NTSC or PAl Camcorder

kacee · 02-10-2003, 6:58 PM

Hi

I am looking for a new Camcorder and am off to Florida in about 6 weeks.

I have had a look at some of the reatilers in the US and the prices are way below what we pay here, it is roughly $ for £

Now for the big question Is it worth the saving???????

MartinImber · 02-10-2003, 8:45 PM

Not if you plan to use in the UK a lot

02-10-2003, 9:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kacee

Now for the big question Is it worth the saving???????

Nope!

- No warranty
- NTSC (PAL is much better resolution)
- You could get stung for import duty (they can tell from the model and serial numbers)

MarkE19 · 02-10-2003, 10:07 PM

Wont be able to record to a VCR.
Wont play back on some TV's as they wont play NTSC. Mainly older models, but some newer ones as well.
VCD's & DVD's will be in NTSC (maybe a problem, maybe not).

Unless you can find a USA retailer selling PAL camcorders, but still could get caught for inport duty & VAT.

Mark.

Soupladel · 02-10-2003, 10:22 PM

Assuming you plan to use PC conectivity, you could convert the video from ntsc to pal then onto DVD/SVCD. The only problem is this can be time consuming and a whole load of hassle.

As people have already said most Japanese/Asia manufactured TV's from the past couple of years can cope with NTSC. My TV is a JVC Widescreen from about 2/3 years ago and it works fine with NTSC, most modern VCR's are the same.

MarkE19 · 03-10-2003, 2:41 AM

Modern VCR's will play back an NTSC recording, but will NOT be able to record from an NTSC source.

Mark.

saggio · 03-10-2003, 8:25 AM

Soupladel,
can you suggest a good PC software to convert PAL/NTSC material?

I have a NTSC DV camcorder and I need to mix both PAL and NTSC clips onto DVD-R

thanks

vonhosen · 03-10-2003, 9:44 AM

Canopus Procoder . Excellent software MPEG & multi format converter. Does, as you wish, good NTSC/PAL conversions amongst other things.

It's also nearly half the price of what it was when I bought it version 1.0

saggio · 03-10-2003, 10:17 AM

thanks, vonhosen.

any experience with cheaper shareware alternatives, like "River Past Video Cleaner" or Easy Video Converter"?

I am not really doing this professionally, but to convert a few home video clips

vonhosen · 03-10-2003, 10:34 AM

Sorry......no experience with them.

vonhosen · 03-10-2003, 10:41 AM

How long (big) are your DV clips & how many of them ?

kacee · 03-10-2003, 10:50 AM

Thanks for all the input.

I have a 2 TV capable of NTSC playback and my parents and in-laws also have the facility. DVD playback from PC edited DVD's should not be a problem either.

Just got to talk myself into the NTSC money saving, ( although I will have to purchase a 240V battery charger, as the one I would buy will no doubt have a 110V one ) against the slightly better quality of PAL systems.

saggio · 03-10-2003, 11:07 AM

vonhosen,
normally I have clips between 3 and 20 minutes long, captured in AVI from DV tape via firewire. I use Pinnacle Studio 8 to edit the clips and produce MPEG2 files for DVD authoring.

The problem is that I cannot mix in the same DVD mpeg files coming from PAL and NTSC material: they need to be all the same.

vonhosen · 03-10-2003, 11:52 AM

Saggio

I've sent you a PM

Orbitalzone · 04-10-2003, 4:38 PM

I'm also looking to convert my 13min home movie to NTSC to burn to DVD for some American friends... I can't run to the Canopus for this little project..

Perhaps Vonhosen you could PM me with any info?

Thanks!

vonhosen · 04-10-2003, 5:16 PM

Orbitalzone

You've got mail

Soupladel · 04-10-2003, 6:36 PM

Saggio,

You could use something such as Tmpgenc to do the conversion as well as canopus.

saggio · 04-10-2003, 11:28 PM

well I have decided to spend those 16 quid and by that shareware "Easy Video Converter". It works well, simple interface.

I have converted a NTSC Mpeg2 file of 2.5 minutes in to PAL: well it took 40 minutes for the conversion !!! (on a P4 1.5GHz and 768MB RAM). Strange thing the output file was 235MB against a starting file of 150MB ... why so much more???

Anyway, the result seems to be acceptable.

Orbitalzone · 05-10-2003, 6:11 PM

I tried the demo of the video converter (seemed very cheap!)

It did indeed convert to NTSC when I tried a 10 second MPEG2 clip but when I tried to convert a 13 min MPEG2 movie, the program crashed... I'm not sure if it's due to being a limitation of the shareware version, or if the software is just a tad buggy?

I'd love to know how you get on with NTSC conversions

saggio · 07-10-2003, 1:25 PM

Orbitalzone,
I do not think that there is any difference from the trial version and the licensed one, apart from the watermark. Maybe the software is not very stable.

I will do some more testing in the next few days. Will let you know.