I have a Sony DCR - PC330.I'm fairly well aware of the basic functions of this camera.But today I got some tapes from my European friend [his PAL camera got stolen] and he asked me if I couldn't transfer them to DVDs.Well,I loaded his tape into my camera and it plays 100%.The problem is when I connect the Sony to the TV via the DVD recorder the TV picture is only B & W. I quickly looked over my SONY manual but didn't find much about this problem.
Do you have any suggestion how to deal with the transfer and how to do it efficiently and in very good quality?
Thanks for your help.
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It may be that the DVD doesn't output colour when fed a PAL signal.
Try burning a test and see if it plays OK on your PC. If it appears B/W then the DVD recorder isn't recognizing the colour carrier type properly. -
Normally an NTSC DV camcorder won't play PAL DV at all. The other way around the rule was NTSC DV would play to some PAL LCD viewfinders but not out the IEEE-1394 port.
On the modern models things may be different but don't expect the analog outputs to play in PAL except for special models. Are you certain your TV is analog PAL capable? 99.99% aren't. My Philips "HD Ready" CRT plays PAL in monochrome except when I use analog component. That works for a DVD player but not for DV camcorders.
Try an IEEE-1394 transfer and see if it plays on the computer. Use GSpot to analyze the resulting file.Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
http://www.kiva.org/about -
Originally Posted by edDV
When I have tried PAL tapes on those NTSC camcorders that can't play them, you get a blocky image on the camcorder's display and nothing on the FireWire. If it plays a coherent image, it MUST be decoding as PAL. The question is whether the analog output is true PAL (4.43MHz carrier) or pseudo PAL (25fps + 3.58MHz). If the latter, it's a problem for this application.
The guaranteed way to rule out the TV is to record a test DVD and look at it on a PC since it will happily play PAL and NTSC correctly.
If the camcorder is sending out "PAL 3.58" then the only solution would be to capture the PAL video via FireWire to the PC (assuming it is sent to FireWire) and convert the DV files to .VOBs and/or directly to DVD.
Berghof - have you tried connecting the camcorder directly to the TV to see what happens? Also, FWIW, my high end Pioneer DVD player can't even play PAL DVDs, let alone get the colour right. My cheap-as-chips $20 Walmart special can play PAL and NTSC plus it can be configured to play to PAL and NTSC TVs... -
Originally Posted by JohnnyMalariaRecommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
http://www.kiva.org/about -
Originally Posted by edDV
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Originally Posted by BerghofRecommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
http://www.kiva.org/about -
Well,yesterday I got the firewire cable and after downloading the windows movie maker I was able to download my NTSC tapes without any problem but not the PAL tapes.With the PAL tapes the picture in the preview window was very distorted and after I transfered a test fotage to the hardrive my windows player wouldn't even open the PAL movie data.I guess that the output signal from the SONY camera then doesn't support PAL.I don't think WinDV will make any difference.Thank you all for your kind help.
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This trick might help:
Put the camcorder in play/pause mode *before* opening WMM. Because you have an NTSC camcorder, when it isn't actually playing/recording anything, it sends data down the FireWire that tells the other end that it is NTSC.
When WMM sees the camcorder and connects to it for capture, it thinks (correctly) that it is NTSC and sets everything up that way.
If a tape is playing, WMM will see it as whatever format the tape is - in your case PAL.
The distorted picture you are probably seeing is PAL being incorrectly decoded as NTSC by your PC and not the camcorder. It usually looks like a crazy version of that puzzle where you move blocks around in a square to make a picture/phrase etc.
If this trick works then it will work with WinDV in the same way.John Miller -
As Johnny Malaria has noticed, one great undocumented feature of Sony D8 and DV camcorders is that they ALL play back NTSC or PAL tapes without a hitch. If only we were all interested in playback, that would be enough. It gets complicated, though. For example, a true-blue Sony NTSC DV camcorder will play back NTSC tapes fine, but PAL tapes are output as NTSC50. NTSC50 is NOT a legit signal and beffudles any attempts at analogue capture (including but not limited to the analogue inputs of of DVD recorders), so we stop right there.
