Guys,

I know that if you want to watch the movie in Europe you must have a PAL (25 frames) version DVD, and in USA NTSC (30 frames) but what if the movie was shot in 24 frames per second....

Let's say I shoot 24p (pan dvx100a) and burn a dvd.
Can people in Europe and USA watch this dvd (24frames?)


Thanks for clearing this issue for me,
Voytek

No - it must be 25fps for PAL. What you do is speed up your movie and soundtrack 4% for PAL.

Graeme

You have to speed up your movie to 25fps and timeshift the audio. But you need to use pitch-shifting too, and use very good software to do so, otherwise everyone's voice sounds too high.

I am told by people in Europe that most PAL TVs can also discern NTSC signals. Don't know if their DVD players can do it too.

Here in Holland a lot of people have multi-standard TV sets and
can thus playback NTSC. I surely can. Every DVD player sold here
can as well [but it's still the TV that must be capable of displaying
an NTSC signal].

The problem is not only framerate people. It is also resolution.

To do a little comparison:

NTSC framerate: 29.97 (30) or 23.976 (24) fps
PAL framerate: 25 fps

NTSC resolution: 720x480 @ about 0.9 pixel aspect for 4:3
PAL resolution: 720x576 @ about 1.067 pixel aspect for 4:3

So does NTSC material look letterboxed for you?

No, keep in mind the pixel aspects are different.

(480 / 0.9) * 1.067 = 569

or the Vegas numbers:

(480 / 0.9091) * 1.0926 = 576

So it will look the same here. The picture is 4:3 in both formats,
we just have a slightly higher resolution.