Need help with Movie Mode and Aspect Ratio

[Tong Zhao]

I am new here. Hope this is the right forum for my questions. I got a NTSC XL1s and need to make a documentary in PAL Betacam for a TV station. I was reading the camera manual and got the following three questions:

1 Should I shoot it in “ Normal Movie Mode” or “Frame Movie Mode”? I just want clear and professional looking video.
2. Do I need to worry about the Aspect ratio 16:9 feature and just shoot it in 4:3?
3. Is there a big loss of quality after the two conversions (NTSC to PAL and DV to Betacam)? What is the right way to do it?


Thank you very much for your help.

[Rob Lohman]

I think you do best to talk with the TV stations tech people about
what might be best. Perhaps they have far better equipment
to do a NTSC to PAL conversion that you do. My feeling says to go
with frame mode (since you don't have to worry about interlacing
stuff when switching resolutions) and shoot 4:3. Most TV shows
in Europe are still 4:3.

There can be a huge loss when converting from NTSC to PAL,
depending on which process you use. If it is really important
and the TV stations doesn't have the quality components then
you might think about a getting a company that specializes
in such things to do it for you.

[Tong Zhao]

Rob,

Thanks for your reply. I understand all the other things in your reply except why I should shoot it in frame mode:

"since you don't have to worry about interlacing stuff when switching resolutions"

Can you explain it a little more? Thanks.

[Rob Lohman]

Well... I haven't done such conversions so don't take my word
for it, but I was thinking along the following lines. NTSC has a
lower resolution (720x480) then PAL (720x576). So you will
need to upscale the footage AND take pixel aspects into account
(NTSC is 0.9 but PAL is 1.067). When you are doing vertical
scaling it might get strange to keep the fields seperate? That
is what I was thinking. A line belonging to field 1 might get into
field 2 after the conversion, unless it takes that into account.
It might, I don't know.

I hope some other people with a little bit more experience on
this topic will chime in. Otherwise it might be a good idea (and
this is good anyways in my book) to contact the TV tech people
or a local house to check on guidelines, rules and perhaps even
let them do the conversion for you.

Good luck anyways.

[Tong Zhao]

I have contacted a local house and they told me that they could do the two conversions (NTSC-PAl, DV-Betacam) for me without much loss of quality (I hope so).

My question now is should I shoot it in normal movie mode or Movie frame mode? Based on my reading of some previous posts, it seems for broadcast nomal movie mode is recommended. However, because of my two conversions, I am just wondering if I can save any quality by shooting it in frame mode before conversions.

Thanks for your help.

[Rob Lohman]

I'd give this question to the house you are considering. They can
probably help you with this conversion!

Good luck with everything.