Internet and Web marking the end of a PAL era?

AVsupport wrote on 1/4/2020, 10:30 PM

[More often than not I do create content for internet use, hence my preference for 'PC' colour space.]

And whilst my historic background is shooting TV in a PAL country, it seems more and more is pushing our beloveth 25i 'out of the picture', with most stuff now being 25 or 50'p' progressive, and, most importantly, more and more screens are being manufactured with a native 60p in mind..; Guess most people don't really care setting up their new OLED55", PC monitor or wonder what their ipad refresh rate is when watching netflix, fb or insta clips..??

Is PAL defacto dead?

Is it worth the hassle producing in 25/50 or would one be better off switching everything to NTSC (this way Sony shooters still have the choice of shooting 24fps on Alpha) .... if it wasn't for the light flickering issue??

Does anyone in PAL land notice Telecine judder conversion issues or are these all things of the past, not to worry about?

Wouldn't mind getting some general guidance input from those who consider this a topic worth discussing ;-)

Comments

EricLNZ wrote on 1/5/2020, 2:25 AM

Surely PAL and NTSC are only really relevant when considering TV transmissions?

Musicvid wrote on 1/5/2020, 2:33 AM

The fact that professional camcorders are made in two versions suggests it will be around for a while. Where does EBU say they are going with PAL broadcast?

AVsupport wrote on 1/5/2020, 10:41 PM

The fact that professional camcorders are made in two versions suggests it will be around for a while.

Not sure if that's more to keep the markets separate as opposed to a technical must. Sony Alpha series can change mode via reboot albeit this forces a card format. I guess that mostly has to do with timing / internal timecode clock.

I see traditional free-to-air in decline in favour of internet based options. Not sure what the EBU plans for the future of PAL, or more, what not? Can there be a merger or a foreseeable winner?

EricLNZ wrote on 1/6/2020, 4:21 AM

My feeling is that to a degree they have both disappeared. Originally with SD the differences were image size (576 PAL lines versus 480 NTSC), framerate (25 PAL versus 29.97 NTSC) and interlace field order (PAL top first versus NTSC bottom first).

Now we've moved onto HD both have the same square pixel size and interlacing is usually top field first for both. But modern cameras shoot progressive, 50 or 59.96,anyway and our TV screens are progressive. So interlaced transmissions are deinterlaced to give solid images for the screen and alternate lines not shown as in old CRT days. So really only framerate is the difference and TVs, TV players, Blu-ray players and software players on PCs, phones etc will play whatever framerate they are given.

j-v wrote on 1/6/2020, 8:19 AM

Surely PAL and NTSC are only really relevant when considering TV transmissions?

For the few people in my country that still need transmisssion trough the air the time comes that it is not available anymore. Fast everywhere there is glassfiber with very fast internet and upto 4K TV.

EricLNZ wrote on 1/6/2020, 4:50 PM

Satellite transmissions are likely to be with us for a long time yet. Fibre may become old technology in the future with advances in wireless technology.

AVsupport wrote on 1/6/2020, 5:22 PM

to go with @EricLNZ 's train of thought, I also believe certain new UHD codecs like HEVC don't like interlaced material [risk of recompression artifacts] and are optimized for Progressive. HFR seems to help certain issues, but in 4K amounts to waay too much data, if you want to jump on the 10-bit Netflix bandwagon

AVsupport wrote on 2/5/2020, 6:51 PM

The other day, uploaded my 25 fps PAL vid to insta, and noticed 'choppyness' afterwards. My fears confirmed after download, insta has converted to 30 fps...

set wrote on 2/6/2020, 7:32 AM

can I see your insta link that has 'choppyness' ?

So far on my side, https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Z-n8gBG3k/ , looks good.

add: curious to also download my insta-uploaded videos, yes, it has become 29.97p.

AVsupport wrote on 2/6/2020, 2:55 PM

this one here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8F4UJcB0fC/

Initially shot on A7iii XAVCS 1920x1080/50fps (@1/50) and rendered to 1080x1080/25p. Unfortunately this is all under artificial light, so there's no way to go 30 without expecting massive flicker issues.

I wonder if I should try to export 30p in the hope to better control cine judder?

/edit: And I guess one must check the viewing monitor is set to PAL/50Hz..

set wrote on 2/7/2020, 5:53 AM

hmm, slow panning movement... yes - I can notice the 'choppyness'....

I try hard watching my posted IG videos, and seems I also had it too..., but hardly feel it... quite possible, need to experiment exporting to 30p