This is a slightly different take on the old question of PAL v NTSC.

The camera is a Sony DCR-DVD 101 available in both a PAL version and NTSC. (not purchased yet)

The object is to play DVD's in both England and the US. (Grandparents in US, daughter and family in UK)

The NTSC format can be converted easily to PAL in the UK. The equipment is very affordable. On the other hand converting PAL to NTSC is very expensive. Also buying NTSC equipment in the US is much cheaper than in England which all makes buying an NTSC version of this Sony camera the object of choice.

This camera is to be used in England.

Questions:

1) Will blank DVD's bought in England be compatible with this camera or will the DVD's have to be bought in the States?

2) If the DVD's bought in England are compatible with the camera and can be viewed in England, will they be able to be viewed in the US?

3) After a DVD has been made in England can a copy be burned on an English computer in the NTSC format?

Thank you in advance,
Posted by: Syncopation

[vonhosen]

1) Blank DVDs can be used for NTSC or PAL , you can buy the discs from here from Japan, from USA , wherever you like & providing you are using DVD-R in a DVD-R comapatible burner (or any other disc format with a comaptible format burner) the video format you are putting on it will not matter.

2) Yes. As I said where the DVDs are bought won't matter. What will matter is can the DVD player play the video format (NTSC/PAL) that is on the disc & can they recognise the disc format (DVD-R/DVD+R). And you don't have to worry about region encoding because DVD-R (burnable) media can't be region coded.

3) You can't take a completed NTSC (Or PAL) fully authored DVD & just burn it in another video format. The individual original files have to be transcoded to the other format prior to authoring.

Thank you Vonhosen for your prompt reply.

Would you kindly define your number 3 answer more fully please?

[vonhosen]

When you capture your video it will be in NTSC or PAL dependent on what camera you have & I'm assuming you will be using .avi files. When you have done your editing & have your movie the way you want it, you will render that out as one big file. It will still be in it's native format (whatever that is NTSC or PAL).

Let's say it's NTSC. To get that to DVD you are going to have to encode it into MPEG & use an authoring program to create the required files for a DVD-Video from your MPEG files. In some programs this is all very automated, in others you may use a different program for encoding to MPEG, then another for authoring, then another for burning.

If you want a PAL DVD there is an extra step. Before you encode to MPEG you have to convert your NTSC .avi to a PAL one, then follow the steps as above.

What you won't want to do is get all the way to making your NTSC DVD & delete the original edited NTSC .avi file. , because you can't just copy a NTSC DVD to your hard drive & then burn it as a PAL one. It's more involved than that.

Thank you, I will discuss this with the family and most likely come back to you with another question.

Keep up the good work, it is very difficult finding someone knowledgable enough to answer these kinds of questions.

You are providing a great service.

[MarkE19]

Originally Posted by vonhosen

When you capture your video it will be in NTSC or PAL dependent on what camera you have & I'm assuming you will be using .avi files.

Well, as I see it the Sony DCR-DVD 101 camcorder that Syncopation is talking about buying is a 'DVD camcorder' and not 'DV' (I've not checked the specs so could be wrong, but the name of the cam does suggest it being a DVD cam) and therefore you wont 'capture' the footage as such, just rip them from the DVD disc. therefore unless adding another conversion stage (that will cause further loss of quality) you will not be working with AVI files.
Then there is the problem of how easy it will be to convert compressed files to/from NTSC & PAL. As I've never done standards conversion or even worked with files that have already been compressed, I'm not sure if the software can even convert these files.

Mark.

[vonhosen]

I didn't even look at the specs of the camera , but yes it is a DVD-R not DV camera. If you want to output both formats I wouldn't be getting a DVD camera. (I wouldn't be getting a DVD camera anyway)

[MarkE19]

I did mean to state that I would recommend avoiding a DVD cam as well!

Go miniDV. It is the only consumer format worth buying ATM.

Mark.

[vonhosen]

Originally Posted by MarkE19

I did mean to state that I would recommend avoiding a DVD cam as well!

Go miniDV. It is the only consumer format worth buying ATM.

Mark.

You don't fancy the new Sony hi-def units then Mark

[MarkE19]

Yep! But I would hardly call a £2.5k camcorder consumer, more prosumer. Oh and they do record to miniDV anyway

Mark.

[vonhosen]

Originally Posted by MarkE19

Yep! But I would hardly call a £2.5k camcorder consumer, more prosumer. Oh and they do record to miniDV anyway

Mark.

No go for the Z1 @ £4k

True it can record to DV & DVCAM but by all accounts you are much better off using the HDV tapes as there is less risk of dropouts which will not be helpful with long GOP MPEG-2.

[MarkE19]

Well yes it will obviously be the Z1 (or later model) when I do upgrade . Being able to choose to film in either NTSC or PAL does look like a great feature!

At the moment the editing software for HD is still in the early stages, and not that stable. Therefore the recommendation with the new HD cams is to just use them as higher quality SD camcorders, either recording in HD and downconverting to SD during capture or just recording as SD. Also there is currently no method of recording HD, you can only play back from cam on a HD screen.
Then there are the 2 different HD formats - Sony 720p & JVC 1080i - it's just like the HD DVD format war all over again

Mark.

