NTSC DV to PAL DV Conversion - Jerky?
 

Using FCP 5.1.4: I'm taking NTSC DV 29.97fps and placing it in a PAL DV 25fps timeline. I scale the video to fit the PAL scale and render. Now when laying off it looks jerky, I've read on the forum here it would be due to 25fps, but I also read that there are right and wrong was to convert the footage. Is this the wrong way? I'm using a HP LCD as my Program monitor, it looks choppy on there, on my computer screen it looks smoother, maybe cause the image is smaller? Any suggestions of advice? Does FCP convert NTSC to PAL correctly? Is the choppyness acceptable?

Could FCP 6 help this?

Thanks, -Jeff

60 fields per second does not convert cleanly to 50 fields per second (divide one into the other to give you an idea of the core problem)...

FCP and Quicktime will do it, but as you're finding it's just dropping frames to make it fit. Not really an acceptable solution.

In the past, this had to be done tape-to-tape with anywhere from expensive outboard boxes, to really freakin expensive outboard boxes. These days, I believe Terenex has the best algorithms/hardware to do this.

Short of that, Graeme Natress makes a very good set of standards conversion plugs for FCP that takes into account the myriad problems converting between the two. It's a little fiddly to get going correctly, and takes a while to render, but it is the best you're going to get short of spending thousands of dollars on hardware or dubs.

Nattress Conversion Tool
 

Thanks, I'm trying Nattress Conversion Tool. Actually e-mailed him and he got back to me as well. Now I just have to figure out some small quirks with the clip referencing and the conversion tool filter. While I'm doing this I have my girlfriend picking up Final Cut 6 to see if I can get anything to go realtime and save some serious time. The project was originally for 28 hours of conversion with cleaning up video, pulling up the blacks and laying down new timecode. Wish it could be easy as a dub, but its alittle more involved. Now lets see how hot I can get this Intel Mac....

-Jeff

FCP6 is going to allow you to put NTSC and PAL on the same timeline and output one or the other, but you'll find the framerate conversion quality is going to be just as bad.

Thanks, FCP 6 did allow for realtime from NTSC to PAL but your right it was just as choppy. It did allow me to quickly export the NTSC timeline. Then I made a new project, re-imported the flattened timelines to work easier with Nattress Conversion tool. Nested the clip in a PAL timeline and applied the filter. Now all the timecodes are good, the reference clip for the Nattress Filter is happy and the rendering has begun. Thanks for the help and now I know what it takes to make good PAL from NTSC. For anyone doing something similiar in the future, you need a Conversion Filter or Standards Converter box to do a NTSC to PAL transfer correctly. Using Final Cut Pro's basic timelines for NTSC and PAL won't cut it.

Thanks again, -Jeff