Can PAL and NTSC DV be read from either type of camcorder

[FredThompson]

Is there a freeware application to read PAL DV from an NTSC camcorder and vice versa?

All the camcorder does is feed a data stream out.

Here's a data format spec: http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/misc/avt/IETF44/slides/ogawa.ppt

WinDV, DVIO, DVTransfer, and DVSpoof all read and write data streams.

I've sent messages to the authors of the first 2, DVTransfer looks long dead and has no source and DVSpoof has source but I'm not skilled with C.

Seems to me it should be possible to pull the raw stream and write the appropriate "true" AVI file.

Should also be possible to convert as needed and write either type to a camcorder as well. There will be loss because frame rate, resolution and color model are not the same. Here's a util that does the conversion: http://www.dvunlimited.com/dvpncdoc.html

That program doesn't appear to actually write files, however, it just does the conversion and it costs $100.

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update: here's a Linux page that shows they have support for it. http://www.linux1394.org/dv1394.html

[FredThompson]

Update:

I've been shatting with the author of WinDV. He's willing to give this a try if he has an NTSC source tape. Well, that's easy for me to make ;)

If anyone would care to contribute, I'll need a PAL tape to test the extraction off NTSC equipment.

This should be a trivial thing, all the camcorders do is send a data stream over the firewire port. There's already Linux code to read a stream and extract either PAL or NTSC.

Obviously, frame rates, color models and resolution are different. However, there are ways to convert. Here's an example: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=35387

So...if anyone with PAL equipment is interested in this project, please let me know.