[vonhosen]

Originally Posted by MarkE19

Then there are the 2 different HD formats - Sony 720p & JVC 1080i - it's just like the HD DVD format war all over again

vice versa I think

Sony HDV is 1440 x 1080i

Vegas now has the "HD Connect" plug in to get your Hi-Def to the PC still as Hi-Def & back to cam. Your right about the distribution medium not ready yet. Personally HD-DVD or Blu-Ray war worries me more than if you video in 1080i or 720p.

[MarkE19]

my turn to say . As you say it is the Sony that does 1080i

Sony HDR-FX1
Features:
3 x 1/3in CCD with 1.12 Mpixels (1.07 Mpixels effective); HDV 1,080i recording (1,440 x 1,080 at 50 interlaced fields per second); DV recording; 16:9 DV recording; 16-bit and 12-bit PCM audio recording; f/1.6-2.8 lens with 12x optical zoom (4.5 – 54 mm, 35 mm equivalent 32.5 – 390 mm); optical image stabiliser and full-range autofocus; DV in/out; HDV in/out; S-video in/out; composite AV in/out; component A/V in/out; lens filter diameter, 72mm; 0.3in/252,000-pixel colour LCD viewfinder with dioptre adjuster; 3.5in/251,000-pixel colour LCD fully adjustable view panel.

not bad specs for a 'consumer' camcorder

Excuse Me............ Helloooo! Remember me.......

I have been to Sony to see what they had to say. So far they have tried their best to assure me that the camera will work very well in England and should play back without any problems with an NTSC compatible DVD player and an NTSC compatible TV. (which my daughter has)

There are three models of this camera the first (probably released on the market before it was fully developed as the electronic manufacturers tend to do to bring in some revenue) is the Sony DCR-DVD 101 which uses mini disks, pixels approx 600. The second 201, again is a mini disk camera with pixels approx 800. The third and latest model 301 takes a full sized DVD disk and has pixels of over 1,000. My daughter has a friend with a 101 and another friend with the 201 model. Both take excellent pictures and are VERY easy to use. That is why my daughter favours this camera since she is not technologically inclined. BUT (and here is the clincher) her friends cameras are in the PAL format being that they live in England.

I live in The United States and our main object is that we will be able to share the DVD's across the deep blue divide!

If an NTSC camera will work without limitations (except for playing through compatible equipment) We will buy one over here to take to England, my daughter will make DVD's of the grandchildren and then burn a copy on her computer to send to us.

The trouble is we don't seem to be able to find anyone who has actually done this and can tell us what the drawbacks are (if any) Even though the cameras are much cheaper over here, it is still a lot of money to spend on equipment that does not live up to your expectations.

[vonhosen]

Your daughters TV & DVD player are NTSC compatible (Are they fully NTSC compatible or do they use PAL60 when playing back NTSC , which is a pseudo PAL conversion retaining NTSC's 30fps ?)

If she is happy with the way NTSC discs playback on her equipment then doing staright copying of the full size DVD's made by the camera should be pretty simple (once she has finalised the discs before copying).

That will be fine & won't require tarnsfering to the PC at all just burn from the original discs.

Where it will get more complicated is if she wants to edit the original captured footage etc. on the PC.

Sony Handycam DCR DVD301

Experience exceptional video quality and direct-to-DVD convenience with the DCR-DVD301 DVD Handycam camcorder from Sony. With a 1.0 Megapixel Advanced HAD CCD imager, 10x optical zoom, and a professional quality Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, the DCR-DVD301 delivers crisp, clean video that rivals MiniDV in overall quality. Best of all, you record directly on to 3-inch DVD-R and DVD-RW discs that can easily be viewed on most current DVD players and personal computers. The DCR-DVD301 features a 3.5" Hybrid SwivelScreen LCD display that rotates up to 270-degrees and provides excellent visibility in even direct sunlight. Other stand-out features of the DCR-DVD301 include 1152 x 864 resolution still images capture, Super NightShot Plus night recording system, and Super SteadyShot picture stabilization. Its lightweight, compact design makes it ideal for practically any shooting situation, whether at home, in the office, or on the road.

Vonhosen, I do not know the answer to your first paragraph. How would we find that out?

[vonhosen]

It will be in the documentation/instruction manual of the TV & DVD player.
What models are they ?

As I say , apart from the above, if she is just going to send you copies of teh raw footage that'll be fine for you, (provided her burner accepts 3" DVDs) , if she wants to edit the footage then there will be hoops to jump through.

Don't know the models...have to contact her on that one.

Thanks again. (me jumping through hoops, I'm good at that)

OK It's me again!

My daughter has tried to play an NTSC formatted DVD but her television will not play it. Apparently it will play NTSC VCR's but not DVD's.

My next question please is:-

If we buy a PAL version camera for our daughter in England. Is there software available to convert PAL formatted DVD's to NTSC?

Could my daughter compress the information on her Mini DVD, send it to us via the computer then could we convert it at our end to NTSC?

[vonhosen]

Firstly if the TV plays NTSC VHS it should play NTSC DVDs. Is it because the DVD player is region 2 locked that it can't play region 1 (USA NTSC) DVDs ?
If that is the case depends what player she has it may be fairly easy to make it multi region (some can be done with just keying in a number with the remote)

There is software to convert PAL to NTSC , I don't know of cheap good ones (the one I have is called Canopus Procoder).

If you heavily compress the video files for transmission over the internet & then try to uncompress them to author to DVD at your end the quality hit would be considerable I'd imagine.