DVD regions, PAL vs NTSC

I am in the process of making a DVD - which I would like to watchable on DVD players, TVs and computers around the world. But I find all the jargon a bit confusing and not sure how much of it relates to a finished disc.

The DVD was filmed on a PAL camera. The footage imported into final cut pro and will be made into a DVD.

I presume that most "self-made" DVDs are region less? So this won't be an issue. Is this correct? Or does the computer give the DVD a region?

Also how about the PAL versus NTSC issue. Does this matter? And if so, how do you get around it?

I am hoping that the answer will be that my DVD will be watchable everywhere, but I am not sure?

Thanks from a confused newbie!

Alex

I am in the process of making a DVD - which I would like to watchable on DVD players, TVs and computers around the world. But I find all the jargon a bit confusing and not sure how much of it relates to a finished disc.

 

The DVD was filmed on a PAL camera. The footage imported into final cut pro and will be made into a DVD.

 

I presume that most "self-made" DVDs are region less? So this won't be an issue. Is this correct? Or does the computer give the DVD a region?

 

Also how about the PAL versus NTSC issue. Does this matter? And if so, how do you get around it?

 

I am hoping that the answer will be that my DVD will be watchable everywhere, but I am not sure?

 

Thanks from a confused newbie!

 

Alex

NTSC and PAL are different film standards, broad stroke he U.S. and Japan are the big ones for NTSC and the R.O.W. is PAL. A NTSC DVD will not play on a PAL DVD Player and vice versa.

That being said more people ex-U.S. will have the ability to play NTSC DVDS, while U.S. will in all likelihood not. In fact some distributors in Europe did not care if NTSC DVDs were delivered instead of PAL because they felt strongly enough about people being able to play NTSC. PAL was devlivered anyway.

On Region coding make sure to check all your Region code boxes (the Reserved is unchecked by default.) All boxes makes a DVD Region 0 which will play in any player, while otherwise a Region 1 DVD will only player in Region 1 or Region All players, etc. (Though there are some machines that were/are not complying with DVD standards.) Just check all the boxes and you should be fine.

Short answer is, nope there is not way to make a DVD that will be guaranteed watchable anywhere. You would need to redo menus and convert PAL to NTSC footage for the best results.

you could use double sided discs and have NTSC and PAL one on either side..

computers will play both, and yes NTSC seems fine for most Euros, but not all.

Not sure what Mac program converts, i know there is one that does, compressor or something?

Procoder from EDIUS (hehe) does it well in pc land

you could use double sided discs and have NTSC and PAL one on either side..

 

computers will play both, and yes NTSC seems fine for most Euros, but not all.

 

Not sure what Mac program converts, i know there is one that does, compressor or something?

 

Procoder from EDIUS (hehe) does it well in pc land

FWIW sometimes computers will ask to reset region codes (the Macs do with a limit) and I have had that happen on discs burned from computers.

Compressor is one of the ways of converting footage from NTSC->PAL and vice versa, or you can run Edius Procoder on the Mac if you feel like slumming (countdown starts until Wagsy shows up )

Thanks guys.

So what I don't understand in all this is that here in the UK I have a PAL TV and multi-region (cheap) DVD player. So my DVD player as well as being multi-region can also cope with converting NTSC DVDs to PAL in real time. Cool. I buy lots of DVDs from Region 1 - all play great here.

Also in Cayman my parents have a US NTSC TV and a US multi-region DVD player. And that happily plays PAL DVDs from the UK as well as local NTSC DVDs. So again it is the DVD player that is doing the conversion?

Alex

A zone free PAL DVD will not play on a NTSC player.

A zone free NTSC DVD will play on PAL players.

Most TV's are now multiformat.

A zone & macrovision free PAL or NTSC DVD will play on any computer with a DVD drive.

You set the zones in the authoring process if you want them.

I would make a NTSC one but you loose quality. PAL 720/576 to NTSC 720/480

You can also do tricky things like encode out a 25 fps PAL 720/576 file but at (NTSC) 720/480 res size and then put a flag into the file so it tricks the player to play the PAL disk at NTSC 29fps speeds.

Works a treat. It's the same as what they sometimes do with 24p DVD's to get them to run at 29fps.

Have fun....

You're getting mixed answers. Here's my 2 c.

I Live in Spain and therefore in a PAL world. My camera is NTSC, so I shoot, edit, and produce NTSC DVD's. Now, while it's true that any DVD player will play your NTSC DVD's, you do need to change the settings for NTSC in the player, otherwise you'll get a choppy image. Once you do this, you also need to view your footage on a modern TV set, i.e. LCD or plasma, or you'll get a nice, fluid, BUT black & white image.

Can't tell a thing abut viewing PAL DVD's on NTSC.

Hope it helps.

You had better encode out you NTSC sound files as well to Ac3 or Wav as NTSC players cannot play Mpeg 2 sound files like PAL DVD players can.

Yes most TV's now days can handle a NTSC/Pal signal.

I don't know why they bother with this PAL/NTSC thing anymore.

I'm sucking in NTSC HDV tapes now with my PAL HDV camera and editing them up with PAL HDV stuff no problems.