Camcorder, hire or buy?

[Steven]

I'd say if a film was being made to be watched in the UK or Europe as well as America, then it should be filmed and edited in PAL as its a superior system. It can easily be converted into NTSC for the American distributers. If its solely for American use then perhaps it would be an idea to shoot it in NTSC from the start, but converting NTSC to PAL later results in a poorer picture than converting PAL to NTSC would.

[Roger]

"the Canons most definately have the edge over the Sony PD150 and VX100 models when used in poorly lighted situations"
RUBBISH!!!!!
The XM1 and XM2 are nice camcorders but no way are they better than the PD150 and VX2000 in low light.

[Giles]

Contrary to popular belief NTSC is a better system than PAL, it's been around longer than PAL which was developed later as a cheaper alternative to it. The cost of doing standards conversion should be no greater than running a beta SP machine about ?100/hour using an AVS ADAC but I have heard silly quotes of ?400/hour for Alchemy which is a plain rip off. It does not matter which order you do your standards conversion in it will not result in any degeneration of picture quality. Shooting and editing in PAL and then converting to NTSC is fine. If you are going to do this keep your media all digital to avoid losses by going analogue.

[marcusallen]

With respect to thew esteemed contributors above, thew key to vid is lines delivered. Currently, for vid purpose, 500ish lines.
NTSC and indeed, US television is inferior to our own--FACT, not opinion.

GILES seems to be on some kind of patriotic kick, and is TOTALLY wrong.

Any disent should be based on fact, not opinion.

[Dave Wells]

Quite right Marcus, your talking utter rubbish Giles. As everyone who knows what thery're talking about knows NTSC should stand for Never The Same Color - American spelling. As for cameras well all film companies seem to ALL use Sony so VX2000 or even better a PD150 can't really be beaten.

[Giles]

Sorry but the number of lines does not affect the quality of the picture when comparing NTSC 525 to PAL 625. Any video engineer (and I did a long stint of training in TV post production) will tell you that PAL was developed as a cheaper alternative to NTSC. If you watch NTSC straight off a master tape it does not look inferior nor can you tell there are fewer lines. Even material from the 1960s looks rich with and has a depth to it which PAL does not have.

Personally I prefer PAL. NTSC got its dodgy reputation in the UK (where I come from) because the standards conversion was so dreadful in the past, making the picture look rather yellow for one thing.

No patriotism intended. PAL is in fact a German invention dating from the 1960s.

[Giles]

The Sony pd 150 is the only 'cheap' video camera used in colleges running training courses in TV production and engineering as a broadcast standard camera so its status as a benchmark camera is there to see. Lots of other nice cameras for less money but ?3K for something which is only slightly less good than digi beta is something worth hiring or buying maybe?

[eC]

There's no way that NTSC is better than PAL.

If that was the case then why don't the top American TV shows film on NTSC? Instead they spend the extra money (and a lot of it) filming on 35mm film instead.


eC
redtrianglefilms.com

[Giles]

The reason why a lot of American shows are still shot on 35 mm is that it is better than both NTSC and PAL. Part of the problem with developing any kind of editing system for NTSC is that the mains frequency used to drive the whole thing is 60 Hz. It's then quite difficult to define how many frames you will have per second because 60 does not divide easily. With PAL the mains frequency used is 50 Hz which means that you can easily derive 25 frames per second from this stable reference source. When video editing was becoming the norm in the UK in the 1980s you still saw stuff from the USA like 'Hill St Blues' and 'St Elsewhere' and 'Cagney & Lacey' all shot and edited on film. The reason was because there wasn't an easy way to edit NTSC video. You can use something called drop frame which instead of running at 30 fps will run at 29.7 fps but doesn't really solve things.

[Steven]

Contrary to Giles's belief, PAL is a better system than NTSC. It did come later and used NTSC as a starting point, but built upon it in order to produce better quality. PAL stands for Phase Alternate Line which means the scan line of the electron guns aimed at the picture tube are reversed every line.
This compensates for the flicker that is evident in all TV systems. Pal is 5O Hertz and NTSC is 60 Hertz but PAL has 625 vertical lines wheras NTSC only has 525 which is why some poor NTSC to PAL conversions look stretched vertically.

I just passed my degree with 90% marks in this subject so I'm not just talking nonesense.

If anybody needs video editing doing, camera work or video format conversions, send me a e-mail and I'll see what I can do for you.