PAL or PAM???

B

blando3

Well-known member
Hey Everyone,
A guy just contacted me regarding shooting something and he has a "PAM" system. I thought he said PAL on the phone but in his email he wrote PAM. Does anybody know about this?
If it is indeed PAL that he means, does anyone know how to convert NTSC to PAL? Is there any quality loss associated with this? Anything else I should know?
Thanks!
 
Where is he?

"PAM" is probably a shortened "PAL-M" which is a PAL system using NTSC parameters...

...and I have no idea what that means.
 
He mentioned something about Africa...what about switching to PAL after shooting NTSC? Are there any issues with that?
 
I never tried it.

But the two run at different speeds which will affect things. (But not horribly. They routinely convert US TV and film to PAL, and no one complains.
 
Not only different speeds, but also different resolutions. PAL 25i 720x576; NTSC 29,97i 720x480 . I never heard of PAM - any possibility he just doesn´t exactly know what he is talking about?

Anyway every conversion will cost you some quality. Naturally. If you convert PAL to NTSC you must create those 4 missing frames and vice versa - you have to remove 4 frames.
 
Often low cost conversions don't do anything more than play a 24 frame project at 50i which results in a 4% speed increase.

In addition to your so called "PAM" (PAL 60 Hz) there is also SECAM (a varient of PAL 50 Hz used in France).
 
There is a PAM.

But I can't find any more info on other than what I said: PAL using NTSC parameters, with no further explanation.

What parameters? Resolution? Speed? Color info? Beats da heck outa me.

Does France still use real SECAM? With the separate video and audio? (All I've ever dealt with was MESECAM)

EDIT: Hmmm...going through about 6 pages of Google hits, PAM may actually just be a signal input standard, since I've found it lumped in with DVI, analogue, and so forth.

On the other hand, I've also found it in the list of broadcast standards...it may be a typo....but if it is, it's a typo a whole lot of people made. I see things like a list like this: PAL-I, PAL-G, PAM, PAL-N, NTSC. . .

Nestled in there, I wonder why the other PALs are PALs.
 
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