Ntsc & pal / 1 shoot 2 markets

ROCKMORE

ROCKMORE

Veteran
I'm shooting a project in a PAL region and plan to air material here in PAL and ship the material to NTSC markets as soon as it's done.

With DSLRs and a Sony EX3 which are my choices, is it better to shoot the original material in PAL or NTSC. At this point I can plan to shoot ether way.

I know 24p is an option but I'm not sold on how good it actually looks. 24p is not film shot at 24fps. 24p doesn't look like video exactly, but it also does not look like film exactly either. It's still a lesser imitation of film at this point in this camera range.

I'm assuming the work flow will be to convert the files from the camera originals and conform 2 online versions PAL & NTSC.

Does anyone out there have any hands on experience in online post which will produce the best in both worlds?
 
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Converting from NTSC to PAL is a bad idea. Headaches abound. Your best bet is to shoot PAL or 24p and conform to what you need.

Frame rate conversion should be avoided where possible.
 
ydgmdlu said:
Converting from NTSC to PAL is a bad idea. Headaches abound. Your best bet is to shoot PAL or 24p and conform to what you need.

Frame rate conversion should be avoided where possible.
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What's your feeling about the look of 24P for TV? I see a lot of broadcast work obviously shot 24p and my first impression was "Hey this looks like it was shot in film, it's great!", but after a while I realize that it is not film. Then it starts to give me a headache when my brain know it's really degraded video and not all that pleasing.
If it is really high quality digital imagery scanned out to actual film for the cinema it's a whole different story. Some of the Hollywood films that were shot in HD I never even knew until reading about it later.
 
ROCKMORE said:
What's your feeling about the look of 24P for TV? I see a lot of broadcast work obviously shot 24p and my first impression was "Hey this looks like it was shot in film, it's great!", but after a while I realize that it is not film.
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I hate to break it to you, but 25p PAL is going to look almost the same.

Then it starts to give me a headache when my brain know it's really degraded video and not all that pleasing.
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How is it "degraded video"? If the original signal was captured at 24p, then there is no degradation. It's just a different frame rate.
 
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The easiest conversion is 24p to 25p, or 25p to 24p. Doesn't really matter which one you use.

30P is the worst.

If you want to do the "live" look, 60p would be the better source frame rate; better to convert from 60 down to 50, than to synthesize from 50 up to 60.
 
Barry_Green said:
The easiest conversion is 24p to 25p, or 25p to 24p. Doesn't really matter which one you use.

30P is the worst.

If you want to do the "live" look, 60p would be the better source frame rate; better to convert from 60 down to 50, than to synthesize from 50 up to 60.
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Random and kind of off topic, apologies but I'm gonna say it anyway: I was watching Seinfeld the other day (which I always assumed was 60i without really looking at it) and when Kramer went on Regis and Kathy Lee everything got waaaaaaaay smoother....you know, that TV look...which I thought was funny because I was watching a show I already kind of associated with that TV look....now I'm guessing Seinfeld was 30p...hmmm...anyone know? This was the episode "The Opposite."
 
Ben_B said:
Random and kind of off topic, apologies but I'm gonna say it anyway: I was watching Seinfeld the other day (which I always assumed was 60i without really looking at it) and when Kramer went on Regis and Kathy Lee everything got waaaaaaaay smoother....you know, that TV look...which I thought was funny because I was watching a show I already kind of associated with that TV look....now I'm guessing Seinfeld was 30p...hmmm...anyone know? This was the episode "The Opposite."
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"Seinfeld" was shot on 35mm film and telecined for broadcast.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098904/technical
 
Barry_Green said:
If you want to do the "live" look, 60p would be the better source frame rate; better to convert from 60 down to 50, than to synthesize from 50 up to 60.
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Wouldn't 60p to 50p be just as bad as 30p to 25p? The ratio is the same for both, after all.
 
Unless exact program length in hours:minutes:seconds is critical for you I'd shoot 25 for PAL version, slow it down to 23.976 and add 2:3 pulldown for NTSC version. You know, like how the yanks destroy movies when they broadcast them. But it's OK, they are so used to how that looks that they miss it when it's not there. :)

60p to 25p works but has a faint stutter to it which can feel odd depending on what kind of movement you got going on. People and animals - mostly fine. Smooth dolly moves on still objects - not so nice. The main problem you will constantly run into when using a NTSC camera in a land with 50 Hz electricity is light flicker due to interference - it has a nasty tendency to pop up quite a lot even at places and times when you don't think there's going to be a problem. So shooting 720p at 1/60 shutter speed will be tricky and if you set the GH1 NTSC model to 1/50 the 720 mode will drop to 30 fps as Barry has shown. I've read somewhere that 7D can't even do 1/50 in 720 but might have misunderstood the statement. You better check that for yourself.
 
In 7D theres a switch to pal/ntsc , in pal you have 25p in ntsc you have 30p, i hope they will add the same thing for 5D mark II , not just 24p.And i hope all canon DSLR's with video will get pal 25/ntsc 30 switch.
 
ydgmdlu said:
I hate to break it to you, but 25p PAL is going to look almost the same.

How is it "degraded video"? If the original signal was captured at 24p, then there is no degradation. It's just a different frame rate.
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Correct, it is not actually degraded, it just does not look as good as 24fps film which it is trying to look like.
Side by side with actual film, it is still just a lesser imitation of 24fps film for now, so lets see what the next generation has to offer.
As Barry put it "Not completely baked yet" I think we all agree on that point for many reasons.
 
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Barry_Green said:
The easiest conversion is 24p to 25p, or 25p to 24p. Doesn't really matter which one you use.

30P is the worst.

If you want to do the "live" look, 60p would be the better source frame rate; better to convert from 60 down to 50, than to synthesize from 50 up to 60.
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Then shooting with a PAL camera at 50p is the best choice in most situations.
1. First I will be shooting in a 50hz region which will cause the least trouble with local lighting
2. 50p can be dropped into a 25p timeline
3. 50p for "live" look would be a better source rate (similar to 60p reasoning)
4. 50p can be uses as slow motion when ever needed
5. Converting the the 25p to 24p is the easiest conversion then out to NTSC with pull down to 29.97
6. I will need to prepare my NTSC version to be a 4% longer program.
 
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