PAL mini-DV cam to AVI. What is the resultant AVI?

[alvz]

Hi

If I capture to AVi from my JVC PAL mini-dv cam, is this AVI PAL or NTSC or neutral?

1)In other words can I use that AVI to create equally good quality NTSC or PAL DVD's?

2)Or do I first have to convert the PAL avi to NTSC avi?

3)Or alternatively, could I capture directly from my PAL cam using NTSC settings in my software to create NTSC avi? Will that avi file be same quality or different than capturing from a NTSC cam?

I have a PAL cam, but now live in the USA. So it will be useful to know if I now have to buy a new cam. My standalone player (Pioneer DV260), plays my DVD PAL homevideos, no problem.

Thanks

[bugster]

If you 'capture' from a mini-DV cam via firewire the resulting AVI is a DV-Avi. Strictly speaking an avi is 'neutral' as far as PAL/NTSC is concerned. However it does share some characteristics with the analog standard, the most important of which is the framerate and secondly the resolution.

So you now have an avi that is 25 fps and 720 * 576. These figures match the requirements of PAL DVD-Video perfectly. Unfortunatley for NTSC you want 29.97fps and 720 * 480. So to create an NTSC DVD-video you need to convert.

The resize is not a problem, plenty of programs that will do that though you will suffer a minor quality loss (unless you simply crop, in which case you suffer a minor picture loss!). Changing the framerate is a bit trickier. If your destination format is DVD, you can slow the video down to 23.97fps then use 3:2 pulldown on the mpeg to achieve 29.976fps DVD compliant video. Of course the audio will need to be adjusted to suit too. This results in approx 4% slower video, but this is generally not noticeable if done properly.



Hope this helps.

[alvz]

Thank you, that is very helpfull.

What would the DV on my tape be? Neutral or PAL? What I am thinking is to adjust my capture settings in Ulead VS7 to NTSC. That is if my DV tape is neutral?

[bugster]

Again, strictly speaking, any form of digital Video is 'neutral'. So the DV tape is neutral. However the characterstics as I described previously (fps and res) make if suitable for playback on PAL analog displays. DV cams sold in the US record with characteristic more suited to NTSC displays (29.97fps and 720 * 480).

So you can say your camera is PAL.

[alvz]

Thanks

If I get a NTSC cam and make an NTSC home DVD, will someone in South Africa (PAL), be able to play/watch it on a PAL player/TV?

I can watch PAL home DVD's (LPCM) on my NTSC player/DVD.

[bugster]

Thanks

If I get a NTSC cam and make an NTSC home DVD, will someone in South Africa (PAL), be able to play/watch it on a PAL player/TV?

That depends on the capabilities of their DVD player and TV.

In Europe practically all DVD players will play both PAL and NTSC DVD's. Alos, most TV's are multi-standard and will quite happily accept the NTSC or PAL-60 output by european DVD players when playing NTSC. I have no idea what the situation is like within South Africa in this regard.

[alvz]

Thanks again

For info:
I was told that generally what works in UK, will work in South Africa.

[FulciLives]

Thanks again

For info:
I was told that generally what works in UK, will work in South Africa.

Please note that in the USA all televisions are NTSC only. Some DVD players can play back PAL DVD discs and convert to NTSC for our NTSC only televions but most people don't have such DVD players as this is not the norm here in the USA.

In fact most people in the USA are clueless that there are more than one video system and the compatability problems.

Also please note that PAL converts to NTSC much more easily with better quality than NTSC converts to PAL

I know of a few people here in the USA that shoot with PAL DV camcorders for that reason alone.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman