Hi, I have a Handicam bought it in USA (NTCS), but in this moment I am living in Spain (PAL), I want to know if Can I record onto PAL tapes in my NTCS camera? Because, some people told me that I would not have problem using a PAL tape, but I am not sure.

MG

-- Marcos Gonzalez (marquitos50@hotmail.com), January 13, 2004

Answers

Good question, but it is off topic for this forum. However, there is no such thing as PAL or NTSC tapes. Tapes are tapes. They don't care what format is on them. However, I'm sure your camera will only record NTSC format. In most cases, it shouldn't be necessary to convert from NTSC to PAL. Most PAL DVD players and TVs are able to correctly display NTSC video, so if you want to make a VCD from your camcorder footage, you should be OK to make a NTSC VCD. It has been estimated that 95% of the world's DVD players can play NTSC video. There are a few PAL DVD players that can't play NTSC video, but not many. The PAL broadcast standard allows for compatibility with NTSC video, but NTSC is not compatible with PAL video. NTSC DVD players must convert PAL video to correctly display it on NTSC TVs. Most NTSC DVD players can correctly convert PAL video, but many do not. You might be interested to know that NTSC is the default video format for many DVDs around the world because it's compatible with PAL. Brazil, which is a PAL country, makes most of their music DVDs in NTSC format and doesn't put a region code on them so they can be sold and played around the world. To summarize, you should have no problems recording to any tapes you buy in Spain, but the format will be NTSC. However, that shouldn't be a real problem if you want to make a VCD/SVCD/DVD of your footage.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), January 14, 2004.