Danger 0 #1 February 28, 2006 A friend recently purchased a new Sony miniDV camera not realizing it is a PAL format. He intended to use the camera for tandem dvd's. Is there a piece of hardware that will convert the PAL signal to NTSC before the standalone DVD recorder? Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks Danger Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dragon2 2 #2 February 28, 2006 I can do the conversion on a pc but it's not real quick. Most of stand-alone converters I know of are more expensive than most miniDV camera's... Cheapest is USD 300 or so, I think. No clue if these are any good. I would just sell the camera and buy an NTSC camera. Even if you do the conversion it's not going to improve any, quality-wise. ciel bleu, Saskia Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
base689 0 #3 February 28, 2006 > Is there a piece of hardware that will convert the PAL signal to NTSC before the standalone DVD recorder? Apart form other user's advice (sell it and buy a NTSC videocamera), I do not know exactly about hardware stuff, but I know about software. Among the various video SW's I have got, I have got TMPGEnc (TMPGEnc Xpress for "conversion" and TMPGEnc DVD Author for creating DVD's). Once I have downloaded the uncompressed AVI (about 13 GB per hour) onto PC (which uncompressed AVI contains indeed the information about DV either in PAL or in NTSC, anyway...), before doing a DVD I must "render" the video. TMPGEnc Xpress lets me choose among various output formats, living myself in Italy, I choose "DVD PAL" (but I could easily choose "DVD NTSC"), then as output I get a MPEG file (that contains informations in PAL). Then I launch TMPGEnc DVD Author and I choose menus, chapters, captions, whatever. If done at an early stage, having a DV PAL camera and aiming to get a NTSC DVD, it would be a "ZERO TIME" consuming, granted that a rendering must be done anyway (yes, it takes hours but it would take hours anyway, no matter which is (PAL/NTSC) the source). Honestly, I never tried to render (and then create) starting from PAL DV and going for NTSC DVD (or the other way around, starting from NTSC DV and going for PAL DVD), but I wouldn't see why it shouldn't work. So, IMHO, if you process all your DV tapes with a PC and aiming to have NTSC DVD's, I see no difference in time if you start from a NTSC DV or a PAL DV tape. Indeed, it creates problems if you want to look on your TV "on the fly" the DV video you have just shot: unless you have got a very smart TV set, you cannot see a PAL DV tape onto your NTSC TV set. Just my 0.02€Stay safe out there Blue Skies and Soft Walls BASE #689 - base_689AT_NO_123_SPAMyahoo.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dragon2 2 #4 February 28, 2006 The rendering part isn't quit true: I did the conversion for the previous World Team record DVD, from PAL to NTSC. The rendering of the same PAL avi clip to PAL mpeg or to NTSC mpeg makes quite a difference, actually. Mostly I rendered the movie to one avi clip first (pretty fast, just the fades and titles etc) then converted to NTSC mpeg at the same time, because otherwise (in Premiere at least) you have to tell each and every different clip on the timeline to de-interlace and change size, so if you have just one clip that's way less work. ciel bleu, Saskia Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
