NTSC to PAL Footage Conversion

P

Pro Gressive

Active member
Does anyone know if an uncompressed QuickTime file has to be either PAL or NTSC? and can it be changed when you are saving the 'file as'?

Basically i want to work at 24p in HD within Final Cut Pro 5.1 in NTSC and then output the finished project as some sort of raw file then i would be able to convert it to any video standard, the main one being PAL?

Does anyone know how this can be done and how much quality i will actually lose? How do all the American Films get transferred for PAL countries, think indy films as well?

:dankk2:
 
Most films that are transferred to PAL are simply speed up one frame per second, since there's not much difference between 24P and 25P. I'm thinking the only way to transfer would be to lay back to P2 or tape which ever you used and re-import to 25p. or simply make a new project at 25 and import the 24 material to that.
 
Does this mean that all American Films on DVD here in PAL land are running at 25p? Have they all been changed or is there such a thing as 24p PAL DVD movies?
 
To convert between PAL and NTSC in FCP, use the Nattress Standards Conversion filters, $100 from www.nattress.com. You can also do standards conversion in Compressor, but I think that the Nattress Filters do a better job. Most PAL DVD players are able to do an internal conversion from NTSC; hence it is often possible to burn NTSC DVD and ship it off to PAL-land. The converse is not true.

Ned Soltz
 
Hey nsoltz if you have had experience with the Nattress filters? Im interested in finding out how much quality i will loose if any?
 
All region 2 DVD's are 576i50.
All region 1 DVD's are 480i60.

All PAL players can playback both 576i50 & 480i60. Most PAL players can only play Region 2. though.

If the disc is region free or the player is multiregion, 480i60 can be output on the PAL player, either as a real NTSC signal or as a PAL i60 signal. (that is a 480i60 signal with PAL color coding.) All current PAL capbable TV sets can also handle NTSC.

All current 576i50 DVD' originating from a 24 fps movie are speeded up.
Some old releases and quite a few laserdiscs were standards converted from 480i60 to 576i50, with a much softer result.


480p24 can be easily converted to 576i50 by speeding it up to 25fps.
480i60 material containing interlaced information or mixed pulldown cannot, and a very good and high quality solution for converting such material is the Nattress converter plugin. Also DV film makes a geed stand alone converter also.
 
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Regarding Nattress filters-- I think you get an excellent conversion and take very little quality loss. Render times can be long. And, as I said, I think the quality is better than using Compressor's standards conversions. Thanks, Anders, for the more specific information about PAL.

Ned
 
ProCoder is also very good. But they are currently working on a bug in the conversion. On the other hand, ProCoder also supports the speedup from 24 to 25 frames per second, the standard in cinema for a sharp result.
 
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I just checked out all my DVDs running through Theater Tek on my puta and displayed the frame rates on screen while they were running. You are right ALL of the American made FIlms are all in 25.000 exactly, and the ntsc ones 24.980, and 29.970 for the docos etc.

Is there a piece of Software that you can put progressive footage through which doubles every frame making it twice the size? Eg: then shooting in 60fps you could double this in post (with slight jerkyness) to 120fps!
 
Pro Gressive said:
I just checked out all my DVDs running through Theater Tek on my puta and displayed the frame rates on screen while they were running. You are right ALL of the American made FIlms are all in 25.000 exactly, and the ntsc ones 24.980, and 29.970 for the docos etc.

Is there a piece of Software that you can put progressive footage through which doubles every frame making it twice the size? Eg: then shooting in 60fps you could double this in post (with slight jerkyness) to 120fps!
Click to expand...

Well, technically, this should not be a problem, but I never had the urge to do it. I don't know, If I could freely change the framerate in ProCoder, but it may be possible.

I think it has been asked here before.
 
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