Hey guys,

I don't have a lot of experience going with PAL so hopefully someone can give me some ideas with this one.

In a short time I'll be shooting and editing a corporate piece for a local company with my XDCAM HD F350 and Final Cut Pro NLE. They will be attending trade shows overseas, in Europe, and will be showing this piece at the shows. They also want to use it here in North America.

Their plan is a to rent a large HD monitor and output the video using one of two methods:

1) A computer hooked up to the monitor with video out playing the video through to the screen in HD.

OR

2) Playing the video back using an HD-DVD player with the video actually authored to a regualr DVD-R disc using the method detailed here...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/hd_dvds_on_sd_dvds_young.html

My question to you guys is how all of this can be done easily from shooting on forward. Is it easy to convert NTSC to PAL? Does this apply the same way in HD? Are HD-DVD players only held back by Region encoding? Hahaha... so many questions.

I want to make this as easy as possible for my client here, but I don't have any PAL equipment to test on. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Method 1 will work fine. Buy a DVI to HDMI cable and you're set. Hook it to a rented HD-ready monitor with HDMI input. HD monitors are most often NTSC and PAL capable.

Method 2: bring your own NTSC HD DVD player and hook it to a rented HD monitor. HD monitors are most often NTSC and PAL capable.

I live in a PAL country. For one client, Dow Chemical, I have to deliver NTSC material. I switch my 330 to NTSC and edit in FCP in NTSC. I show previews on the Dutch Dow Chemical site on a HD monitor. The monitor switches automatic to NTSC. After approval the disk is shipped to the States.

Don't worry to transcode material, just use a NTSC player and show it on a NTSC-PAL switchable monitor. Simple.

Thanks Klaas! I was worried I may not get a response to my question. That really helps out my situation.

...Are HD-DVD players only held back by Region encoding? Hahaha... so many questions. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry I can't help with HD-DVD specifics, but one golden rule I've learned is that almost all PAL DVD players with PAL monitors can play NTSC, but virtually no NTSC DVD players can play PAL DVDs. If your needs include NTSC, make it an NTSC shoot/edit. (1)

Region encoding should be set to 0 (or all). Most players are sold 'region free', but fate usually ensures that your client's machine isn't, so be global. No reason not to. :)


(1) However, there's a school of thought that says making a 24p DVD from a 25p master may give better results on progressive scan devices than a straight NTSC 29.97i master by avoiding all those pull-down cadence issues, but the Jury's still out on that one.

I've made PAL specific DVDs for retail by taking my 24p timeline in FCP and using Graeme Natress's conversion plugins. Graeme's method is to just simply speed up a 24p timeline to 25p.

It works great, and is super clean.

Interesting Nate... so would shooting the project in 24p be the most effective method to ensure a good conversion?

I was hoping to shoot at 29.97p to keep things simple as I don't have a lot of experience yet editing with a 24p timeline and all of the pull-down issues that come with it.

Hopefully I won't have to worry about the conversion if those European monitors will play NTSC material. The client only needs to play the video at trade shows, nothing is going to retail, so I would like to avoid any conversion at all if possible.