Why not PAL camcorder in USA?

mhbstevens wrote on 7/18/2004, 11:09 AM

HD is not quite here yet and also expensive, yet UK PAL standard is almost as good. So why in the USA, do we not shoot with PAL cameras? Vegas can give us NTSC output from PAL capture so why does this work flow not exist?

Cheers,
Mike Stevens

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Comments

Laurence wrote on 8/26/2004, 10:48 AM

Now I understand what you're saying. There would be an increased bandwidth problem. There would be too much data going to tape to use the existing format.

baysidebas wrote on 8/26/2004, 11:10 AM

"Nope we think "why are the colors off?"."

So what do you think NTSC stands for?

Never The Same Color

John_Cline wrote on 8/26/2004, 1:55 PM

The problem with 720x576 30i is that it would be completely non-standard and vitrtually nothing would play it. This whole thread is somewhat silly. Standards exist for a reason and, as it stands, standard definition PAL is 720x576 at 25fps and NTSC is 720x480 at 29.97fps. These are "etched in stone" and discussing alternatives is moot.

HDTV standards are now 1280x720 and 1920x1080, both of these whip standard definition in evey way.

John

riredale wrote on 8/26/2004, 11:05 PM

Sixteen years ago I delivered a paper at the IBC (sort of like a worldwide NAB) conference in Switzerland. I was proposing the creation of a new HDTV capture format called HD-Pro. This new format had 1500 scan lines, specifically chosen because the active line count could easily and cleanly downconvert to both the infant European 1250 and American 1125 HDTV standards, and was unusual in that it ran at 24 frames/sec, just like film. I proposed that it would be easy to convert the NHK 1125/30i equipment over to HD-Pro, because the total number of scanlines per second was comparable.

Alas. No one gave a damn.

I now note with a bit of irony that some HD gear has been adapted for shooting at the 24 frame rate. Perhaps I was a bit too far ahead of my time, or perhaps the video standards committees were too caught up in the Europe-versus-America-versus-Japan infighting to take notice.

farss wrote on 8/27/2004, 4:32 AM

I maybe wrong here but I'm suspecting if you viewed a monitor running PAL in an NTSC country you'd be quite likely to get a 10Hz flicker due to the difference between the stobing of the ambient lighting and the monitor. I'll try running some NTSC on my monitor and see if it also flickers in PAL land, I've got fluro lighting so it's very likely it'll happen.

This is the reason 30 fps was chosen in NTSC countries, they're almost invariably countries with 60Hz mains frequency, PAL countries have 50Hz mains.

Just to add a bit more to the idea of PAL at NSTC frame rates. The much bigger issue is the PAL is 625 lines and NTSC 525 lines as broadcast. So unless you changed everything in the signal path including the transmitters and all the TVs it just plain will not work. Having more pixels in the digital without adding more lines to the analogue signal would mean having to interpolate down, the result would probably be worse.

Bob.

riredale wrote on 8/27/2004, 10:35 AM

The early NTSC researchers used 30Hz (60Hz interlaced) because a major issue was how to sync a receiver to the camera. With 110v 60Hz ac power common to both, it made sense to use it as the sync. Another equally important reason was because if you DIDN'T use 60Hz you'd probably see slowly-moving "hum bars" on the screen due to imperfect power supply filtering.

Regarding cross-interference: in my most recent trip to Austria and the Czech Republic this summer I was able to notice some very obvious "strobing" from 50Hz street lights when captured by my 60Hz NTSC camcorder.