I wanted to ask is it possible to mix both a NTSC cameras footage and a PAL format cameras on the same edit/timeline?
If you were to capture with say Premiere Pro each cameras footage on a seperate project, can the NTSC be exported out as a PAL AVI file so could be imported into a the other project and both mixed together in the same edit?
I know the DVD for either one can be made region free and thats no problem but I wanted to know if both can be worked on together?
Thanks
Paul
I would export the NTSC as PAL and edit in PAL rather than NTSC , but Alan Roberts etc would have a better knowledge of the better origination format to edit in.
I would use Procoder from Canopus to do the export from the timeline.
So it is an easy enough process to do you think, would the quality suffer any?
Alan migh reply if he sees the thread as you feel he would know more about it but thanks for your help.
Paul
Hi
I regularly work on mixed-format projects.
No editing software is likely to give a good transcode without extra software - Procoder for a Windows system (and the Nattress FCP plug-in for Final Cut on a Mac).
PAL>NTSC isn't bad, NTSC>PAL is slightly worse as resolution is lost.
So for projects that are delivered in both formats I try (if the time and budget allows) to set up two projects, and edit each in the same format as the DVD will be delivered in.
However for everyday low-budget DVD projects I have worked with everything on the timeline in PAL (the NTSC footage transcoded) then encoding this final PAL movie to NTSC for a DVD to be delivered to the USA.
The problem is that the colour space of NTSC DV (4.1.1) is different to the 4.2.0 colour space of PAL DV and all DVDs, NTSC as well as PAL.
So it is noticeably better to avoid going from PAL DV through NTSC DV on the way to getting an NTSC MPEG-2 file - I presume the effect of doing this is an end result equivalent to 4.1.0...
On a Mac using QuickTime there are plenty of 4.2.2 or better codecs to use if an intermediate NTSC is needed.
Using Windows I presume that the Procoder direct export from PAL .avi to NTSC MPEG-2 will give the best results as the colour space will be maintained.