Downconverting NTSC HD to PAL SD

[CW-35]

I am curious what technical/playback issues would occur if I were to shoot in 1080/60i and then place that footage into a PAL standard def timeline in Final Cut Pro. ?

I would ultimately be going back to PAL dv tape or PAL DVD with the material.

I've tried a couple of tests and haven't noticed anything too apparent.

Thanks.

 

[CW-35]

I have a SD PAL shoot in Italy next week and I have rented an EX1 to shoot PAL there. But, I am still kicking around the idea that I might be able to pull a useable image from my HPX170 that I just received and use it instead.

In attempt to "fake" some PAL footage from my HVX170 today, I did the following test and I am curious where my downfall may be in attempting this:

I shot at 720/25P (I know it is not actually 25 FPS) & set the syncro scan to 50.

I then dropped the the footage into a FCP timeline that was set to the FCP PAL sequence default. I enlarged the footage to 100% to create a 4:3 image and crop the sides.

Basically, the footage does not seem to have any huge apparent issues on my Apple Cinema display. I tried a bunch of different things shooting-wise hoping to exploit any strobing with movement, etc.. It did hold its audio sync as well.

I then made a PAL dvd of the material and played it back on my Sony PVM-20L5. In 575/50i mode the entire image did appear to be a bit "strobey" but not particularly on the movement so I am not sure if that is the monitor itself.

I was thinking I would try a frame rate hack of "50" and see what that produce in terms of a (fake) 50i image.

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Please forgive me if I don't truly understand the difference caused by the 50/60hz differences as I will try to forgive Panasonic for not shipping this camera PAL/NTSC switchable out of the box...

 

[CW-35]

I can confirm that this method did actually "work" for creating a 25 FPS PAL DVD that does playback without issue on a DVD player here in Italy...

I was convinced that I might run into issues with our shoot so I did in fact rent an EX1 to shoot directly in PAL, a feature that the EX1 has simply out of the box...

I look forward to the PAL upgrade for the 170 eventually being available, going through the time consuming process, expense & down time of having the upgrade done and finally having a fully functional camera to work with.