I want to send a copy of my movie to a buddy in Belgium. So I guess I need to send him a PAL version? OK, so I can make a PAL movie out of FCP...but how do you make iDVD burn it in PAL? And if I send him an NTSC...can computers play both types of DVD...or is it segregated like TVs?
Basically what do I need to do?
I think there is no difference when it comes to DVD players... the important thing is that the DVD is Region Free. Other than that, I think PAL/NTSC works with regular TV and VHS, but not for DVDs. I may be wrong, but I dont think so
Firstly, I haven't used FCP before but I know that NTSC to PAL conversion on software I have (and in general) is tricky to do
well. I dont know how much you know about it but NTSC is running at 30fps and PAL at 25fps. If done badly, a conversion can cause the footage to stutter.
If he's watching it on his pc, it doesnt matter whether its Pal/Ntsc aslong as its not region coded (and even then there are ways). For playback on a television through a dvd player it is also not a problem for the footage to be NTSC aslong as both the TV and DVD are fairly modern (and again there is no region coding, assuming the player is
not multi-region).
Here's a good page I found when I had to do this, less of a 'How-to' more of a briefing of the technicals of whats happening when you convert.
http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/PALvsNTSC/PALvsNTSC.asp
A post on another forum suggested it could be as easy as this:
Quoteexport the video from FCP as an MPEG 2 then after you open your authoring program iDVD or Studio Pro, set the Prefrences for PAL, import the MPEG 2 and your end results will be a PAL disk.
But I don't know what the quality will be like.
Thanks for the quick replies.
Important question for anyone who knows about playing PAL DVDs on a Mac...
Would it be possible for me to [permamently] set my internal drive to PAL and my external to NSTC... so I never have to do any more switching (since the switching is limited)?
when i export originally NTSC footage from FCP to iDVD and burn it in PAL, i get a green bar down the side of the screen. wtf, mate?