Edit NTSC and PAL together?

[SimonBones 1]

I'm trying to edit up a video (I'm stilll new at this) using windows movie maker. My problem: I've got footage mostly NTSC but I firewired some PAL footage in Europe onto my PC1000. When I try and capture it onto the computer it won't work, even if I change the settings to PAL. Is this an issue with windows movie maker? Can you not edit the two formats together? Am I just doing something wrong and being stupid? Please help!
--Simon

108 way head down world record!!!
http://www.simonbones.com
Hit me up on Facebook

[newshooter12 0]

a few edit programs that i know of... final cut i believe and higher end avid products will edit NTSC and PAL together.

the problem being that the avid Express that i know will do it can only edit it in a PAL Project or Timeline. That doesn't help us in the U.S.

So basically unless you get your PAL footage converted to NTSC before you put it into your computer it's pretty useless in this country. except for watching it on your camera.

Don't you just love non-universal standards like Never The Same Color and PAL?!?!

Matt

[DSE 3]

Sony Vegas, both the "lite" consumer version and the professional version, can manage importing either format and both to the timeline at the same time, and export to either/both.

[SimonBones 1]

So I guess I should be investing in new editting software eh? Do either of the programs you guys recommended also do DVD authoring? That would be important for me too as I currently have nothing to do that with.

108 way head down world record!!!
http://www.simonbones.com
Hit me up on Facebook

[DSE 3]

Both the $89.00 version of Vegas and the 599.00 version come with DVD Authoring tools.

[snafuhere 0]

good news:
you can easily edit both to create one movie
I did it many times using Windows Movie Maker (free soft)
when you capture it doesn't matter what format it was recorded with, it's important what format you save it to disk (so select either PAL or NTSC in options of your Movie Maker and stick to it)

bad news:
if you firewire PAL to NTSC camcorder and copy the result will not play
the trick is to copy PAL directly to your PC, if you copy to NTSC camcorder it is corrupted

https://www.facebook.com/1skydive/

[dragon2 0]

If you can get the footage to your pc (doubtful when using an NTSC camera for PAL ) you need to remember 2 things: there is a 20% size difference between the 2 formats so you need to resize depending on your output format, and you need to de-interlace the clips to get rid of the frame rate difference.

I edited a few swoop/FS world record videos that had PAL, NTSC, and lately HD PAL and HD NTSC too. It's doable just takes slightly longer. I use Premiere Pro though not movie maker. I capture all footage in separate premiere projects, PAL project for PAL, HD for HD etc, then import all clips in a project with the settings for the final video (in my case, generally widescreen DV PAL). The I edit the video, fix the size where needed and when finished, render the project with de-interlacing.

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[Zoter 0]

DSE....with Vegas...can you import both PAL/NTSC and then export in either without having to do anything special to the 'odd' format not used inthe final output...?

ie...if I import PAL and NTSC footage/...edit it and then export the final as a PAL project....does vegas auto correct the sizing/frame rate issues of the NTSC footage...???

[BMFin 0]

Your issue may have been answered above. Im no expert, but here is anyway what I did :

I had most of my footage filmed in PAL. Some of it was Firewired from NTSC camcorder to a PAL camcorder.

When I was editing, I had a standalone DV player witch has a switch behind it to switch it PAL of NTSC. So we simply switched it NTSC and then imported the footage.

According to my memory the software did the rest. The picture was just in another scale so we solved that by scaling the picture a little wider and zoomed it also a little. (made a compromise not to strech it too much)

We were using premiere pro 2.0

The picture looks a little different because the framerate is different, so it may look like it is a little bit slo-mo this way even if its not... but its all cool.

[DSE 3]

Quote

DSE....with Vegas...can you import both PAL/NTSC and then export in either without having to do anything special to the 'odd' format not used inthe final output...?

ie...if I import PAL and NTSC footage/...edit it and then export the final as a PAL project....does vegas auto correct the sizing/frame rate issues of the NTSC footage...???

Vegas auto-sizes the footage correctly for either format.
720 x 576 properly becomes 720 x 480, and when going from NTSC to PAL it goes from 720 x 480 to 720 x 576.
Framerate doesn't matter; any NLE should properly insert or remove frames, and do so intelligently by resampling the 50 or 60 frame cadence and create a new one, blending both quite nicely.

50i should never become "slow" when converted to 60i anymore than 60i should become fast when converted to 50i. The only caveat is if you manually zoom, it's quite possible to flip fields (which is seen A LOT on skydivingmovies.com), which if done, will guarantee that you'll experience interlacing artifacts and issues.

[Faber 0]

it wont be as good as all of it were the same but heres what i did after a trip to US.

I took the fotage i had the smallest amount off..
took it into a edit program(i use pinnecal and adobe)
I did a rough edit of what i wanted,then i rendered the video to the best quallity i could get in AVI or MPEG (or MPEG2),then export it as a file(this will take alot of time and space)

as hat is done ive import the file to edit program again this time i edit it as usual if i make a video.

the result can be watched,but NTSC(im on PAL) loose alot of info and can look like if the vid is "jumping" once in a while..

try it out by "convert" a small file into the MPEG or so and sample together whith the file you want,do you get the result you like?

Other alternative is to pay a pro to convert it,i however dont know the price as i never asked..

Hope it helped

Stay safe
Stefan Faber

[dragon2 0]

Quote

the result can be watched,but NTSC(im on PAL) loose alot of info and can look like if the vid is "jumping" once in a while..

Not if you do it the way i do it. Of course the pc has to make up 5 out of every 30 frames but since you cannot SEE 30 fps anyway it is not too bad, certainly no obvious skipping (only if you forget to de-interlace).

BTW I'll convert anything to anything if you pay me to

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[DSE 3]

Saskia, are you saying you cannot see the difference between 50i/60i on playback?
NTSC does lose a bit of clarity on the upsample to PAL, PAL has greater resolution at a cost of smooth movement (50i vs 60i). NTSC is only 480 lines vs 576 of PAL. Upsampling those 480 to a 576 line image creates a little softness, but that can be somewhat managed with unsharpmasking and a little sharpening.

[Faber 0]

so you just want to make mony or your going to tell what you do?

i would be keen to see full dvd quality were you converted ntsc to pal edited into palvideo and convince me that i cant see the dif...

Quote

BTW I'll convert anything to anything if you pay me to

you eider had to pay ME if you should convert my vid or i had to kill you so you couldnt tell about the locations ive been

Stay safe
Stefan Faber

[erikph 0]

if you are looking for quality in your PAL/NTSC transcodes, procoder 2 is a very good piece of software.
legal versions of it are expensive, but you can see the difference.

blue skies,

http://myjumps.blogspot.com/

[dragon2 0]

I already wrote how I do it, in this thread and in others.

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[Faber 0]

sorry i didnt see,i just reread it,and you do exactly as i do...On my videos i clearly see which video is ntsc and which is pal..
sorry i cant upload as its not public eye stuff(sorry)

Stay safe
Stefan Faber