Will a DVD created for my use in the USA play in France?

[mephoneno]

I'm creating a DVD with iMovie. I want to send it to France.
Will it play properly on French DVD players/ TV sets?

Any info appreciated.

Dave

[pants]

maybe.
the dvd your creating, is it ntsc? i'm assuming since you're usa it is. france is pal. most, not all though, of european tv's and dvd players can convert ntsc to pal, so it'll play correctly, but not all players/tvs do this. so i'd say chances are high that you'll be ok, but nothing is certain. you might try asking who ever you're sending it too if they now if there player'tv can handle ntsc and go from there.

[miksu]

France is actually SECAM (système electronique couleur avec memoire), as parts of eastern Europe countries and few african countries. 625 lines, 50Hz.

http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-032/_4719.htm

[mephoneno]

pants & miksu -

Thanks for the info.
I'll hope for the best.
I think I'll send along an MPEG2 file as a backup.

Dave

[pants]

france is secam, but dvd's are either pal or ntsc, no secam dvd's exist.

[miksu]

Secam seems to be same as Pal, 50Hz, 625 lines. That's one thing I've been allways wondering VHS tapes have PAL/SECAM printed on 'em.

If you take a look at (PAL):
http://www.high-techproductions.com/pal.htm and for SECAM
http://www.high-techproductions.com/secam.htm,
you notice they are same except PAL has "Color Subcarrier", Secam doesn't.

They also have good table about tv-systems used in different places

For more technical, take a look at
http://www.videointerchange.com/pal_secam_conversions.htm

[cvalera]

Well I live in France and sorry, my English is not very good;

Many answers for you
- There is no SECAM DVDs, only NTSC or PAL
- Here most DVD players run PAL or NTSC DVDs
- Most TV set display Secam, Pal and NTSC, old ones dipslay only Secam and Pal

So if you burn a NTSC DVD, it must be read and seen here.

A little bit of history, the first color TV systme was NTSC, well known as Never Twice The Same Color (because it had many problems), then France and Germany tried to do their own color TV system. In USA the frame rate is 30 per second and 60 frame per second, in Europe it is 25 Frame per second, and 50 field per second, that was the same think in black and white.

So France developped the Secam (Séquentiel à mémoire) wich is very simple and robust, the color information is quite indestructible, the color definition is divided by two. The problem with Secam is that producing material was more expensive than pal one. That is due to the conception wich is very close to the digital process, maybe in advance for the time.

Germany developped the Pal wich is a mix of NTSC and Secam, with ideas of both systems, the results is good, and producing systems was cheaper than secam ones.

Both PAL and SECAM have 25 frames per second, and 50 fields per second, so they are black and white compatible, the difference is that the color information is not coded the same way, frequency modulation for Secam and Phase for Pal (it was the time of analogic systems !!)

Bye

[havema-1]

http://www.danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6017.shtml