Settings for Pal to NTSC HD CAM output

[RayFrisby]

III

 

[M Most]

Hi Guys !
I have entered some film festivals in the US and as part of the delivery requirements they need a HD CAM NTSC master for playback.

I am living in Europe and was wondering what settings I need to use on a Pal HD CAM deck, or if their will be any issues playing a HD CAM tape recorded on a Pal Deck in the U.S.

PAL and NTSC are standard definition color encoding systems. There is no such thing as "PAL HD" or "NTSC HD." There are, however, different frame rates for HD recordings that generally correspond to these two systems. In the case of the 1920x1080 format, that would include 23.98, 24, and 25 in progressive formats, and 50, 59.94, and 60 in interlaced formats.

What you seem to be asking is how to go from 1080/25p (or 1080/50i) to either 1080/23.98p or 1080/59.94i. The answer in either case is the same. Either an HDCam SR or one of the recent HDCam models can play back 25p as 24p (or, in your case, 23.98). By doing this, the material is slowed down by about 4%, but there are no artifacts as the frames are not being interpolated. You can then either record this on another VTR as 1080/23.98, or you can convert it to 1080/59.94i, which is done by adding 3:2 pulldown (this is also available in the VTR as a playout option). Either way, it's basically just a tape dub once you create a 1080/25 master. You might need to convert your sound tracks (the same 4% pull down is available in Pro Tools and other sound editing programs) and do a new layback, but that depends on the capabilities of the VTR you use for playback.

Another way to accomplish this is to render out a 1080/25p Quicktime movie, and use Cinema Tools to conform it to 23.98. You can then play it out directly to a 1080/23.98 tape master.

 

[Darren Orange]

Yeap! Those are the best ways of taking care of this. No one can see or hear the 4%.