im suspicous about my camera, can anyone help?

D

daveroberts

Member
hi,

im from the UK and i purchased a dvx100b-e a few weeks ago and im really pleased with it. the only thing i am confused about is whether it is actually a PAL or NTSC camera. it says on the box ag-dvx100bE, i guess the 'E' represents the European part of the camera. however, on the side of the camera, it just says AG-dvx100b, no 'E'. I only discovered this when i tried to export a video via firewire on my pc that was 4:1:1 (PAL) and the camera wouldnt recognise it, but out of curiousity, when i converted that to 4:2:0 (NTSC), it worked. what does this mean? is there a menu that has been set wrongly or do i have an NTSC that was sold as a new PAL camera?

if there are any other people with the same camera or if there is someone who might know, i would be really interested to know

dave
 
doh!

after thinkin about this whole problem for a while, i read up on it and realised that the 4:1:1 and 4:2:0 resolution thing is not neccessarily to do with NTSC and PAL but how the signal is processed. i learnt that they are different ways that the signal is processed and that 4:2:0 is actually a superior quality compression rate to 4:1:1 as this only uses every fourth (1:1) Cr and Cb bit in the Luminance (4) Signal, hence the phrase Y:Cb:Cr. Where as 4:2:0 allows for every second bit of Cr/Cb in the Luminance signal. My orignal belief that 4:1:1 was PAL is therefore incorrect as it is actually the compression used on NTSC DV / DVCAM or PAL / NTSC DVCPRO-25 where as 4:2:0 is used on PAL DV / DVCAM, prosumer MPEG-2 and HDV cameras.

I hope this makes sense. Atleast if someone else falls into the same trap that i did, this may help someone in understanding what i have now just realised!

dave
 
How are you liking the 100B? I just got mine and it is an amazing piece of gear. Lots and lots to learn.
 
its awesome mate. i got mine about two weeks ago, shortly after i joined this thing and ive loved it so far.

already made a little video using the camera and my PSP cos i was bored and desperate for something to do with it!

some nice little suprises on it too that i didnt realise until i strated pressing buttons like black balance and slow shutter effects. i love the idea of sharing timecode and scene files between cameras becuas me and a friend had an agreement that we would both buy one and do films together

are u thinkin about buying any extra accessories for it?
 
PAL is 4:2:0. NTSC is 4:1:1. They are inherent to the DV signal, you can't have PAL DV at 4:1:1 and you can't have NTSC DV at 4:2:0.

If you're shooting PAL DV on a European DVX100B, then you're getting 4:2:0 and there's no two ways around it.

If you want to verify that you definitely have the PAL version, just press the "counter" button a few times until the "frame rate" display comes up. On the US version it'll say FR 60i or FR 24P or FR 30P; on the PAL version it'll say FR 50i or FR 25P.
 
cool

thanks barry

i tried it out and ur right, thanks for the advice, that certainly clarifies things abit more for me, i guess i got the two switched round by mistake, that would certainly explain the problem i thought i had with the camera!

many thanks
 
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