Cannot capture PAL footage with Adobe Premiere Pro

[roise_r]

I have a SONY DVR 280 model digital, can read both NTSC and PAL, although it can record only NTSC, it was bought in USA. If i insert a digital8 PAL recorded tape, it will play the tape absolutly fine, only that it will show a PAL logo on one of the corners. I cant capture this footage on adobe even thought i tried all kind of different projects... even if i choose PAL 23.976fps as project type. the digital camcorder is connected with firewire. The footage will play normaly on the camcorder while adobe is showing black picture. ..what could be wrong??? 10x in advance

[guns1inger]

I couldn't see anythig specific in the manual regarding PAL playback, but I suspect it cannot convert PAL to NTSC for DV output

[roise_r]

adobe premiere pro cannot covert...???? WTF i payed 800$ for that... I think it is a matter of some option... somewhere

[guns1inger]

Not adobe - your camera. I don't believe it is actually outputting through the firewire for PAL source. Drop an NTSC tape in and see if it works.

[roise_r]

NTSC works fine... only PAL get black screen, ok then how to force my camera to output PAL through firewire...?

[guns1inger]

Chances are you can't. Sony's site actually says in the FAQ that cameras sold as NTSC in the USA cannot be used to playback PAL footage. The manual for your camera doesn't seem to talk specifically about PAL playback, although it does say that playback of other TV systems may result in noise in the signal, and that this is normal. I could not find anything regarding PAL playback explicitly, or PAL conversion through the firewire.

[roise_r]

sony's site says that NTSC cameras cannot play PAL, but I can, and i can perfectly, only with added PAL logo, the problem accurs when trying to play it through firewire.

[JohnnyMalaria]

FYI, we resolved this (over on Doom9):

@ JohnnyMalaria

10x JohnnyMalaria, it worked like butter, i only had to play the footage before pressing F5 in adobe. once the capture screen appears, after that everything works fine, even if i press stop afterwards, the footage still shows as soon as i press play. i havent tried with NTSC project, but i figure since this is PAL footage, even if it works, it's best to keep it PAL ,

P.S. It seems you had dealed this problem before... can you tell us why this problem accours.

Great!!!

Yes - I've come across this during development of one of our products. Here's what's happening:

The camcorder communicates with the computer in two different ways. When a tape is playing, all of the information about PAL vs NTSC, timecode, etc is read from the DV information. However, when the tape is not playing, the camcorder sends the information a different way to the computer. For an NTSC camcorder, it will tell the computer that it is NTSC. But if you start playing a PAL tape, the computer will get the format information from the DV stream. Basically, the problem you had was that Premiere "saw" an NTSC camcorder and, when you started playing the tape, it got a PAL signal - so it gets a conflicting message. If the tape is playing already, Premiere "sees" it as PAL.

It's not a Premiere thing, though. It's how the specifications for DV devices are written. Windows handles the interpretation of the incoming signals and provides the information to applications such as Premiere.

Anyway, I'm glad it worked!