Combining PAL and NTSC video files

[frzn]

Hi all,

I'm working on a project that involves cutting together video from a variety of Blu Ray and DVD sources (think youtube supercuts).
I've noticed that some of the Blu Rays I would be buying are only available in Europe, so ostensibly are PAL.

After I rip them with MakeMKV I will want to work with them together in Premiere or another editor. Will I encounter problems with ripping PAL and NTSC sources and combining them together? What's the best way to deal with this? Have Premiere convert all the PAL content to NTSC and vice versa?

Thanks!

[poisondeathray]

It depends on what you have exactly, or how the "BD" or "DVD" version was converted or made , or what the original, original source was. e.g. were they sped up, or field blended etc...

PP won't import a MKV, you'd have to remux it into another container.

But after you do that, if you just drop it on a PP timeline , it will conform the video to whatever settings you have for the sequence. That's not necessarily the "best" way to do it, but it certainly is an "easy" way to do it.

For example, if you drop 25fps footage onto a 23.976 "NTSC" timeline, it will drop a frame every second. There will be "gaps" or jumps in the motion. It would be better in that situation to slow down both the footage and the audio +/- pitch shift

It takes some thought and planning to do it properly

[frzn]

It depends on what you have exactly, or how the "BD" or "DVD" version was converted or made , or what the original, original source was. e.g. were they sped up, or field blended etc...

PP won't import a MKV, you'd have to remux it into another container.

But after you do that, if you just drop it on a PP timeline , it will conform the video to whatever settings you have for the sequence. That's not necessarily the "best" way to do it, but it certainly is an "easy" way to do it.

For example, if you drop 25fps footage onto a 23.976 "NTSC" timeline, it will drop a frame every second. There will be "gaps" or jumps in the motion. It would be better in that situation to slow down both the footage and the audio +/- pitch shift

It takes some thought and planning to do it properly

Hmm, ok. Yes, I would remux it into MP4 first.

So I guess my question then is, what should be my "base" FPS be when I create my first sequence...if I say my "base" is 23.976 and I want to convert everything into that, will that be more problematic than say, having a base of 30FPS and converting everything into that? I'm assuming the range of my TV/film sources will be 23.976 to 30 FPS.

As for the field blending and differences aside from FPS, I have no idea where to even start with that so might have to seek some professional consultation...

[poisondeathray]

Again, it depends on what you have exactly.

A base 30.0 or 29.97 fps will usually be more problematic if most of the sources were North American film and TV drama sources . Most of them will be 23.976p , that's what you 'd want to use. But some BD's will be 24.0p

What "base" framerate you choose would normally depend on how much of each content you have and the output goal was or how it was going to be played back. If most of it is native PAL sources you might choose 25. If most of it is "Hollywood" sources you might choose 23.976. If most of them are 24.0p BD's you might choose 24.0p. Simply because it's less work trying to fix more things

And it's not just the "fps", but the actual content fps. eg. a film NTSC DVD will be 23.976 content, but 29.97 fps framerate. You'd have to inverse telecine to get the original film frames. PP can't handle that part properly, you'd have to use other programs for at least part of the workflow for those

Some types of content will be misinterpreted by default in PP. e.g a progressive PAL DVD or progressive PAL BD . They will usually be encoded and/or flagged "interlaced" . PP will deinterlace by default (this will degrade the frames) unless you interpret it as progressive

You can do simple speedup/slow down in PP by interpreting the framerate. (e.g. if you have 25p content, you can assume 23.976 and no frames will be dropped or added). But assuming you want audio and sync, you'd have to (slowdown) stretch the audio to match