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My question may seem silly.. If I make a VCD here using NTSC format and sent it as a gift to an European country which uses PAL.. will they be able to play it on their computer? Or would it have to be produced using the PAL fomat. Also if I have to use the PAL format.. then what is the correct method to get it from a NTSC to a PAL...or is this possible in Premiere.. Thanks Guys... I love this place...

Email: bubw@blazeinet.com

-- Edwin Wesley (bubw@blazeiet.com), January 20, 2001

Answers

you need to create the VCD in PAL 252x288 @ 25fps, if you send it as 352x240 @ 30fps it will play too quickly.

-- kev (khm@btinternet.com), January 20, 2001.

1. Play back VCD on a computer does not have to be either. The codec will automatically adjust to whatever format the VCD is in.

2. When creating a VCD, you only have to consider what the format of the source is. The final product will depend on the original source. You can make a PAL VCD from an NTSC video source, yes; However, the playback will be extremely jerky. This also apply to both computer and stand alone DVD units. Take this into consideration; Your video source is NTSC which means it is playing at the frame rate of 29.97 typically, and you want to change this frame rate to 25fps? If you are capturing it as PAL format using NTSC video source, then you will have problem with jerky movement in the video since you have to drop frames to make PAL compliant. Encoding a captured NTSC video source will yield the same result; Furthermore, you may experience an audio/video de-syncronization.

3. Most stand alone DVD players can either convert PAL to NTSC or vice versa on the fly as the disc is played, or you can set it up in the setup menu.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), January 20, 2001.

Actually i didn't read the question; NTSC/PAL vcd's will work fine on all computers..

But as for standalone DVD players the NTSC disc will play too quickly on PAL. and a PAL disc will play too slowly on NTSC. been here. the workaround is to change region on the dvd player. no players self- adjust as suggested above, as they're output is locked to the tv signal; 25 for PAL and 30 for NTSC.

-- kev (boyo@btinternet.com), January 21, 2001.

I don't know but, last week I made some NTSC VCD sent to my sister who live in Nice, France, she said it ok to watch in stay alon DVD player wich is PAL system. I asked her about what is the different betwen the two copy of NTSC and PAL wich one is better, they said both are ok.

-- Cher (cher_her@juno.com), January 21, 2001.

I swap PAL & NTSC vcd's (VCD & SVCD) with people around the world, I do not have any trouble at all in playing NTSC disks in PAL (Australia) and my friends in the States have not had a problem either playing my PAL presentations. As Long says, does not matter on the computer anyway and frankly standalone Pioneer 525's, Philips, 711, 725 and Apex 600 and 660 cope easily it seems with the TV formats.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), January 21, 2001.

The free quicktime player supplied by apple is universal and if used on a Mac "computer" can read Mpeg-1 format which is VCd. Thus any mpeg-1 video read on the quicktime 4.1 mac version will work regardless of your position on the earth.

-- Phil Patalano (sci_tech@lava.net), January 23, 2001.

I have a Phillips VCD player and a PAL copy of Star Wars. It will not play correctly on my NTSC TV, but it will play correctly on 2 other DVD players.

-- Brian Bond (kb@bond.ac), May 14, 2001.

That is eactly what I experience with Akai DV-P2500K which plays some VCDs on PAL TV OK but not on NTSC TV. The same VCD will play on Pioneer S5. Is there any way to make VCD PAL play on NTSC TV?

-- Jeremy Ma (jl3838@hotmail.com), May 18, 2001.

The answer is: 1) If playing on the computer, it doesn't matter which format the VCD is in. The user will see the "correct" picture either way. This is at least true if you're using windows media player.

2) If playing on a standalone machine, a DVD player will play both format. The decoder in the machine will automatically display the "correct" picture.

3) VCD-only players are slightly problematic (from personal experience).

-- Ning Loh (ynloh@totalise.co.uk), January 24, 2003.

I have a Sony DAV-S300 - North American version. It plays PAL VCD's from Europe and I did not notice any problems until I made my own PAL home movie into a VCD. While video looks fine, it seems to me that it is playing a bit (barely noticeable) faster than it should. And it makes sense, since NTSC is reading 30 frames per second instead of 25. But like I said it is only slightly noticeable. It also could be in my head only... I would expect the DVD player to 'understand' the frame rate and adjust to it, but I was not able to find anything in the specs or on the Internet so far. Would appreciate if someone could point me to a source.

-- Eugene Karassev (ekarassev@hotmail.com), February 17, 2003.