you are shooting natural light.
Also PALconverts to NTSC easily. Its not so easy the other way, NTSC to PAL.
after you render either format to a DVD format (Mpeg 2) it will play anywhere or an Mpeg 4 if its going to be played on a computer.
but i could be wrong
aloha
tito