Secam VHS to DV tape conversion questions.

[rijir2001]

I know a guy in France that has an original VHS tape with some rare concert footage. I have a PAL DVD he made from his Secam VHS (his VCR converted it to PAL). But I want to get the footage from his original tape in direct DV format so that I can do some color correction, digital cleanup etc. He says he has a DV camcorder. But did they ever make Secam camcorders or will it probably be a PAL DV tape? Then if that is the case I will lose the color data which I can't afford to lose. In the end I will author it to DVD in PAL format but I am a bit stumped as to how this can work.

So are there Secam DV camcorders or are they PAL?

He doesn't have PC hardware to do any type of captures so that is out.

[harley2ride]

Both Vegas and Adobe (and likely others) allow for capturing in PAL format DV-AVI (as long as you have the hardware to capture it with). Once captured, you could then run it through avisynth with filters. You should then be able to go back to Adobe, Vegas, or others, and render/encode to pal or ntsc and get pretty good results.. I've never actually worked with PAL, but I have noticed the options in both Vegas and Adobe.

[rijir2001]

How to capture PAL and convert wasn't really my question.

Are there Secam DV camcorders or did they only produce them as DV-PAL. And if you went from Secam-VHS to PAL-DV I assume you will lose the color correct?

[edDV]

Secam was/is an analog color encoding technique that FM modulated color where PAL and NTSC used AM techniques.

Precision decoding SECAM is an analog problem and needs proper SECAM analog decoders.

SECAM to PAL is well understood in Europe but nobody in the USA cares. You need to get a quality conversion done in Europe* if this is important.

A transfer house that can dub to DV (on DVDR or hard disk) or uncompressed YUV (on hard disk) would be the best way to proceed.


* OK, LA or NYC can do anything but at 10x the cost.

[turk690]

to rijir2001, it is neither a PAL nor SECAM DV tape. There are currently no SECAM consumer DV camcorders in the sense that the recording will have anything in it identifying it distinctly as SECAM, as that is an analogue system. The camcorder may, on outputting it in analogue, modulate it as SECAM, but on the tape it will adhere to all the DV specs concerning 625/50 video, such as a resolution 720X576, creating a YUV signal out of the RGB and sampling it 4:2:0, etc, still all digital & can't really be called PAL or SECAM at that stage yet. SECAM is a more precise (and complex) analogue color system used in France; in fact a modified version is used for terrestrial broadcasts here in Saudi Arabia acronymed MESECAM. But in this age complex digital circuitry has been able to cleanly modulate and demodulate analogue color TV signals such that the superiority of SECAM has long been hard to distinguish from PAL, at least in domestic situations.
All you can hope for is for your friend's VTR to playback the SECAM tape as accurately as possible & modulate it back to PAL (as PAL is the only analogue signal the camcorder will accept). Once in the DV format (and in your PC) there will be NO PAL or SECAM issues; you WILL BE able to merrily color correct all u want in any standard program, like Adobe Premiere Pro.

[edDV]

True, SECAM and PAL once dubbed to digital DV or DVD format are the same thing YCbCr 720x576 25fps.

The problem is if you have an analog SECAM tape, you need a SECAM capable player to make the dub. Those are very rare in the USA. Multi-system consumer decks may play it but not be the best way to obtain a quality dub.

[Richard_G]

Bottom line is that no manufacturer has ever made a SECAM camcorder of any sort. All camcorders sold in France (and the rest of Europe) are standard PAL models. It follows then that a copy of his original SECAM VHS tape onto DV will be a standard PAL DV tape.