DV capture through FireWire is just as complicated: the camcorder tells the NLE that it's NTSC, so the NLE preps for such. Then along comes the PAL signal which gives it fits. There is a way around this in Premiere: turn Device Control off in capture. The NLE then becomes interested ONLY in the incoming DV stream itself, not whether the camcorder is this or that. Alternatively, as was pointed out, don't give a chance to the NLE to figure out the camcorder type by putting it in play/pause mode BEFORE either plugging into the FireWire port or starting the NLE program.For the nth time, with the possible exception of certain Intel processors, I don't have/ever owned anything whose name starts with "i". -
Now I wish I had a PAL DV tape to try all this out. It would have simplified my last Europe trip if I could have played PAL tapes into my laptop.
Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
http://www.kiva.org/about -
Originally Posted by edDV
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Originally Posted by JohnnyMalaria
My work around was to capture PAL tapes from the analog outputs through the Canopus ADVC-100 for non DV formats and to try to borrow a camcorder or deck for PAL DV.Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
http://www.kiva.org/about -
Ladies and Gentlemen thank you very,very much.I can see that out there in the cyber universe are some very capable minds.Yes, I did fool the WMM program into believing it's recording a NTSC tape thaks to your genoius ideas.I can very finely and easily now record my PAL tapes.I can't belive it but this great TRICK WORKS!!!! Thank you so much.
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Hello, greetings from the future-present.
This post helped me to capture my PAL tapes and want to show the process to help you if you need the details
I have been using a PAL JVC GR DVL-145 to record several miniDV tapes and could properly capture them for a while with Adobe Premiere 2015. But it seems that this camera has come to an end. It won't start and i find it difficult to get technical surgery for it, so i looked for another miniDV camera wishing it was PAL. It wasn't, but it played my PAL tapes with no problem and showed them with no glitch or error in the LCD screen. It is a NTSC SONY DCR-HC28. When i tried capturing the tapes with Adobe Premiere, the generic control tools worked and it seemed to been doing the work, but when i hit record it didn't save any content and showed a "Ningún fotograma ha sido capturado/No frames have been captured" message. I was going to try and digitize it with an EasyCap USB capture stick with the risk of getting a low quality backup or maybe nothing. But the thing is, if the LCD screen of the NTSC camera can properly show a PAL tape, why wouldn't Firewire/i-Link connection won't work?. So, i tried cheating connecting the camera to the Firewire/i.Link computer slot AFTER setting the SONY camera to PLAY/EDIT mode, like JohnnyMalaria said, and it worked. Thanks Johnny.
I tried it with Adobe Premiere 2015, DVIO, WinDV and Scenalyzer Live and worked in all cases. Lastly, i found two surprises: the first is that you can configure WinDV and Scenalyzer to export the scenes separately instead of getting a unique file of the complete tape like Adobe Premiere does. The second is that, if you choose Scenalyzer, you can use its control device tools to move along the tape.
Finally, the procedure goes like this:
1. Turn on your NTSC miniDV camera compatible with PAL tapes (like happened with this SONY).
2. Open the tape holder and place your miniDV PAL tape inside.
3. Wait until the electronic sounds stop and close it carefully.
4. Set the device to PLAY/EDIT (in the case of SONY, i don't know how other brands work but it should be similar, like PLAY in the case of JVC).
5. Rewind the tape and hit the play button to start playing the tape.
6. While the tape is playing, connect the camera via Firewire/i-Link to your computer or external capture device.
7. Hit Capture in the program you chosen.
8. Now you can check if the control device tools of the program works. (If it doesn't, you can move along the tape using the camera buttons).
Hope this works or helps you in your troubleshooting. Saludos! -
In Vegas capture, you simply rewind the tape to the beginning and start capture. After the first time, the camera throws an error but switches to PAL mode (or NTSC mode for PAL cameras). Now just restart capture.
Alternatively, you can wait to start capture until the first frames appear in the viewfinder.
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