No regions settings in DVDA which means they play everywhere.
From what I've seen going from PAL to NTSC, make certain the project properties have 'Deinterlace Method' set to 'Blend'.
That's about it. If youve got under around 70 mins of video then you can just use PCM 16/48K audio, no need for the added drama of ac3 stereo.

Bob.

Thanks for the help!

Just for curiosity's sake, when we had visitors from Australia (I'm in California), I sent home with them a DVD I had created in DVD-A, using the DVD-A NTSC video stream settings.
Much to my surprise, they report that it plays fine in their system - even though their TV is PAL.
I had thought that an NTSC-formatted disc would fail in the PAL part of the world, but it apparently works... can anyone fill in the gaps in my understanding, re PAL-versus-NTSC and how it relates to DVD?
Thanks as always,
Ernie

I think the PAL/NTSC thing is a little like language: Most Americans can't speak anything but English, but people in other countries are mostly multi-lingual. Same thing with TV. Many European (and perhaps Australian) TV sets and players may be able to handle NTSC. I don't know this for a fact, however. I think there were some threads early this year about this. You might find them by doing a search on "NTSC PAL DVD."

I've lived in the UK, Hong Kong and Thailand over recent years. All in the PAL part of the world. And generally TV's and VCR's sold there these days are "multi-system", meaning they will handle PAL as well as NTSC. I just stick NTSC DVD's in my cheapo Pioneer DVD player here in Thailand and they play fine on my cheapo DiStar PAL TV. However we had a problem in Greece (also PAL) a few years back where some NTSC mini-DV footage would only show in monochrome on a PAL TV, even though it had an NTSC switch on the back of it.

Now if only you yanks and Japs would repay the compliment by selling multi-system TV's over there, I wouldn't have had to shell out $700 for Procoder to make PAL -> NTSC conversions, and I wouldn't have to carry stock of 2 different formats of my DVD :-(

By the way I tried all sorts of ways to make a smooth conversion from PAL to NTSC before I finally bit the bullet and bought Procoder. I didn't have Vegas in those days. From the posts above it sounds like Vegas does an acceptable job the other way round (NTSC to PAL), but I guess that's not such a challenge as you've got more frames to play with (29.97fps down to 25fps). Anyone know what sort of job it can make of PAL to NTSC?

Your NTSC version will play just fine in most players in Australia. However, if you want to make doubly sure, your formula for converting is correct and there is no need for region codes.

Many DVD players here seem to convert an NTSC signal to something playable on a PAL television automagically.

I found this quite by accident last Christmas when I put an NTSC disc into my parents' DVD player connected to PAL TV. I'd previously tried to hook up VCRs to this same TV to watch NTSC tapes and completely failed, so it seemed obvious to me that the TV wasn't capable of displaying an NTSC signal.

Lo and behold, up came a picture...

More and more commercial DVDs here are NTSC, because most players and TV sets seem able to handle it (we produce Region 4 DVDs in NTSC here at work and haven't had any complaints about it).

Hmm.... maybe I should only produce NTSC DVD's then and make my next camera an NTSC one.

Does anyone in a PAL country know of an instance where a NTSC DVD has not played correctly?

Probably on old players/televisions - not everyone has the latest and greatest.

It depends what your biggest market is gonna be.

PAL to NTSC looks about as good as it gets. Actually that's probably an easier conversion as you're going down in resolution. Fast motion looks a little soft but you've really got to look at it frame by frame to notice.

I'm going to get the same material converted on a broadcast converter that has motion compensation to do a comparison. I'm doubting I'll notice the difference withour looking carefuly.

Bob.

OK, next question.... If you guys in the US went on holiday to the UK, Australia, Thailand or wherever and bought a souvenir DVD that had no format marked on it, would you even think that it might not work in your TV back home? How would you feel if it only played on your computer?

You know, DVD players are the one area where I feel you get the inverse of what you pay for: I have a little "CyberHome CH-DVD 300" that I paid $35 for at Best Buy. It seems to play back anything, regardless of the quality of disc, zone, or NTSC or PAL format. I think that since these cheap Chinese decks are designed to play back the horrendous pirated DVDs that are all over the street corners of third world countries, they can handle pretty much anything! The build and video quality are great too. There is S-video and individual color outs. Spend the $35 or so and get yourself a quality player!

I agree with you there Laurence. My one customer who had trouble playing one of my Ritek DVD-R discs last year had a top of the range B&O TV with intergrated DVD! Conversely I bought a Ronin cheapo DVD player recently and like your's it handles everything.

From what I've learned a lot of the 'Hollywood' DVDs are 24p. It's a requirement of ALL DVD players that they play these. The player inserts pulldown if it's an NTSC player and feeds a standard NTSC signal to a NTSC and all is fine.
If it's a PAL player I guess the DVD just plays out at 25 fps into 50i and no ones the wiser.
But yes most things down here will play NSTC out, some also do a dodgy pseudo PAL conversion by shifting the burst and the TV copes playing out at 60i but more and more TVs will accept a pure NTSC feed with no drama. One of my DVD players will do a full NTSC -> PAL conversion but the maker does warn it's 100% and you'd do better running native NTSC into a NTSC TV.
For the life of me I cannot figure why a lot of the expensive players cannot cope but I've a feeling it has something to do with them also doing full progressive scan out on component.

Bob.