NTSC IN PAL Country

[John McCully]

I’m retired and living, for now, in New Zealand, a PAL country. I shoot wildlife, the occasional documentary and impressionistic fast-paced pieces of life around Banks Peninsula. I don’t do events and hardly ever shoot indoors or using artificial lighting. I shoot almost exclusively with my Sony EX1 set at 1080 30p (I know that’s a so-called NTSC setting) as I much prefer 30p to 25p. The ‘film look’ is of no interest to me.

The projector at the local Cinecafe plays my MXF files (and all formats I’ve tried) no problem. It seems most HDTV’s now play NTSC and PAL no problem. I have no interest in providing content for broadcast TV in New Zealand.

So my first question (more to come in separate posts to keep things simple): is there a problem I might have overlooked in shooting NTSC in a PAL country?

Many thanks.

[Chris Soucy]

Hello again, John.

I take it that by "shooting NTSC" you mean HD1080 with a 30p frame rate?

Which isn't, as far as I'm aware "shooting NTSC" as such (tho' I'm open to being corrected on that).

I've just checked the specs for my Sony Bravia, which is now about 4 years old, so getting on a bit.

The set can deal with: PAL, SECAM, NTSC 3.58 & 4.43

and: 1080 p/i, 720p, 576 p/i, 480 p/i

Interestingly, no frame rates are printed for that last group, so I must assume it can take any frame rate you want to throw at it, even 50/ 60 p if you had it available.

The one thing that "might" trip you up is that 1080p is only available on the 2 HDMI inputs (no suprise there) BUT the digital audio on that input must be:

32, 44.1 or 48 khz, 16, 20 & 24 bits.

Whether any camera on the market can record anything else is a mystery to me, but if your EX 1 can record anything else, it may not play on some sets.

Other than that, I can see no problems at all shooting 30p.

Regards,


CS

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

No issues at all considering your particular case.

[Craig Parkes]

Actually, there is one problem you may encounter, but it's very unlikely if your main subject matter is wild life.

If you shoot with the equivalent of 180 degree shutter, or a multiple there of (1/60th, or 1/30th etc) You will run into issues with New Zealand lights, fluorescent lights especially (tungsten should be fine, others may vary), because they run on 50hz power. Basically you will get flickering or strobing of 50hz power light sources if you don't change your shutter to accomodate when shooting at 30 or 60p because the refresh rate doesn't match the lights refresh rate.

So you'll be fine outside, or while using tungsten sources. But you'd Need to adjust your shutter angle for shooting in a 50HZ country at 30FPS under some lighting circumstances. There are conversion charts you can search for online.

[John McCully]

Thanks folks, I do appreciate your replies. Nice to know shooting 30p is not a problem for me. Obviously that's what I figured but the reassurance from you experts is indeed comforting.

Thanks again.

John