After buying the above camcorder, I learnt from the appended xtract from a website that all Sanyos record in NTSC but output PAL for playback on connection to a UK TV:
"It should be noted here, again, that all Sanyo camcorders record natively in the NTSC standard (60 frames or fields per second) rather than the European PAL standard (50 frames or fields per second). Have no fear, though. The camcorders can instantly convert to PAL for playback. This idiosyncrasy should have no effect on your editing process, as computers are typically format-agnostic."
I wondered whether anyone here could please clarify for me what the last few words about computers being format-blind for editing purposes mean? I'm using Power Director 9 and, when it imports a video file from the camcorder, this warning appears:
"The clips you dragged to the workspace contain one or more video clips with a NTSC TV format. Your preferred TV format setting is PAL. PowerDirector will convert the clip, but the resulting video quality may be degraded. It is highly recommended that you use only video clips with the same TV format in a project."
What would deliver the best post-edit output in PAL -setting my project preference to NTSC and convert the finished output to PAL or leave my project preference on PAL and let PowerDirector convert NTSC clips to PAL as they are imported?
Should be most grateful for any helpful thoughts please. Thanks. Tony
Tony,
Your best bet would be to create an NTSC project to completion. Any 60 to 50 fields per second conversion, whether in-camera or via the editor will severely degrade the image quality.
If your playback device, (DVD player?) can handle NTSC, it should be OK as your own discs would not have any regional coding, but all region 2 players can play 525/60 NTSC discs. The TV is another issue, most sets produced in the last 10 years can display pseudo-NTSC where the colour subcarrier is 4.43 MHz as automatic scan rate and subcarrier frequencies are built into the chipsets used.
Steve
A friend of mine bought the same camcorder and met the same format conversion problems. I reckoned it was a case of miss-selling by Currys because how many buyers of such a machine are adequately warned of the downsides? He wasn't. Curry's refused to budge, saying the footage looked ok on the camera's screen, didn't it?
NEXT!
do they output PAL? or NTSC for replay in a UK tv? Most UK TVs will replay NTSC, so playback from the device would look ok.
We used to get this problem with VHS where you could watch a video from the States on a SCART connected TV but it was a wonky-shonky version of NTSC that the TV could handle.
Sanyo and many other digital camcorder/camera/phone companies are locked into NTSC only recording format.
They will sometimes do PAL60 output - usually composite - but this is NOT a true PAL signal and retains the frame rate of NTSC.
As Steve says you should keep the entire workflow at the native frame rate.
Any DVDs or Blu-ray discs you make can be kept at 60Hz rates (29.97/59.94/ aka 30/60)
Most PAL DVD players, all Blu-ray players and LCD/Plasma TVs can display it just fine although some players need to be told to output NTSC as NTSC rather than PAL60.
The only time you need to do any standards conversion is when you are either editing the footage from the Sanyo with other PAL type content or broadcasting it in a PAL territory.
Hope this helps.
We bought one of these on holiday last year, filmed loads & tried to edit it! Same problem as you describe, did all the conversions & ended up with rubbish & severely degraded footage. Camcorder now sold!
Many thanks Steve, Tom, Dave, Gavin and Caryjoy. I much appreciated all your helpful comments. I will set project properties to NTSC and keep data in that format, as you recommend, as I think my own players/TVs will handle it. Inevitably, though, when I come to distribute edited material to others in UK, I suppose I'll have to do standards conversion as there is no means of knowing whether others' equipment can handle NTSC. What a shame to have this problem as it is an excellent camera in other ways. Cheers, Tony
within the uk, it's a fair bet to assume that you'll be ok.
NTSC playback used to be a posh option but it's very cheap and easy to build into thye cheapest of kit now.
The same is very much less true for PAL on NTSC
within the uk, it's a fair bet to assume that you'll be ok.
That's as far as playback is concerned, but if you are shooting in 50Hz land, beware of artificial lighting or TV screens appearing in view as they could strobe which would be impossible to remove.
Steve