PAL DVDs in US and the 'Author' of films

[Peter Copestake]

Can anyone with definite info., Ned C. perhaps, confirm or contradict my understanding
that PAL DVD-R will play on standard US players. A "customer" (strictly
loss making as far as I am concerned, never mind non-professional) insists
they will not, but I suspect he is confusing regions or zones or whatever
they are called with PAL/NTSC conflict.
Please give your "qualifications" - I believe Ned is very high up the ladder
and I want there to be no argument with my chap. He gave , they thought,
two big 16mm reels of pre-war film, mostly family stuff, to our local Heritage
Centre, but then said 'when you've copied them to video, I'll collect them
again'. Out of it we've got 17 minutes of really interesting footage of
a complete silent film made by his father of their cotton-weaving mill.
By the way, having copied it to video, put subtitles and music on it, can
I enter it in competitions as mine? Surely not. This refers to Dave Watterson's
query last month. Peter.

[Ned C]

Unfortunately your client is correct, here in the USA most DVD players will
only play NTSC. I have two high quality players, Sony and Yamaha neither
of which will play PAL. However, there is a cheap player, CyberHome C300
available from the major electronic stores for about $40 that does play PAL
as well as NTSC. It actually does a full transcode on the output and we use
them to transcode the PAL entries to the Festival. It seems the cheaper the
better!

Ned C





"Peter Copestake" <forums@theiac.org.uk> wrote:

Can anyone with definite info., Ned C. perhaps, confirm or contradict my
understanding
that PAL DVD-R will play on standard US players. A "customer" (strictly
loss making as far as I am concerned, never mind non-professional) insists
they will not, but I suspect he is confusing regions or zones or whatever
they are called with PAL/NTSC conflict.
Please give your "qualifications" - I believe Ned is very high up the ladder
and I want there to be no argument with my chap. He gave , they thought,
two big 16mm reels of pre-war film, mostly family stuff, to our local Heritage
Centre, but then said 'when you've copied them to video, I'll collect them
again'. Out of it we've got 17 minutes of really interesting footage of
a complete silent film made by his father of their cotton-weaving mill.

By the way, having copied it to video, put subtitles and music on it, can
I enter it in competitions as mine? Surely not. This refers to Dave Watterson's
query last month. Peter.

[Peter Copestake]

"Ned C" <ned@ampsvideo.com> wrote:

Unfortunately your client is correct, here in the USA most DVD players will
only play NTSC. I have two high quality players, Sony and Yamaha neither
of which will play PAL. However, there is a cheap player, CyberHome C300
available from the major electronic stores for about $40 that does play
PAL
as well as NTSC. It actually does a full transcode on the output and we
use
them to transcode the PAL entries to the Festival. It seems the cheaper
the
better!

Ned C




Many thanks, Ned, Peter.

[ron jarrett]

Strange Ned that you shoulD say that as the American Motion Picture Society,
currently accepting entries for the September festival stipulated that PAL
entries must be on DVD.

Ron








"Ned C" <ned@ampsvideo.com> wrote:

Unfortunately your client is correct, here in the USA most DVD players will
only play NTSC. I have two high quality players, Sony and Yamaha neither
of which will play PAL. However, there is a cheap player, CyberHome C300
available from the major electronic stores for about $40 that does play
PAL
as well as NTSC. It actually does a full transcode on the output and we
use
them to transcode the PAL entries to the Festival. It seems the cheaper
the
better!

Ned C





"Peter Copestake" <forums@theiac.org.uk> wrote:

Can anyone with definite info., Ned C. perhaps, confirm or contradict my
understanding
that PAL DVD-R will play on standard US players. A "customer" (strictly
loss making as far as I am concerned, never mind non-professional) insists
they will not, but I suspect he is confusing regions or zones or whatever
they are called with PAL/NTSC conflict.
Please give your "qualifications" - I believe Ned is very high up the ladder
and I want there to be no argument with my chap. He gave , they thought,
two big 16mm reels of pre-war film, mostly family stuff, to our local Heritage
Centre, but then said 'when you've copied them to video, I'll collect them
again'. Out of it we've got 17 minutes of really interesting footage of
a complete silent film made by his father of their cotton-weaving mill.

By the way, having copied it to video, put subtitles and music on it, can
I enter it in competitions as mine? Surely not. This refers to Dave Watterson's
query last month. Peter.

[Ned C]

There is some history here. Unlike the PAL countries where VHS players will
usually play NTSC, here in the USA VHS players only play NTSC, as with the
regular DVD players. VHS is becoming history and although we can play miniDV
and DVCAM on a DSR11 we wanted an easy life at the Festival, one player preferebly
DVD. We did a series of tests with DVDs from a number of sources, gratefully
correspondents to this forum supplied PAL DVDs and we found that the CyberHome
300 will play everything we throw at it, both NTSC and PAL DVD - and +created
in software and hardware. Output to a modern projector and we have a simplified
Festival presentation. Last year we received DVDs from a number of European
countries, Aus and NZ plus USA and Canada. All played without problems. All
of last year's entries were on DVD except one on VHS from Canada. So far
we have been lucky and this cheap DVD player usually priced at $40 and quite
often discounted to $30 seems to do all we ask of it (watch me proved wrong
this year!). We did a write-up on the DVD player in the AMPS Newsletter and
I suspect every member now has at least one. There is now a new version available
that upconverts from SD to HD 1080i and 720p with and HDMI connection, but
this is a a staggering $89!!! I have much more expensive DVD players with
much less capability. Hope that explains it Ron,

Ned C




"ron jarrett" <henry.jarrett@btopenworld.com> wrote:

Strange Ned that you shoulD say that as the American Motion Picture Society,
currently accepting entries for the September festival stipulated that PAL
entries must be on DVD.

Ron

[ron jarrett]

Thanks Ned, my enries will soon be on their way

Ron




"Ned C" <ned@ampsvideo.com> wrote:

There is some history here. Unlike the PAL countries where VHS players will
usually play NTSC, here in the USA VHS players only play NTSC, as with the
regular DVD players. VHS is becoming history and although we can play miniDV
and DVCAM on a DSR11 we wanted an easy life at the Festival, one player
preferebly
DVD. We did a series of tests with DVDs from a number of sources, gratefully
correspondents to this forum supplied PAL DVDs and we found that the CyberHome
300 will play everything we throw at it, both NTSC and PAL DVD - and +created
in software and hardware. Output to a modern projector and we have a simplified
Festival presentation. Last year we received DVDs from a number of European
countries, Aus and NZ plus USA and Canada. All played without problems.
All
of last year's entries were on DVD except one on VHS from Canada. So far
we have been lucky and this cheap DVD player usually priced at $40 and quite
often discounted to $30 seems to do all we ask of it (watch me proved wrong
this year!). We did a write-up on the DVD player in the AMPS Newsletter
and
I suspect every member now has at least one. There is now a new version
available
that upconverts from SD to HD 1080i and 720p with and HDMI connection, but
this is a a staggering $89!!! I have much more expensive DVD players with
much less capability. Hope that explains it Ron,

Ned C




"ron jarrett" <henry.jarrett@btopenworld.com> wrote:


Strange Ned that you shoulD say that as the American Motion Picture Society,
currently accepting entries for the September festival stipulated that
PAL
entries must be on DVD.

Ron