I need copies for Pal AND NTSC regions

Hennessy · Post by **Hennessy** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 1:39 am

Hello,

I need two copies of every DVD I make, one for my family in the UK and one for myself here in Canada.

Does this mean I have to do the whole project twice, once with the capture settings configured for Pal and then again for NTSC, or is there an easier way?

Thanks

PeterMilliken · Post by **PeterMilliken** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:57 am

Unless somebody knows of some utility that will do this then I believe you will have to do it twice - but these days TVs and DVD players quite frequently advertise the ability of showing/playing NTSC/PAL anyway, so perhaps you can just do a PAL version (better quality picture

) for your UK relatives and play the DVD on your own NTSC equipment?

I am pretty sure that the last TV/DVD player I purchased claimed compatability with NTSC (I am in Australia - so PAL is my "native" format). So perhaps think about that option over having to render your project twice.

Goodluck,
Peter

Hennessy · Post by **Hennessy** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:09 am

Peter - many thanks, some good advice...I will look into that (it could save me a lot of time)

2Dogs · Post by **2Dogs** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:25 pm

Hi Hennessy,

you might check out some posts by Trevor Andrew on this topic, but I would generally endorse Peter's comments.

I would suggest that you make NTSC DVD's, however, if your source material is NTSC. Although the PAL standard has higher vertical resolution, and should be superior, I've found that PAL DVD's made from my own NTSC source material are not as good (picture quality) as NTSC DVD's.

The latter can quite happily play on all the UK DVD players I've tried them on (3 owned by relatives, another 4 tried out in stores) I do use LPCM audio most of the time, otherwise MPEG audio. The latter is the subject of some controversy here with the purists, since it is not part of the NTSC DVD standard - Dolby is the compressed format of choice. My MPEG audio NTSC DVD's play fine in all my own and relatives' DVD players here in the US, however, and MPEG audio is part of the PAL standard.

So my recommendation would be NTSC with LPCM for best sound quality and compatibility, MPEG audio if you need to maximise the video bitrate or squeeze a few more minutes on the disk.

You should send a sample NTSC disk to your relatives to try out.

Good luck!

Hennessy · Post by **Hennessy** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:47 pm

Thanks 2Dogs. I really appreciate you taking the time to help!! As you and Peter suggest, I will send my relatives a copy of what I have and see how they get on with that.

Cheers!