region coding question
 

I understand PAL / NTSC.

I understand DVD region coding.

What I am unclear about is the relationship between the two.

For example, say I shoot PAL but then when I am burning to DVD I select region 1.

Will the DVD play in a region 1 player in NTSC land, despite the fact that the video originated in PAL?

Does burning as region 1 convert the PAL to NTSC - or does PAL / NTSC not really matter... is it superseded by region coding?!

Would appreciate clarification very much!

Thanks.

From my experience, PAL DVD's won't play in your typical American DVD player. Region coding is a form of copy protection designed to prevent you from playing a DVD in another country. I don't think it has anything to do with PAL or NTSC. Unless you're doing some marketing thing to limit the distribution of your DVD's then you shouldn't be using it (to the best of my knowledge, but I'm no expert on this stuff :-)

NTSC, Short for National Television System Committee. The NTSC is responsible for setting television and video standards in the United States (in Europe and the rest of the world, the dominant television standards are PAL and SECAM). The NTSC standard for television defines a composite video signal with a refresh rate of 60 half-frames (interlaced) per second. Each frame contains 525 lines and can contain 16 million different colors.
The NTSC standard is incompatible with most computer video standards, which generally use RGB video signals. However, you can insert special video adapters into your computer that convert NTSC signals into computer video signals and vice versa.
Europe and most of the world use PAL, while China and most of the far east use SECAM, however Japan is NTSC. I should also point out that PAL is 25fps. DVD regions can be set for the following:
1: U.S., Canada, U.S. Territories
2: Japan, Europe, South Africa, and Middle East (including Egypt)
3: Southeast Asia and East Asia (including Hong Kong)
4: Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
5: Eastern Europe (Former Soviet Union), Indian subcontinent, Africa, North Korea, and Mongolia
6: China
7: Reserved
8: Special international venues (airplanes, cruise ships, etc.)

Hope this helps!

- Devin

Thanks - I won't use region coding then. I mistakenly thought coding it Region 1 might make it play in the states. I will leave region code at 0. Just have to deal with the PAL problem now. I hear many DVD players in the states are okay with PAL? But I'm interested you say:

'you can insert special video adapters into your computer that convert NTSC signals into computer video signals and vice versa.'

Is it software or hardware?

Graham

To give you some more info about my route, it's JVC PD1 - NLE - MPEG 2 - TMPGENC - DVD. Like I say, I'm just worried that the DVD won't play on an American DVD players... need to send it to some people in the states.

A few years ago a friend of mine took a PAL 0 DVD I had made and had no problem watching it in the US on standalone DVD players, so this is part of the reason I am unsure about all this!

Thanks for any input anyone can chip in.

This thread may be of interest...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=47890

as i remember it, the main point here is that the burnable dvd standards(dvd-r, dvd+r, etc.) do not allow for region encoding as part of their standards... so desktop dvd players simply do not recognize it, even when you tell your dvd authoring app to set it.

Anyway, I've found a way that works for me.

In TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress you can drag and drop an Mpeg2 file, even an Mpeg2 TS file into the window and immediately have the option of encoding as NTSC DVD - as well as many other encoding options.

I did a test and then ran the test through TMPGEnc DVD Author 1.6 and, sure enough, that latter app recognised it as NTSC frame rate and pixels..

Doesn't look too bad either. I was expecting worse image degradation and this is just to show a bunch of people in the States..

Thanks again.

Actually I think Graham stated the main point... Region codes don't "make something play." They do the opposite - they prevent it from playing in other regions.