Video Duplication - Foreign Standards Conversions
 

Television broadcast standards are not uniform throughout the world. The United States and North America are on a system called NTSC, Europe is generally on a system called PAL (except for France of course), and parts of Asia and the Middle East are on a system called SECAM.

Converting U.S. videos to foreign formats is tricky business. It's easy to think you have the conversion process under control, then a tape comes in that won't transfer well. On one program the conversion will look fine. On another, motion-based artifacts appear.

There is a variety of equipment, even consumer equipment, capable of making conversions to foreign video formats, and in some instances this equipment will make playable copies. But major engineering compromises are involved. When problems appear, there's little that can be done.

Artifacts, synchronization, and other assorted problems are caused by a poor conversion process. The best process is one in which the conversion is handled by a separate, stand alone machine called the Standards Converter. The gold standard for foreign conversion machines, capable of correctly handling every variation and all situations, is a top of the line Snell & Wilcox Standards Converter, along with PAL Panasonic AG6840 VHS and PAL Sony Betacam SP and ¾-inch recorders.

Another area where a major investment is required is in monitoring the dubs as they are being made. You can't play a PAL format dub on a U.S. standard monitor. Likewise, technical elements such as signal amplitudes and color information require special PAL monitoring equipment. Many duplication facilities won't have this equipment.

When processing video into foreign formats, the sound must be delayed relative to the picture. If this is not properly done, in some scenes the picture will be ahead of the voice by a frame or two, and lip-sync will be off just that tiny amount that makes the viewer realize something is wrong. In order to correct this inherent problem we have variable audio delays added along with the standards conversion. This creates perfect synchronization between video and audio signals.

Countries and their broadcast standards