HDV to NTSC and PAL -- tips?

[James Binder]

I know that most NTSC DVDs will play on PAL systems/DVD players – but I have a client who insists on having his current project produced for both NTSC and PAL (will be played in India).

Anyone have any tips in regard to production/editing/DVD output workflow?

I will be shooting HDV (Canon A-1) and can shoot 60i, 30, 24,

What are the best practices for a project such as this? Again, I need to create both an NTSC and PAL DVD in DVDA.

Thanks --

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

In Vegas with HDV, this is ridiculously easy. Shoot 60i, make a master timeline that is 60i, edit as 60i.
Then simply change your project settings, and output as 50i once you've finished outputting the 60i.

The only thing you'll need to do if shooting HDV is to apply a pan/crop tool in the standard def version to get rid of the small pillar box you'll have due to differing aspect ratios.

With HDV acquisition, you're starting out with the same spatial resolution, so the picture quality at acquisition is now the same.

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by James Binder

I know that most NTSC DVDs will play on PAL systems/DVD players – but I have a client who insists on having his current project produced for both NTSC and PAL (will be played in India)...

And, I have to agree with your client. NTSC DVDs will play on most PAL systems, most of the time. That's not good enough, in my opinion. The first time I saw a B&W distorted version of my work in a PAL country marked the last time I sent an NTSC dvd...

Since then I've used the workflow Spot outlined above, and as he says, nothing could be easier. You'l also want to check your project properties in DVDA.

Then, I test on a PC. Look for the disc properties in your favorite DVD software, to confirm PAL. I guess I'm nuts about qc testing. (quality control)

[Richard Firnges]

Hello,

I live in Europe. I disagree with DSE and Seth. Shooting in 60i and then converting to 50i looks crappy. That is the ugly thing what our TV – Stations do all the time when they have to deal with NTSC – Footage. In my opinion You will get the best results if You shoot in 24p and then do a speedup to 25p. Of Course You will need 2/3 Pulldown for NTSC. It is true that on some cheap or older Pal Equipment (especially cheap standalone players) NTSC will look not so good – but most of the hardware here in Europe will handle NTSC nicely. Whatever You do, it will always be a compromise for one system. I for myself would prefer a 60i -NTSC – DVD over a converted 60i to 50i Pal DVD.

Greetings Richard

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

His delivery is 60i and 50i. You can't take 24p to 60i and have it look good.
Given that we do this at least once a week, and no complaints from our clients, I'd submit it works well.
No matter what, it's a compromise, but starting with HDV, it's not the same issue. If you let the hardware upscale 50i to 60i;
1-you're in a crap shoot that the hardware does a good job and you have *no way* of knowing whether it will or won't.
2-You might as well deliver 24p and expect the PAL gear to pull that to 50i.
3-Most importantly, client specified 60i.

Vegas is well known for its temporal resampling quality, and it's one of the few low cost tools that can do it reasonably well.
Maybe your TV stations don't have good gear, I dunno. I do know that anything we sent to the UK or Sweden for broadcast, it had to be conformed to their spec. We used to use a company called I2 (International Image) to convert it all and be sure we were within spec. Then we discovered that we could get equal and usually better results in Vegas.

[James Binder]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

The only thing you'll need to do if shooting HDV is to apply a pan/crop tool in the standard def version to get rid of the small pillar box you'll have due to differing aspect ratios.

Thanks everyone –

Spot –

I’m a bit fuzzy about how to accomplish the above – and I want to make sure I understand this part fully (getting from 60i ‘wide screen’ HDV aspect ratio to standard 4x3).

After editing with my project settings set to HDV 1080 60i, do I then change project settings to NTSC DV (720x240, 29.970) and *then* apply the crop tool on the video segment(s) in the timeline? If so, I assume that I then render as normal to standard Mpeg-2 for DVDA.

Does that sound right?

Question: Why can’t I bring the HDV 60i footage into a timeline with project setting > NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970) and edit and render from there? Testing the footage, it seems to work – or is there some technical reason for not doing so?

Again, I really appreciate your input as I continue my somewhat confusing journey/education into the world of HDV.

BTW – I enjoyed your sessions at NAB in NYC this past year.

[James Binder]

Thought I'd bump this up in case anyone else also cares to toss in their input --

Many thanks!