NTSC to PAL Assistance Please - suggest sequence settings

jackscoldsweat

jackscoldsweat

Member
I live in PAL land and have been given some NTSC footage shot on handicam of some description to create a video with.

Having not had to work with NTSC I'm a little thrown by the 720x540 29.97f/s 1.0 PAR size of the footage? I was expecting 720 x 480 or similar.

The image is (roughly) 4:3 - it's definitely not supposed to be 16:9. There's no letterbox and no squashed pixels. it just doesn't fit NTSC frame properly.

My output will be PAL 25fps - I just need suggestion as to what size sequence settings I should be working with as none of the presets seem to suit this size natively?

Does anyone recognise what 720 x 540 is? or what it's trying to be? I suspect some sort of proprietary handicam size?

Also any suggestions for size to maximise quality at the end when I produce the final film because I'm sure with the format conversion that's coming at the end there could easily be a gotcha - so any warnings appreciated

Thanks
 
720x540 is what a PC media player would display 4:3 720x480 NTSC footage as. Other software would display it as 640x480. 720/540 is 4/3 (square pixel display on PC monitor)

Are you sure it is not 720x480, or did someone hand you re-encoded 2nd generation footage?

What format is the video? What audio/video codecs? You can use mediainfo (view=>text), or gspot

Is it interlaced or progressive or telecined? This will affect how you do the NTSC=>PAL conversion
 
Thanks for the reply

Yes it is 2nd generation. They've come from overseas with some stuff on a data DVD (photos and videos etc and they want it compiled into a DVD Video)

It's definitely 720 x 540.

m4v is the format

Media Info says this:

General
Complete name : V:\Video Projects\09.12.16_***\*** and *** Part 1.m4v
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Apple TV
Codec ID : M4VH
File size : 343 MiB
Duration : 15mn 50s
Overall bit rate : 3 032 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2009-05-18 20:48:13
Tagged date : UTC 2009-05-18 20:48:21
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 15mn 50s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 2 900 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 540 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.249
Stream size : 329 MiB (96%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2009-05-18 20:28:00
Tagged date : UTC 2009-05-18 20:48:21
Color primaries : BT.601-6 525, BT.1358 525, BT.1700 NTSC, SMPTE 170M
Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients : BT.601-6 525, BT.1358 525, BT.1700 NTSC, SMPTE 170M
Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : No
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 15mn 50s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 126 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : L R
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Stream size : 14.3 MiB (4%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2009-05-18 20:28:01
Tagged date : UTC 2009-05-18 20:48:21
 
Last edited:
So that means progressive?

You can see that's it's already very compressed so that's why I'm keen to do the best I can - otherwise it really will turn to crap when I'm finished with it
 
Well mediainfo only reads the header information, so it can be inaccurate. The only 100% sure way is to examine the stream, but it's likely progressive

EDIT: so final goal is a 25p PAL DVD? I just saw that in your 1st comment

What are the formats of your other footage? or does this footage make up the bulk of it?
 
This is the main piece - the rest is still photos - I have 2 videos like this

Wanting to edit them into a seamless piece

Yes the final target is 25P PAL DVD - unless you knoweldgable suggest otherwise ;o)
 
Well most Euro spec DVD players can play NTSC material, not vice versa (in North America, most players cannot play PAL material). It would be way easier to make a NTSC spec DVD. Perhaps you could double check, it would make your life much easier

The problem here is you have 29.97 video and audio. For NTSC Film (23.976), a simple speedup is usually done to bring it to 25fps, along with audio pitch shift with simple speedup

29.97=>25 is problematic because the the difference is larger and noticable with a simple slowdown, so audio has to be resampled , and video has to be frame interpolated to be smooth. You can just decimate at set even intervals, or you get jerky playback
 
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