mini dv and PAL

[granturissimus]

hello all,

I have on old childhood VHS tape that is in PAL standard. I live in US now though, and thinking of converting the VHS tape to digital though a video shop.

I am trying to figure out to what I should convert the tape to. To which format and medium? I suppose to keep the best quality I should keep it in PAL, but to which format? Converting to a DVD is not as high quality I hear... I really want to preserve the quality as best as I can.

Also, I don't have a bluray drive, so converting the tape to bluray disk can't work atm. I have a mini dv camcorder that I've bought here in US, and I'm wondering if i could convert the PAL VHS tape to a mini dv tape, and then transfer the video to my computer through my camcorder. Will my camera be able to play it even if the video is PAL? My camera is Panasonic PV-GS19.

[DB83]

If you only have one tape then take it to a video shop.

Unless you have a PAL VCR then you really can do nothing yourself with it.

Final format really depends on how you intend to play this. DVD WILL be higher quality that the VHS especially if this is done by a pro-store. They should also be able to convert it to NTSC since there are still many issues playing PAL dvds on US equipment.

[granturissimus]

but will converting it to NTSC cause it to lose quality?

[_Al_]

Do not convert those tapes into different frame rate, leave it 25fps, same size, interlace. Just capture it, make it digital. Use PC's, media players for playback. Use thumbdrives for mobile storage or SD cards, back up on hardrives, you do not need DVD or BD disk totay.

Encode it into H.264 into mp4. Keep original because H.265 is knocking on the door but right now it is still premature to think about it.

The capture is quite important, you need to have TBC while capturing , google it, do some search what devices have it, you just might capture tapes by somebody else, not sure if that Panasonic has it, even if has capture capability I doubt it has TBC of some sort.

[turk690]

Will my camera be able to play it even if the video is PAL? My camera is Panasonic PV-GS19.

That is an NTSC camcorder (Panasonic NTSC camcorder model numbers usually start with "PV"; PAL models with "NV"), and resolutely plays NTSC tapes only.

[DB83]

but will converting it to NTSC cause it to lose quality?

Well this is VHS so you do not have much quality to start with.

Your best option is for the store, if it can, is to make an intermediate lossless transfer - huffyv or lagarith. From that you can encode it to whatever final format you desire and that will depend on the equipment you have.

If the store creates a PAL dvd and then you, or anyone, attempts to convert that to a NTSC dvd will there be a loss in quality but if you make NTSC dvd from a lossless source then there is no loss.

[2Bdecided]

but will converting it to NTSC cause it to lose quality?

Yes. How much depends on how it's converted. Cheap real-time hardware to do the job gives quite horrible results. That's what many shops/pros will be using. Decent real-time hardware costs $50k+. No one you can afford is using that! Software running much slower than real time can do the conversion on your PC - results are better than a cheap real-time converter.


At the very least, you want a "PAL" digital copy (DVD, or better).

If you choose to also have a conversion to NTSC (by the shop, or yourself) that will be useful, but the quality will be lower, and the video will probably stutter and/or be blurry compared to the original - but at least it till play on all "NTSC" TVs.

Cheers,
David.