Sequence Settings for PAL DigiBeta Delivery_help

I have a one minute sequence composed of still photos and audio. I need to deliver the final product on PAL DigiBeta and am having Lightning Dubbs do the conversion for me. I've never had to deliver in PAL before so I have been asking the dub house a lot of questions:

Since I don't have any footage to deal with I figured I would work in PAL. They told me to work in NTSC 30fps 10 bit uncompressed.

I'm confused though. Shouldn't my sequence settings be PAL 720x576 (5:4)? and shouldn't the pixel aspect ratio be: PAL - (720x576)? That's quite a difference from 720x480.

Right now everything looks good in the ntsc sequence but will it look the same when converted to PAL? I appreciate any help, I'm really confused with all of this.

Pons

If you create the show in PAL, they won't be able to charge you for the television standards conversion--usually a lot of money. No, no matter how good they are, it won't look quite as good as if you produced it and delivered it in the same standard.

You're delivering a hard drive with the show on it and they're taping it for you?

Koz

Yes, I'm giving them a HD and they were going to convert and then make copies.
Like I said, since I've never done this before I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing. When they told me to work in ntsc I was relieved not to have to figure out working in PAL. I guess that's not the case though, is it?

I tried changing my sequence settings from NTSC to PAL; in PAL the still images are stretched...so, more questions. Obviously PAL has a different aspect ratio, since the still images (PSD & TIF) all look great in my NTSC sequence: is there a Photoshop round trip thing I need to do with them?

Do you view PAL using the Square pixels setting?
I am B a PAL idiot.

If you shot in NTSC, then I'd say work in NTSC. Just dropping the NTSC vision into a PAL timeline won't make for a good conversion. So - make your whole program as per normal, then turn it over to them for PAL conversion. It can be expensive.

You could also look at converting it yourself to PAL using Compressor or Natress. This is possibly cheaper but a lot slower.

BTW - PAl is 720x576, 25fps. The colour is different too, and you may notice a 'flicker' in the converted vision that we PAL editors can't see. Apparently this is normal.

Seeing as your sequence is stills and audio only you have a bit of flexibility.
If the dubbing house can do straight PAL playout that would be the way to go. There is a chance they can't which would be why they're asking for an NTSC sequence.

Speaking generally, for the least amount of signal degredation and probably less cost, finding a place that can take a PAL quicktime and dump it straight to a PAL DBeta would be your best option.
For one minute of video, you could work in an 8 or 10 bit uncompressed sequence and render out an uncompressed QT that should look quite good.

If you just changed the sequence setting from NTSC to PAL you are going to get distortion due to the change in pixel dimensions It sounds like FCP stretched your NTSC to fit the PAL. You might have to remove the "Distort" attribute, or at least change it if you've been doing some stretches already. Work on a duplicate as always.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

<<<vision that we PAL editors can't see. Apparently this is normal.>>>

Conventional wisdom is that it takes a day or two of watching BBC in its native format to stop seeing the stomach-churning flicker. I can tell you I worked in a 24/48 shop--even worse--and after about the third day I couldn't tell which frame rate I was in.

It probably stunted my growth and grew hair on my palms, too.

Koz

I did a consult with Larry Jordan today, pretty sure I've got everything sorted out. I needed to set up a sequence using the EasySet-up...10 bit PAL 48k.

then I created a new sequence labelled it PAL...copied and pasted everything from the old ntsc sequence. I needed to set the aspect ratio of the still images to "0", they had been set at -12.5

I am going to work in PAL, export a 10 bit uncompressed PAL QT, and take that to be DigiBeta'ed.

I want to thank everyone for helping me with this. I got very confused with the info from the dub house, but its possible I didn't tell them that i had stills only and not ntsc footage...

Pons

Sorry Pons, my mistake on this one. I also didn't notice that you were only using stills.