NTSC X PAL

Hi everybody,

I normally work in NTSC and I am making a DVD for someone living in Scandinavia, which is PAL. The media was NTSC while in FCP 3. I exported as QT MPEG2 PAL and brought into DVD Studio Pro 1.5
Now, what's the right procedure ?
If my client will watch it in a computer.
If my client will watch it in a home DVD.

I selected PAL as well in DVD Studio Pro. is there anything else I should do ?
Thanks,
Marcia

Marcia,

You can't just take an NTSC project of video clips and magically turn them into PAL. There is a pizel size and frame rate difference.
I am sure someone out there with a massive amount of conversion equipment can change 29.97 at 720x480 into 25 at 720x540 (?), but it can not be done within Final Cut or DVD Studio Pro. (Please don't shoot me if I quoted the PAL size incorrectly, I have only read about it)

Thanks, John,

I can take my 8 min. footage, convert it to PAL in a post production place and then, how's the process in order to burn a PAL DVD ? You see, I am in a NTSC country, so I cannot test it. I just want to make sure that my client in Sweden will be able to watch it on a PAL DVD System.
Does anybody know what is different in DVD Studio Pro in order to have a PAL DVD ?

Marcia

If your client has a PAL DVD player manufactured in the last couple years and a multisystem TV (fairly common in Europe) then she can play your NTSC disc just fine. Most PAL players will output NTSC, it just depends on the player.

If this is a disc for a single client and you just want to make sure they can watch it, then ask if they have played NTSC discs before, or send them a test NTSC DVD-R.

If you want to make absolutely sure that anyone with a PAL system will play the disc, you will want to make a PAL disc. You can actually convert your footage from NTSC to PAL using Compressor. I can't vouch for the quality of the results, but it is possible to do.

To burn a PAL disc in DVD Studio Pro, you simply set your Disc properties to PAL (this is true in both DVDSP 1.5 and 2). Setting this means that ALL of the assets on your disc must be PAL -- menus must be 720 x 576 and all video must be PAL.

I have authored several replication runs of NTSC DVDs for an international client who does not have the budget to author & manufacture both NTSC and PAL discs. In the past six months we have heard NO complaints from customers in Europe about playing NTSC discs on their PAL players.

Hope this helps,

Jeff