NTSC / PAL - what are these and when should I use them?

[John]

When capturing video, there are several options to save
as. I see 2 options that seem to be the right bit rate,
resolution..... but one has NTSC and the other does not.
What is this? When should NTSC/PAL/Other be used and when
should they not?

 

[Rehan]

NTSC/PAL ones conform to these standard while the other ones do not
necessarily do. One important difference is the NTSC/PAL standards specify
non-square pixel encoding.

For example "High quality video (large)" uses frame size of 640x480 while
"high quality video (NTSC)" uses 720x480 resolution to encode a 4:3 frame.
These 720 pixels are slightly squeezed in horizontal direction and therefore
map to 640 pixels of the screen. Therefore the final output on a computer
would still be shown in a 4:3 frame of 640x480.

Computer screens always show and have 1:1 pixel aspect ratio. Therefore any
material originating from computers such as still images and screen captures
etc should be output using a profile that uses square pixels such "High
quality video (large)" while almost all camcorders capture video in
non-square pixel encoding so such video should be saved with a profile
matching their pixel encoding such as "High Quality video (NTSC)".

 

[Guest]

NTSC is for North American format movies and PAL is for European.