A basic question about telecine and importing DVDs...

[amiableakuma]

An old buddy of mine who claims to be an expert on all things video once told me that I shouldn't buy R4, Austrailian DVDs because, and I quote, - "PAL inherently has a bad telecine transfer from NTSC."

What does this mean in English?

Now I want to buy a few more R4 DVDs that I will end up remastering the content from, putting on a new DVD-R, and running on my regionless Oppo DVD player --- but what he said has scared me.

In terms of actual video performance and what I may need to know or worry about - what if anything regarding my plan should I consider? And did my friend have a point or was he confused?

[lordsmurf]

It doesn't mean anything, it's nonsense. There goes his claim to knowledge.

I'll assume you're talking about movies, not tv shows.

PAL video is 25fps.
NTSC is 23.976fps (24fps film) telecined to 29.97
For a NTSC release, they go native fps and telecine (close enough)
For a PAL release, they speed up to 25fps, and augment the audio by around 4%. There is no telecine.

There is some truth to what he says, in terms of CAN BE (not WILL BE) somewhat reduced quality, but only when it refers to NTSC interlaced material converted to PAL. Usually tv shows or cartoons. And it has nothing to do with telecine. But this is because even the most advanced conversion equipment can be misused. You can get ghosting and visual imprints of interlace lines on sloppy jobs. High quality work is identical to a NTSC release. Most of your Chinese PAL work is botched, most UK/Europe work is fine. Australia can go both ways.

[guns1inger]

Could you re-phrase that last sentence please

It is a mixed bag here. On the one hand, US releases still often have extras that we don't get, or have to wait months, if not years for. On the other hand, the quality of most major releases is at least on par with, if not superior to the US release. The difference in resolution is the major factor. All other things being equal, the higher resolution of PAL does produce a better quality product. And this is especially noticable on letterboxed discs (as opposed to 16:9 enhanced discs). While it may not be the case so much now, certianly for quite a period the US release was letterboxed while the European released was enchanced. We would generally get the European (UK) release, so got the better quality.

There is a downside to this, of course. A coupleof times we have been caught out be getting the UK censored or altered release - Men in Black, for instance, has some of the dialgue altered for the UK release, and this is what we got on DVD.

Where I have noticed particularly low quality is transfers of some TV shows from the 90's. The X-Files boxsets are very poor quality, with grainy and banding images. Films, on the otherhand, are easily as good.