have only DV-AVI(PAL) cature option - I need DV-AVI NTSC

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Guest

hi - all seem to be well with the setup, except for the difficulty in the
title. can anyone help me out with this ? the DV cassette is in NTSC but I
can't enable that format for capture in Movie Maker. capture is possible but
shows as wierd colored blocks.

thanks

Peter
 
OK. I have a Sony HC hat plays a DV cassette perfectly. There is a little
'NTSC' symbol on the view screen when I play the tape. I did not record the
tap with this camcorder, though. I recorded it on a Panasonic, but the iLink
is busted on that camcorder.

So I set up I link, open Movie Maker. It recognises the Sony, no problem.
I go to capture and choose DV-AVI. I see in 'setting details'... video
format PAL.

This remains even if I select 'NTSC' on Tools > Options > Advanced. Nor
does this setting bring up an NTSC option.

During capture, video file size increases as I would expect it to etc. etc.
Preview video is garbled.

If it try the capture without preview, the resulting clip is identical.

Going back to the capture wizard, I select 'other settings' and the drop
down will only offer DV-AVI (PAL) which gives the same results as above.

I did read another post on the forum of an individual who had the 'opposite'
problem to mine, though I did not see a resolution to his problem.

FYI: PC (XP Home Edition), camcorder bought in the US, though I do now live
in PALland. I did upgrade to SP2 while living in PALland, though I do not
see what incidence this could have.

Thanks

Peter
 
If you are in PAL land, using an NTSC tape, then you'll need an NTSC digital
camcorder.
--
Cari
(MS-MVP Printing & Imaging)


What do you have your Tools, Options in WMM set to?
 
I'm guessing that your digital camcorder cannot really convert PAL to NTSC.
It can put out an image which your TV can see, but it's not really a PAL
stream. It is doing what nearly all European VCRs do which is put out a
signal that a PAL tv can correctly interpret, but it isn't really PAL or
NTSC, just somewhere in between.

You'll need to:
Either find an NTSC digital camcorder and use that
or
Get that iLink fixed on the Panasonic.
 
I got out my Panasonic: I knew one of the interfaces on it was busted and as
I said, I thought it was the ILink -- I wanted to try the USB interface on
it. Oh joy! On further examination it turns out that the USB plug is the
busted one! Ilink interface is intact.

So I set it up. MM recognises the Panasonic, capture wizard recognises it
as NTSC and capture works perfectly!!

So, as surmised by Cari above, the PAL land Sony, borrowed from a friend,
seems to tell the computer to expect PAL but then DOES NOT correctly convert
NTSC to PAL for DV transfer. I did not find a way to configure the Sony to
pass the NTSC signal its ILink interface, though I did not bust a gut after I
got the Panasonic working.

Rehan: thanks for your suggestion to use a different capture app: I did try
WinDV, without success.

Is there a good white paper or document that explains why PAL or NTSC are
used to encode DV recordings at all? I would have thought this was not
necessary.

It also seems that camcorder manufacturers have only gone half way with
their interoperability work.

Peter
 
YEAH! Excellent news. PAL vs NTSC dates back years and years.... at least
in Europe most PAL VCRs will happily output a signal from an NTSC tape that
the TV will interpret correctly. Here in the US 99.9% won't. You have a
choice of just a few multi standards VCRs which will actually do a real
conversion - unless of course you have a TV which is also multi-standard and
they're even rarer.

When I came over from the UK to the US over eleven years ago now I had to
shop around for a couple of multi-standard VCRs as I'd brought about 300+
VHS tapes with me.

I have no idea why the two standards originated. I'm not a TV engineer.
It's as bad as the Regionalization of DVDs. I just wish it would go away
forever.
 
I have a feeling this is the problem with my rather old Canon MV20i DVC. The
movie capture is blocky garbled, like it is forcing capture in NTSC mode
while the cam is PAL output. This is through Firewire, Win XP home, SP2.
Maybe there is no fix for this? :(
 
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