Any video pros??

[gottaluvlasers]

hey gentlemen-

i need to take a VCR tape from my girlfriend and record it into my computer and then record it to DVD. its a pretty old video of her mother (who has passed away) that we want to send off to a relative of hers in Liverpool England.

My question is, Here in the U.S. we use NTSC video- Is it NTSC over in England also?? I believe that it ISNT NTSC. i think its PAL correct??

I should just be able to record the video to my hard drive and select a PAL file to render it to DVD. do you think its that simple?

I have some pretty high end video software (Sony DVD Architect and Vegas Video) so, im guessing this shouldnt be too much of a hassle.

anything specific i should know? is it even possible to take an NTSC and convert it to PAL?? what is the main differences? frame rates?

thanks in advance for any help.

-Marc

[heroic]

hey gentlemen-

i need to take a VCR tape from my girlfriend and record it into my computer and then record it to DVD. its a pretty old video of her mother (who has passed away) that we want to send off to a relative of hers in Liverpool England.

My question is, Here in the U.S. we use NTSC video- Is it NTSC over in England also?? I believe that it ISNT NTSC. i think its PAL correct??

I should just be able to record the video to my hard drive and select a PAL file to render it to DVD. do you think its that simple?

I have some pretty high end video software (Sony DVD Architect and Vegas Video) so, im guessing this shouldnt be too much of a hassle.

anything specific i should know? is it even possible to take an NTSC and convert it to PAL?? what is the main differences? frame rates?

thanks in advance for any help.

-Marc

Not a gentleman, but here goes:

VIDEO ENGINEER HAT ENGAGED. HOLD ON TIGHT FOR THE TECHNICAL BIT.

In the UK we use PAL. Most DVD players, however, will play an NTSC DVD, though you should also remember that DVD players in the UK (and the rest of Europe) are Region 2, rather than the Region 1 used in the USA. Given that you're burning this DVD, you should be able to burn a Region 0 disc that will play anywhere.

It's possible, or even easy, to convert from NTSC to PAL in the digital domain. The differences are:

- NTSC has a different colour encoding (PAL has a rather better gamut than NTSC). Since this is DVD, this doesn't matter. Both NTSC and PAL DVDs use 4:2:0 colourspaces, though the standards for saturation and contrast are slightly different (NTSC TVs normally have lower gamma values than PAL ones, but if it's coming from VHS anyway this won't matter).

- NTSC uses 525 lines, some of which are blanked. There are 480 visible lines in NTSC. PAL/CCIR601 uses 625 lines, some of which are blanked, giving 576 visible lines. Both standards use 2:1 interlace. Converting this in analogue electronics is hard; doing it in software is easy, and Vegas should be able to do it for you.

- NTSC uses 59.97 fields per second (ie., about 30 frames per second), whereas PAL uses 50 fields per second (exactly 25 frames per second). Most video software, including Vegas, can do the conversion for you.

Hope this helps,

-J.

[gottaluvlasers]

J-

thank you very much for your explanation! and my apologies if your not a "gentleman." just a force of habit and i forget we have a few wonderful women here!

-Marc