Hello, Given that PAL provides more vertical lines than NTSC, couldn't one create a better quality VCD using PAL system over NTSC (all other things being equal). I live in a NTSC country so anything I produce using PAL would assumably be unplayable on an NTSC DVD player, but to a computer no difference, right? Anybody have any experience comparing NTSC with PAL while controlling all other variables? Always looking for an edge! Thanks.

-- derek sider (dereksider@home.com), March 03, 2001

Answers

its not only the resolution, its also to do with the underlying way that NTSC is broadcast and displayed. NTSC=Never The Same Color, meaning its crap. Pal will always be better, period.

-- kevin (khm@bt.com), March 03, 2001.

Pal has more lines than NTSC true. But, it's not better! Here is why. Real film is captures at 24 frames per sec and Pal = 23.97 frames a sec. Video needs to be bumped up to 30 fps to make the scan lines work. So every 4th frame if I remember right is repeated. NTSC is 29.97 fps. When I rip a DVD I use NTSC. WHY, because of those extra frames it will smooth out things like pixellations. As for playing PAL VCDS. Most DVD & some VCD players have a converter in them to force PAL to play NTSC. I'm in the US and have had no problems with Pal VCDs.

-- James Myers (jamesthepest@aol.com), March 03, 2001.

None is necessarily better than the other. Adding to the transfer-to- film argument, NTSC has to necessarily undergo 3:2 pulldown, where a film frame is assigned two NTSC fields, the next film frame three, the next two, and so on. This comes out 60 NTSC fields in a second corresponds correctly to 24 film frames. For PAL, film is speeded up 4% so that 24fps becomes 25fps. The increase in speed is vastly unnoticeable, but as one can see, unlike NTSC, the absolute playing time is now shorter. For the nitty-gritty a good place to start can be www.adamwilt.com.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), March 04, 2001.

<...Real film is captures at 24 frames per sec and Pal = 23.97 frames a sec...>

DOH!!! Film=23.97 and PAL=25fps. Need i say anymore about taking the advice from someone who hasnt got a clue? But there's more.....

<....Video needs to be bumped up to 30 fps to make the scan lines work....>

Bullshit. You may be confusing DVD and NTSC but the subject matter here was PAL vs. NTSC. What you are describing here is the process which allows DVDs to be played on your crappy NTSC tv's. DVDs are recorded in MPEG2 @ 23.97 FRAMES/s, whereas S/VCD's are recorded in 25 & 30 FRAMES/s (pal/ntsc). Example, an NTSC tv splits a 30 FRAME/s picuture into 2 FIELDS where each are displayed in lousy colour at 60hz, but each field is only "half" the picture. This is because during the advent of TV's it was not possible to get phospers to react to electrons fast enough for them to do 60 FRAMES/s, otherwise this would be what we'd all be watching today, or rather PAL users would have got 50 FRAMES/s.

-- kevin (khm@bt.com), March 06, 2001.

Kevin is right.

PAL is far better than NTSC as it has 20% more resolution and captures at 25 fps. Your computer NLE editing system doesn't care if it's PAL or NTSC and most modern production monitors simply have a switch to go from PAL or NTSC. There are many, many reasons why PAL is far superior than NTSC no matter what country you are from.

I use an xl1 pal in the frame mode so I get 25 frames per second, very close to film with higher resolution. All things being equal, for this price range, the images are far superior than if I shot in NTSC.

Tom Falater tfalater@yahoo.com

-- Tom Falater (tfalater@yahoo.com), April 09, 2004.