OK I am pretty new to the whole process here.....I have shot most of my stuff on NTSC but was recently in Europe where I picked up PAL camera. Now I have no problem getting either of these sources onto my hard drive, but they will all be used for playback on NTSC, so what I'm wondering is so I just shrink the frame down from PAL size to NTSC or what? And what about the 25fps as opposed to the 30fps?

Also I'm a little confused as well...it seems that I have 2 conflicting Frame sizes for PAL.....one is 720x576 and the other is 768x576. Which one is the actual frame size. Sorry for my lack of knowlege on this subject, but any help would be great! :-)

Are you using a Mac or a PC? What NLE are you using FCP, Premiere, Avid, Vegas and what version? Do you have After Effects?

I'm using a Mac, I've got premiere 6.5 now but just ordered Final Cut yesterday, so I'll be using that once it arrives. I also have After Effects 5.5, but I am still learning my way around it.

The fairly quick and easy way is to do it through QuickTime Pro. Import the PAL and when you export use NTSC. The conversion looks a little better going the other way, but I assume you need NTSC. A little better quality can be achieved using AE. The best way would be to have the footage professionally converted by a post house familiar with the process.

If the product is not meant for a film blowup (no need for a slowdown), then use the Atlantis software at www.dvfilm.com. The results are great. I've used it in the past and gotten jobs just based on the footage quality. It deinterlaces your footage. If you want to keep interlaced, or if you need to do the 4% slowdown eventually, do it in After Effects. It's confusing, but bite the bullet and learn that crazy program. Check the Adobe forum, that's where I learned to do it.

canopus procoder