[MEncoder-users] Encoding Pal DVD to AVI or SVCD for NTSC

[n0dalus]

On 12/3/05, Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
>
> Better? PAL is worse in most ways, the most notable being the
> irreversible dotcrawl and rainbow effects due to 4-refresh period of
> the chroma carrier's phase rather than just 2-refresh. The only
> benefit is a few extra lines of vertical resolution.
>
> Rich
>

Unless I'm mistaken, I've noticed dotcrawl on NTSC too. I don't know
if I've seen rainbow effects on NTSC before but on PAL yes it can be
very bad (especially pictures of skyscrapers that just go totally
rainbow -- I'm assuming that's what you're talking about. I think you
get chroma shifting problems on both formats?).

If you do a google search for 'PAL vs NTSC' you do get an overwhelming
number of pages in support of PAL. Maybe this is just a widely held
but ignorant point of view.

Personally, as someone who is used to the 4% speedup (but smoothness)
of PAL, when I watch pulldown'd NTSC I see a slightly visible speed
up, slow down, speed up, slow down, all the time. This really annoys
me.

I know you are an expert on this stuff, so I don't really want to
argue here (I'm probably wrong anyway), but it's always interesting to
discuss.

I think with the movement to HDTV anyway, the whole NTSC vs PAL thing
will stop being an issue. (People can fight about HDTV formats then
instead)

n0dalus.