PAL Format

Svenster wrote on 1/18/2005, 8:06 PM
I just finished editing a movie in VMS and I selected NTSC format. Created a project in DVD Architecture to create menu and scene selction menu and burned to DVD. I now want to take the same project and make a DVD which I can mail to my relatives in Denmark. I've read some posts about PAL format being used in European countries, so I need help on how to make a DVD which will be able to be played on my relatives DVD player which I presume would need to be in a PAL format. Thoughts appreciated.

Comments

ScottW wrote on 1/18/2005, 9:56 PM
Most PAL DVD players will play NTSC without major issues.
IanG wrote on 1/19/2005, 12:58 AM
The TV will also need to be dual standard. It's probably safer to change the project properties to PAL and rerender / reauthor it.

Ian G.
Atheryn wrote on 1/19/2005, 1:26 AM
Actually, I believe PAL DVD players will only play NTSC if they are built to read both formats. In New Zealand for example, PAL is the standard - but many player manufacturers build their DVD players to read NTSC as well, since a lot of people buy DVD movies online, and most online DVD movie retailers only stock movies in Region 1 (NTSC) format.

It would be safer to completely re-render the project in PAL format.

Cheers,
Atheryn.
IanG wrote on 1/19/2005, 5:14 AM
>most online DVD movie retailers only stock movies in Region 1 (NTSC) format.

Not in my neck of the woods :-) Don't confuse region encoding with TV standards - it doesn't matter whether you use NTSC or PAL, there wont be any region encoding, so you don't need to worry about having a multi-region or region free player.

Ian G.
ChristerTX wrote on 1/19/2005, 3:40 PM
Hello,
I sent a DVD disc that I produced with the NTSC template and it played fine in my brothers and also in my mother-in-law's DVD player in Sweden (PAL country)
Don't know what makes it work but perhaps modern DVD players are system agnostic ??

Christer



Svenster wrote on 1/19/2005, 8:34 PM
Ok, one thing I failed to ask is if I elect to render using the PAL template, do I select the PAL template in VMS and rerender, then open in DVDA and also select PAL template? Or can I just change to the PAL template in DVDA using the avi file I rendered in VMS. I don't want to loose all the work I did DVDA with menus, scene slections, etc... Thanks for all the input.
IanG wrote on 1/20/2005, 12:57 AM
>Don't know what makes it work but perhaps modern DVD players are system agnostic ??

A lot of modern players, especialy the cheap far-eastern models, are built using generic PC components. This means that they're not restricted to the DVD standard UDF file format (so you can use any burning software to make a DVD) and they don't care about niceties like NTSC and PAL. FWIW, they're also built without things like region coding and copy protection. Hollywood doesn't like it, but it makes life easier for the consumer.

>I don't want to loose all the work I did DVDA with menus, scene slections, etc...

I'd guess that you're at least going to have problems with chapter points, simply because PAL and NTSC use different frame rates. It's possible the chapter points refer to a timing signal, but I think they just count frames. You could try renaming your current MPEG2 files and then reusing the original names, but I don't know what would happen.

Ian G.