[edavis]

I have a few questions concerning Final Cut Express and iDVD.

I need to make a PAL DVD for a wedding I shot. I have exported the movie from FCE as a PAL movie, and then burned it as PAL on iDVD. This worked fine, except I did not get the chapter markers using the "Using QuickTime Conversion" option for export. (At least, I THINK it worked fine. I don't have any PAL equipment to check it on...)

So, my question is, if I export the movie normally, using NTSC, will iDVD do the PAL conversion? In other words, will iDVD burn a PAL DVD from an NTSC movie file?

[Steve SpotOn]

I wouldn't bother trying to convert.... most DVD players here in PAL land will play an NTSC disc.

I doubt your first try did work. NTSC and PAL are very different (frames rates, image size etc.). Ideally you should convert in FCE (There are some plug-ins try:
http://www.nattress.com/standardsConversion.htm) and then work through iDVD as a PAL format DVD.

Steve

[k_munic]

Hi edavis,

most/all PAL dvd standalones play NTSC too, but NTSC player don't play PAL.
the Quicktime engine offers some basic PAL<<>>NTSC conversion, so iDVD indeed can convert the systems, eg. an NTSC iMovie project into a PAL video-dvd, but reuslts don't satisfy...

export as dv stream and convert that file with JES Deinterlacer, a free app with very good results (for a software converter, hardware converters do much better of course...)

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeschot/home.html#DEI

[edavis]

Steve,

Thanks for the reply. When you doubt that my first attempt worked, I wonder why. When I put the finished DVD into my iMac, the DVD player plays the DVD just fine. My US DVD Player does NOT read it. When I do a "Get Info" on the DVD, the OS replies that it is a PAL format DVD. So, I THINK my attempt worked. Do you have another check that would confirm one way or another, short of buying a PAL player and rewiring my house to 220V?

Also, I appreciated the info that most European players can handle either NTSC or PAL. I was not aware of this.