Hello Forum,

I am very excited to say that a company in South Africa has asked to internationally distribute my half hour video. This is the first time I am working in such a professional international arena and I am trying to decipher the many pages of deliverables.

I shot my video in HDV 720p non-drop-frame 30fps and they want it delivered on a DVCPro 50 PAL drop frame tape. I know how to compress an NTSC video in compressor into PAL. However, I am not sure how to print to tape onto a DVCPro 50 PAL tape. I asked my colleagues here at PBS and they weren't sure either. Can we use our regular DVCPro tape deck or do I have to find a post facility that has a DVCPro PAL deck? If I have to find that, do you have any suggestions?

Thank you for your time and help.

Cheers,
Sharon

I'm guessing I need to convert the piece in Compressor and then find a Panasonic DVCPro50 deck that has the NTSC/PAL possibilities. I saw online that those are out there. And then print to tape in PAL mode. Does this sound right?

So far can't find that kind of deck in Bozeman, Montana. Anyone know a good place in San Fran?

Thanks,
Sharon

I would think a large post-production house in Denver, Seattle or Chicago would have what you need.

I'm guessing I need to convert the piece in Compressor and then find a Panasonic DVCPro50 deck that has the NTSC/PAL possibilities.
I'm afraid the quality of transcoding in Compressor will not suffice for distribution; follow Adam's advice, let the pros do it on a hardware converter.

So would I then print to an NTSC DVCPro 50 tape and then have a post house convert it to a PAL DVCPro 50 tape?

Thanks.
Sharon

Correct. Output your best quality version to DVCPro50 (drop frame - so you'll have the correct length and broadcast standard format) and send it to the post house. They then do a hardware conversion to PAL and send it off. Looks MUCH better.

Just a note; there is no good reason to shoot in non-drop frame. The earlier non-linear editors sometimes had problems with drop frame but that problem is long past. If you shoot in non-drop your going to have to change your timeline/sequence to drop frame for output to tape or distribution anyway as you've discovered.

I don't see why you would have to convert yourself from 720P to DVCRPO; you would take a quality hit there and then another one in the post house. Check with the house, they will more than likely take the format your video is already in, in order to avoid further degradation. The more times you transcode, the more quality you loose.