Further to the Kane DVD thread, I wanted to raise a question re the NTSC vs PAL formats for DVD releases. In Australia, most DVDs are released in PAL format, with the exception of a few releases which come out in NTSC, but coded for region 4. I understand that PAL delivers a slightly higher horizontal resolution compared to NTSC, which to me doesn't make a huge difference. SOme people claim that colours are better on PAL - again, I don't know because I haven't done direct comparisons. One thing I have noticed is "judder" on some NTSC discs, particularly where slow movement occurs. I believe it's related to framerates and something called "3:2 pulldown" effect or something like that - don't quote me on that. This jerkiness is sometimes disconcerting - I wonder if any of you have observed it. On the other hand, PAL has the issues of the "PAL speedup" - film transfers end up running 4% faster than they should. Of course, I've never noticed that effect - but it does bother me to know that the movie is not at the right speed. Is there any way, in theory, that this could be corrected in future? When I have purchased some DVD titles, I have faced the dilemma of whether I would prefer the NTSC version at correct speed, or the PAL version with no judder - I still have resolved which I would prefer, but usually opt in favour of the cheapest version, mostly the PAL version
Perhaps this is an ignorant question, but, why are some disks released in NTSC format there - do your TVs do both standards? That seems odd. I am not an expert on matters video, but I *think* the primary reason PAL is thought to have better colo(u)r than NTSC is because it's consistent, whereas NTSC is sometimes said to mean Never Twice the Same Color. For reasons I once understood but have long since forgotten, when color was introduced in the USA they slowed the frame rate down ever so slightly (29.94 I think, instead of 30) leading to endless headaches for ever after. But doesn't the flicker on PAL bother you more than the "judder" of NTSC? (I think it's much worse on some transfers than others.)
Frame rate for PAL is notorioously 25 frames while NTSC is 29.97, for at least DVD. NTSC Abbreviation of National Television Standards Committee. The NTSC is responsible for setting television and video standards in the United States (in Europe and other parts of the world, the dominant television standards are PAL and SECAM). The NTSC standard for television defines a composite video signal with a refresh rate of 60 fields (half-frames interlaced) per second. Each frame contains 525 lines and can contain 16 million different colors. The resolution of an NTSC VCD is 352x240 pixels, an NTSC SVCD is 480x480, and an NTSC full D1 DVD is 704 or 720 x 480. PAL Short for Phase Alternating Line, the dominant television standard in Europe. The United States uses a different standard, NTSC. PAL delivers 625 lines at 50 fields (half-frames interlaced) per second. The resolution of a PAL VCD is 352x288 pixels, a PAL SVCD is 480x576, and a PAL full D1 DVD is 704 or 720 x 576. I'm learning about this as well. The "jutter" is usually from frame interlacing, or two frames together, FWIR.
NTSC: isn't that derided as "Not The Same Color" or "Not The Same Color Twice" (I hear the latter more)?
Thanks - sgraham, I'm not aware of flicker on PAL transfers, haven't come across it. But I have read about the 4% speedup on PAL transfers, but of course, it's not the sort of thing you notice, unless you time a movie or segment and see that it doesn't match the correct times for the video. As far as the judder on NTSC, I do notice it, to varying degrees. Sometimes it's very prominent, usually when there is fairly slow movement on the screen - to me it's a minor annoyance that i can live with, but some people find it really hard to put up with. Most TVs sold in Australia these days will display PAL and NTSC, and perhaps others as well. I think this is due to the spread of DVD and the acknowledgment that a lot of people want to see NTSC material on their TVs, because that's the format of so many releases from the US. So local film distributors sometimes will release a film in NTSC rather than PAL for the local market eg. Forbidden Planet, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, An American in Paris, to name but a few - why this is so, I don't know. Perhaps its economics - it might be deemed to costly to produce a PAL version just for the Australian market (I say that not really having a clue as to how companies go about creating different versions for the different TV systems, and how they share the original source transfers). The funny thing is that, with these AUstralian-made NTSC discs, they are still coded as Region 4 for the local market, not Region 1 (US) or anything else. The other thing to point out about the Australian scene is that, when DVD first arrived, retailers were offering conversion kits or services to make local Region 4 DVD players "multi-zoned", so that folks could enjoy all the great stuff available from the US. These days, it seems that most DVD players are multi-zoned right out of the box, although they don't promote this on their packaging. eg. My Sony machine, which is about 9 months old, is multi-zoned - I gather that a few years ago, Sony machines were never multi-zoned. I don't know what the situation with zoning of players is like in the US. The fact that major electronics companies see fit to make multi-zoning a standard feature on their machines makes a bit of a joke of the whole system. Especially when one considers that years ago, in the days of LaserDisc, when there were a pathetic number of PAL discs produced in AUstralia, and moviebuffs imported NTSC discs from the US, these electronics companies were selling multi-zoned players on the one hand, while on the other bringing in law enforcement to shut down any retailers or rental companies that were offering imported NTSC discs to the public!
Judder is not just a function of DVD format transfers, it occurs in all kinds of content and framerates, which is why all the major TV manufacturers have so-called 'smooth motion' processing options designed to smooth out the judder. This is done by frame interpolation or black frame insertion. They're generally a waste of time (unless set to the minimum strength setting) as overprocessing introduces its own problems like motion blurring/smearing and the so-called soap opera effect.
Wow, here's a 12-year-old thread back from the dead. Whenever people tell me that NTSC stands for "Never Twice the Same Color," I remind them: 1) the signal recorded on videotape or videodisc is not NTSC. NTSC is a broadcast over-the-air format; 525 video (640x480 29.97fps) is the actual video standard. 2) from identical sources, 525 and 625 look about the same on a high-end broadcast monitor. The extra bandwidth of PAL is miniscule in the grand scheme of things, and it's offset by the fact that 25fps video has more inherent flicker in it. 3) PAL stands for "Pretty Awful Looking." (And SECAM was "System Essentially Contrary to the American Method.")
And back in the old days of CRT TV's, for some (like me) PAL flicker was very annoying up to the point that even living on a PAL country (Spain) I imported my LaserDisc and DVDs movies from NTSC countries like the US and Japan.
