Video convertions PAL to NTSC

[Eddie]

Hi guys,
appoligies, this is not really a kung fu topic, but i thought I might get some help here. I have to send some video tapes to the USA, but I have a slight problem. We use a format called PAL, and the US use the NTSC format. ALthough most of our vcr's are multi system, I do not know if that is also the case in the USA.

I asked around to figure out how to convert it, but no-one seem to be able to help (unless you pay an arm and a legg to a professional company).

Any suggestions? Alex, you guys also use PAL right? Do you know how to convert is?

Thanks people, once again, keep up this great forum. i think i speak for everyone here when I say that we learn so much from this group of knowlegable people.

[straightblast5]

I understand your plight. I had a similar dilemma when I tried to watch some videos that my Si-Hing in Hong Kong had sent to me a while back. Actually multi-systems are quite common in Hong Kong, but are next to non-existent here in the United States. What I did was to bring my PAL video to a video reproduction company and had them convert the PAL format into NTSC. Converting about one-hour of footage cost me about $15 US.

Hope this helps.

Phil

[David]

I've been quoted around £34/hour! :eek:

The powers of Kung Fu never fail!
-- Hong Kong Phooey

[Eddie]

Hi Phil and David,
thanks for the replies. Actually, $15 and (even worse) 34 Pounds are way to expensive. The tapes are not really valuable at all, so it would not be worth it to spend so much to reproduce them. I took it on a 8mm VCR film.

Someone actually e-mailed me a suggestion that might work (thank you very much).

Thanks for the help so far people.

[alecM]

Eddie
Sorry I can't help you I had a similar problem a while back getting tapes from the states, and had to get them converted professionally. I ended up having to pay for a more expensive VCR that plays both Pal or NTSC formats which worked out much cheaper.

Fear not the man who has learned one thousand kicks, fear the man who has practiced one kick a thousand times.

[Ross]

I moved to the UK and brought a multi-system TV with me....

Funnily enough...all the UK VCR's I have tried in the last 5 years play my videos without a problem..no conversion needed. So first try them out and see what happens.

Oh.....you can't do it the other way around.

Cheers, R

East Midlands, UK

[phoenix-eye]

I'm in Uk also. My TV plays 60 hZ signals from game consoles - i.e it plays NTSC games.

Assuming my video can also play at 60 Hz then will I be able to watch NTSC videos??

Also, martialartsmart only take $10 to convert any tape from TSC to PAL so $34 seems way too expensive!!

"We had a thing to settle so I did him"
Tamai, 43, was quoted by Police as saying.

[Ross]

To tell you the truth I never even had to worry about the Hz. I walked over to my neighbours one day and mistakenly brought a NTSC tape with me. Popped it in the VCR and low and behold it just played fine.

NTSC is a much more limited format than Pal so the VCR's can read the less sophisticated info and play the info (also they have been engineered to do this task for the past few years...says so on the boxes of the average new machine). For the same reason it doesn't work the other way around. The info (number of lines and size of the screen ) is more complex here and would confuse a north american VCR.

Phoenix I would just give it a try if you have a NTSC tape. If you are stuck and don't have one I can send you an old tape of some sort and you can see if it works (I've got 3 kids and we have tons of old NTSC tapes).

Otherwise just go buy a cheap machine at Argos or whatever (after reading the box to make sure it plays NTSC).

Cheers,

R
(East Midlands)

[Eddie]

Thanks guys,
my problem is, although I have a multi system, I'm not sure if my friends in the US have this system. I decided that I will just send money for the conversion if they need it. $10 is much better than 34 pounds (I dont know how to make that pound charactor in short hand)

Have a nice week everyone.