50i–60i Q to Steve Mullen & others

[Naas le Roux]

Dr. Mullen thanks for your HVR-V1 & HDR-FX7 Handbook. It is great! I am in a PAL country (South Africa) and am used to the idea that PAL is better than NTSC. I am using a Snell & Wilcox standards converter for PAL–NTSC conversion. That is of course for SD. Now that I have 2 V1Es I am shooting in HDV 50i. I am editing on Avid Liquid 7.2 and enjoy every moment of it. At the completion of a project I record the master to a HDV cassette to keep it as native as possible for the future. For distribution at present, it is then down converted to a PAL master DVD and for distribution in the US, transferred to NTSC and a NTSC master DVD is authored. These are projects that have to be available in the market for many years to come. Thus the 50i HDV masters will eventually have to be transferred to 60i, because it will have to be available on HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs in both 60 and 50 regions. When I recently requested a price for a systems converter capable of that, I was quoted an astounding £90000.00!

Concerning the 60i – 50i situation there appears to me the solution namely to shoot, edit and distribute in 60i only. According to your V1 handbook I understand 60i as a better option than 50i. Please correct me if I have it wrong, but 50i has artifacts such as (if I remember correctly) aliasing, twitter and strobing which you do not have with 60i. Further it seems to me (not from your Handbook) that 60p plasmas will mostly only display 60, while the trend is that 50p plasmas will be multi system. Thus everyone will be able to enjoy our products if it is in 60i/p. Why then spend time, energy and money on producing masters in both 50i and 60i?

A solution would be to sell my two V1Es, and import 60i V1Us. The one question I have is this: In SD we know that NTSC always tends to have a problem with BLACK. It was never really black, but a little grayish. Perhaps Steve, you can comment on this: Is the black in 60i just as black as in 50i? Are 60i and 50i the same as far as color is concerned, or is there also a color difference like between NTSC and PAL?

I would also like your honest opinion on my idea of changing cameras from 50i to 60i.

Thanks in advance.

[Steve Mullen]

Great questions!

1) NTSC DV uses 0IRE just like PAL. All HD uses 0IRE. So no problem with blacks.

2) I just returned from Asia and confirmed that 1080p HDTVs happily work at 50Hz and 60Hz, while our USA HDTVs seem limited to only 60Hz. I had no problem playing my NTSC DVDs on an Asian Blu-ray DVD player into a Asian 1080p HDTV.

So, yes -- shooting and editing only 60i makes good sense. In fact, looking for DVDs I found many in Asia either were NTSC or didn't even both to say.

3) Of course, shooting and editing 24p is also possible since this remains the same everywhere.

4) Avoid 25p as it seems not yet supported by BD.

5) Yes -- 60i V1s have fewer artifacts.

PS: Where I stayed in India the house had one 42" LCD and one 42" plasma. In Malaysia I helped a relative buy a 46" 1080p Sharp LCD. Dealer threw-in a Sharp Blu-ray player. The player was Region Free!

I remember in 1973 India had only B&W TVs. Now I can playback HD at homes or go to a dealer who's well stocked with the latest HDTVs.

[Naas le Roux]

Thanks for your reply Steve. It is really of great help and confirmation. I apreciate it very much.