Can D8 NTSC camcorders play D8 PAL?

[kabanero]

Hello everybody,

I am sorry if this question was asked before, but this is what happened the other day.

My friend brought me Hi8 tape and asked me to copy it to VHS tape for his customer. Customer told my friend that video was taped in Europe, but it was D8 NTSC format. I put that Hi8 tape in my D8 Sony TRV840 camcorder. Display showed D8 SP, but I noticed right away that video was strange: 1) people were "tall and skinny", 2) playback was jumpy.
I copied that tape to VHS. Video on VHS was terrible.
Then I connected my camcorder via FireWire to my JVC DR-M10S stand alone DVD recorder, and I got terrible picture: Images consisted of large pixelations and audio was distorted to an unusable extent. Then I connected my camcorder via composite connection to JVC, and video was great, except two things: 1) people were "tall and skinny", 2) playback was jumpy.

So, my question is: was my D8 NTSC Sony TRV840 able to play PAL D8 that strange way, or was it screwd up NTSC recording?

[Richard_G]

The tall and skinny effect probably means it was shot in widescreen (16:9) and your camcorder is playing it back in full frame (4:3). Try turning widescreen on in your camcorder. The jumpy playback and distorted sound is probably due to your camcorder trying to output the 25 frames per second PAL signal at 29.97 frames per second as used by NTSC.

You may not be able to play back PAL on an NTSC camcorder. I don't know if camcorders are the same but with normal VHS video players, DVD players, etc, PAL models can play both PAL and NTSC but NTSC models can only play NTSC (because the US doesn't consider anything that happens outside the US).