Question about PAL DV tape in a NTSC DV camera

[shardison]

I've searched the forum and found nothing that exactly answers this question.

I have a PAL mini DV tape and no PAL camera. I have an NTSC mini DV camera. Obviously, playing the PAL tape in the NTSC camera won't work. But can I buy a DV cable and dump "raw" PAL data to my computer (I have a DV capture card) even though the camera encodes in NTSC?

I understand that analogue cameras have different recording heads that physically record PAL and NTSC differently--- but does a digital camera need to do this? Is the data encoded in the same format (like on a hard drive) and then later decoded as PAL or NTSC?

[danplnsk]

There is no way to play PAL tape on a NTSC camera, and there is no DV cable that does it. It is encoded differently and there is no same RAW material. You will need to convert the DV tape to NTSC or get a PAL player to transfer it the computer.

[Raga]

Since the DV camcorder essentially just copies what's on the tape to the computer, one would imagine it wouldn't be hard at all for camcorder manufacturers to add an option for both PAL and NTSC. One wonders why it's only there in the high-end camcorders.

[troyvcd1]

Well it is all about money and royalties. I even heard that some countries camcorders have the pass through function disabled because they consider it a vcr recording device.

[edDV]

DV broadcast equipmet is often switchable but the info on tape is very different.

720x480 vs 720x576 frame size
60 fields per second vs 50
I/O sections differ
data rate is the same 25Mbps.

[daamon]

I even heard that some countries camcorders have the pass through function disabled because they consider it a vcr recording device.

In Europe, manufacturers choose to disable the pass-through and / or recording in via the ports (e.g. firewire) functionality as the European taxation laws class these as video recorders and so they attract a higher tax.

Disabling this means lower tax, means cheaper to the consumer, and so more attractively priced.

[Raga]

A related question: If I have a PAL camera with PAL footage on a tape, can I plug it in to a NTSC-standard TV? What'll happen, will it output anything?

[Richard_G]

Unless the TV is multistandard, you'll probably get a black and white picture. No problem the other way round, just about every PAL TV will quite happily accept an NTSC input.