I Have a lot of PAL Videos, but moving to NTSC country. Am i Screwed???

[KO.NET]

At the moment i live in the UK and do a lot of capturing from TV (mainly Sky Digital Satellite stuff). All these vids are initially captured in DV (PAL at 25fps of course) then converted to PAL MPEG 2 with resolution 720x576. I watch a lot of them on my TV from my computer and ofcourse they look great, but soon i will probably move to the USA where all the TV's and everything are NTSC and are made to display 30fps video and i think also at a different resolution aswell. I've never watched PAL on an NTSC TV but heard its not a good idea. so basically am i screwed if i go to the US? Will all my videos be worthless ?

[Neo Neko]

NO. Yes. Maybe. I can't get any more specific than that. Basically it depends on a few factors. Do you deinterlace? Is your PC powerfull enough to do it on the output? I have DVD players that can play back PAL SVCD content just fine on an NTSC TV. But considdering that you are using computer output interlace might be an issue. Since there is a tiny drop in vertical resolution resizing for output of interlaced material could cause issues. But apart from that there is no big issue ahead of you.

[KO.NET]

Thanks for your reply.

I dont deinterlace, i leave all of my videos interlaced as my intention is to watch them on a TV rather than my monitor. This would also be my intention after moving to the US, to basically "stream" my stored vids from my computer to my TV. But im just worried about how these PAL 25fps (interlaced) videos would look on an NTSC 30fps TV after being streemed. any idea's? would it be affected at all or would there be absolutely no problem and look the same as watching on a PAL TV ??

[Neo Neko]

Due to the interlacing there will be artifacts when you resize. Unless you deinterlace first. You can use one of the many deinterlacing methods in ffdshow to process the decoded stream as it is sent to the TV. It should work like a charm and reduce artifacts to basically none. And 25fps should not be a problem either. In isolated instances you might notice a very slight jerkyness of motion. Apart from that it is not such a big deal.

If you are taking your PC though why not a PAL TV as well? Or are you just visiting for a short time?

[ammck55]

Neo Neko's got a good point if you're coming to the States for an extended visit and decide to bring your PAL set with you; all you'll really need is a step-up/step-down voltage transformer. This link (http://www.starkelectronic.com/st500.htm) will give you a little information on some of the transformers available, a 15-20 minute Google session will supply you with additional options. Electricians are an expensive alternative, you might be better off with the converter unless you're a good hand at wiring. Cheers.

ammck55

[Mug Funky]

um... this isn't the dark ages... TVs will do both these days.

it's a matter of whether you're wanting to invest in new equipment.

if you're going to go on capturing, you may need an NTSC card (not sure if cap cards are switchable. in a perfect world they are, but we all know this world is far from perfect). i'm sure you can find a TV in the USA somewhere that will do PAL (sure enough, pretty much every TV for the last ~8 years has been NTSC capable in PAL land).

if you don't mind b&w playback and have a TV too old to be multiformat, then you can tweak the vertical hold until the PAL picture stays still (i tried this once... it was funny as hell but ultimately useless, because it didn't find the chroma, and if it did, wouldn't know what to do with it)

[Doom9]

PAL on an NTSC TV? Are you sure about that mugfunky? I know it works the other way round, but our friends overseas are pretty good at keeping to their own standards.. we Euros are way more flexible there (even England is considering the Euro and managed to convert to the SI standards). There's only one DVD player brand I'm aware of that is PAL DVD compatible (Apex), whereas pretty much every DVD player sold in Europe can handle NTSC (same goes for TV today, but that wasn't the case only a few years ago). Also note that format conversions can introduce a slight amount of choppyness (though I only know that from NTSC -> PAL transformations which one of my players had to do for a TV that couldn't handle NTSC).

But either way.. you're not screwed since you can still watch whatever video you have in the best quality possible on modern screens, not the dark ages of prehistoric technology aka TV ;) And as an added bonus, you'll get HDTV in the US, so soon enough you'll no longer be interested in your SD captures anyway...

[Mug Funky]

PAL on an NTSC TV? Are you sure about that mugfunky? I know it works the other way round, but our friends overseas are pretty good at keeping to their own standards..

well, to be honest i've no idea. it would certainly make sense for this to be the case, but i've never been out of PAL land, so couldn't tell you. i have encountered the mentality "why would you want to use PAL anyway? we're not in france here" before. let's hope it doesn't include electronics manufacturers. certainly most of the PAL TVs made are made in NTSC land, so the technology is clearly available (well, my TV was made in Germany, but that's probably an exception).

[smiller667]

Unlike in Europe, tv sets which accept both ntsc and pal are not too common in the US. That's why many threads in home theater forums deal with standalone players doing a decent pal->ntsc conversion ...

[Doom9]

France actually uses Secam which is close to PAL but not exactly the same ;) A few former Eastern Bloc countries also use Secam afaik.

[avih]

as neo-neko suggested, it can be deinterlaced in real time with proper cpu. another solution is to convert to 30-interlaced using avisynth in real time (never tried it though). so it should be deinterlace (50fps) -> convert to 60 with avisynth (not speedup, just dup more frames).

[KO.NET]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Due to the interlacing there will be artifacts when you resize. Unless you deinterlace first.


hmm i thought it wasnt good to deinterlace stuff thats gonna be watched on a TV as most normal TV's are designed to deal with interlaced video (i think?)

Originally posted by Neo Neko

If you are taking your PC though why not a PAL TV as well? Or are you just visiting for a short time?


I will probably be over there for a long time. and i dont think i'll take my pc there, i plan to buy a new one and just bring my hard drives to the US with me.

Originally posted by Doom9

you can still watch whatever video you have in the best quality possible on modern screens


By "modern screens", like what exactly do you mean, plasmas? or do you mean that modern screens now come with the capability to play any format??

Originally posted by Doom9

And as an added bonus, you'll get HDTV in the US,


Yeah i was just wondering about this, what format is HDTV exactly, cause it cant be NTSC as NTSC seems to be defined as 720x480 interlaced video, or can it? also i heard that HDTV broadcasts and tv sets are progressive rather than interlaced?? but not sure about that either.. any info on this, and you reckon HDTV sets could handle PAL 720x576 ?

[dragongodz]

also since you mention you watch most from pc to tv it should be mentioned that all modern tv-out(that i know of at least) has selectable output format. so you can select to output NTSC and the gfx card will do the format conversion for you on the fly. in your case you would probably see black bars on the sides (since NTSC has less lines) to keep the aspect ratio correct of the film you are watching.

[KO.NET]

Originally posted by dragongodz
all modern tv-out(that i know of at least) has selectable output format. so you can select to output NTSC and the gfx card will do the format conversion for you on the fly.

i assume you are talking about tv cards or graphic cards with tv out, which is all good, but ideally i would like to buy one of those wireless wifi media streamer things. im really into the whole idea of the pc being the central storage device for all your movies and music and other media and then just being able to access them all from your TV or hifi.

[Doom9]

with modern screen I mean whatever is designed to be connected to a PC, ideally with a DVI input. Todays you'll find many LCD TVs that have both PC and TV inputs.. and if you can connect your PC via DVI, you won't have to live with all the disadvantages of traditional TVs (which are all based on decades old technology that we should've thrown into the crapper a long time ago ;)

but ideally i would like to buy one of those wireless wifi media streamer things.That might actually be a good thing, because they are not restricted to PAL/NTSC input but eat whatever your PC serves them.. but so far those things are still not quite suitable for proper video playback I think (the device has to decode your content.. and while that's no problem for audio, video is still a problem).