Here is a link to an article a guy wrote that goes into so much detail your eyes will start to bleed.
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/articles/palvsntsc/palvsntsc.asp
[Link]
Natural 6 - review by Captain Jack| Author | Post |
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| empihw New Member 3 Posts 9/10 |  Posted - Sep 21 2010 : 3:13PMHello, When buying DVDs there's a choice between PAL and NTSC, how do y'all decide which version? In my experience, PAL looks best when the original was shot on 24fps film, PAL format video or 24fps HD video, and NTSC looks best for anything shot on NTSC video or 30fps HD video. Of course, this guideline is only useful if you can find out what format the original even was. The movies I'm looking at are: Classics like The Opening on Misty Beethoven, or Behind the Green Door More recent big budget movies like Zazel the Private Gold series Various Viv Thomas releases 'Couple Friendly' releases from the bigger U.S. producers I'm guessing that classic movies must have been shot on film, and most US movies will have been shot on NTSC video, apart from very recent HD video which could be 24fps or 30fps. Others, I'm really not sure about. Can anyone give me any hints how to find out? Of course, this all only applies if the transfer to DVD was done 'directly'. I can imagine classic movie being shot on 24fps film, then converted to NTSC for a US VHS release. The rights holder then wants to rerelease on DVD, and its going to be easiest to digitise from the VHS master, and then convert back to PAL for the PAL DVD. In this case, the NTSC DVD would likely look best, although probably still poor. Again, can anyone given any hints on how to find things like this out? Fortunately, Blu-ray is immune from such problems, with players supporting multiple formats. Thanks for any help! Topic Moved by - heynow on Sep 22 2010 [Link] |
| Captain Tight Pants Member 337 Posts 9/09 | Posted - Sep 21 2010 : 3:33PM Here is a link to an article a guy wrote that goes into so much detail your eyes will start to bleed. http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/articles/palvsntsc/palvsntsc.asp [Link] |
| empihw New Member 3 Posts 9/10 | Posted - Sep 21 2010 : 4:47PM It seems to confirm my previous thoughts. For movies shot at 24fps, go for PAL, otherwise go for the same format as originally shot in. The problem is still working out what format something was shot in. For classics, this is probably 35mm film shot at 24fps, and it seems reasonable to assume that very recent big budget productions would be shot on digital HD cameras at 24fps. For everything else though, its difficult to know. Even stuff filmed in a PAL country might have been filmed in NTSC given that the US is likely the biggest market. Can any industry insiders let us know what they've done historically? [Link] |
| Prophit Member 378 Posts 1/07 | Posted - Sep 22 2010 : 3:48PM But in the case of Viv Thomas I would go for the HD downloads anyway so there is no need to think about whether to get NTSC or PAL. I had some very bad examples of conversions of both PAL -> NTSC and NTSC -> PAL. They usually fuck up those conversions so I'm like you in always trying to find out which would be the "original". Fortunately Blu-ray and digital downloads make theses problems obsolete (well mostly anyway). [Link] |
Jacco  All-Star Member "liable to deprave and corrupt" 2673 Posts 5/04 | Posted - Sep 22 2010 : 6:54PM Jacco [Link] |
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