NTSC to PAL conversion

[Brian Henderson]

I'm going to be shooting some footage on an NTSC mini DV (DVX-100A camera that is going to be converted to PAL. Should I shoot it on 60i or 24P?

I've been told that you can't convert 30P to PAL, but 24P works well. I'm guessing 60i is fine but which will actually look better (and sound good too)?

I am (hopefully) going to be doing the conversion with FCP 5.

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by Brian Henderson

I've been told that you can't convert 30P to PAL, but 24P works well.

The best hardware converters will do a good job on 29.97 interlaced. At a cost.

24P to 25P is an easier switch, but a few more hoops to jump through. Although it's the busiest season over here in PAL land, I am trying to create the best FCP workflow for PAL to NTSC, similar but different.

- Shoot and edit 25P
- Use CinemaTools to convert 25P to 24P (accepting pitch shift on audio, but working on SoundTrack Pro to get around this)
- Compress to NTSC 24P MPEG2 for DVD (using Compressor)
- DVD player will handle pull-down at playback

It should be similar in reverse - IOW, shoot 24P, accept audio shift when going to 25P, etc - it's just that the vertical resolution will be interpolated upwards rather than down.

A little voice inside my head says "have you considered shooting in PAL and downconverting to NTSC?" although one forgets that only Z1s and un-speyed XL-H1s can do this. :)

Maybe shooting HDV 24P will be an option soon.

Meanwhile, Nattress and DVfilm.com's Atlantis are worth a look.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by Matt Daviss

A little voice inside my head says "have you considered shooting in PAL and downconverting to NTSC?" although one forgets that only Z1s and un-speyed XL-H1s can do this.

Just to be clear, the Z1 can shoot in either PAL or NTSC. It cannot, however, convert PAL to NTSC - it's an either or proposition. I had to convert some PAL video to NTSC last week for a short TV commercial. I have DVFilm Atlantis already, so I used it. Came out fine but I was surprised by how long it took. Actually I nodded off because it was late at night, but it wasn't even halfway done after an hour. The clip I converted was about 45 seconds long, and I think it took around 3 hours to process of my dual G5/2.5ghz PowerMac.

I know that Nattress Standards Conversion is another option, and you can also do the conversion using Compressor but I haven't tried either of these options personally. I don't think you can do an acceptable conversion by only using FCP however.