I have a question, because I have currently no opportunity to try this out anywhere: How do European standalone DVD players handle 352 x 240 x 30fps streams, resp. American ones the 352 x 288 x 25fps format?

I have only a computer to play them, which doesn't care about format at all, of course.

More specifically I have several VCD streams, some in PAL and some in NTSC, and I was wondering whether you can burn them all on one CD without converting one half into the other format. My computer's not minding isn't sufficient evidence of correctness, of course.

What will standalone players do which encounter both PAL and NTSC streams on a VCD? Does anyone have experience in that area? Can you put my mind at rest as to whether they're universally playable?

-- Ulrich Schreglmann (ulrich.schreglmann@t-online.de), May 03, 2000

Answers

I have done this with some sample MPEGs. Some were PAL and some were NTSC. If I set my stand alone Raite 715 DVD player to NTSC output only, it switches between PAL and NTSC MPEGs just fine.

I guess the trick is to be able to lock the output. If you let the DVD player auto-detect the DVD format it will output video in the original format.

I hope this helps.

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), May 03, 2000.

I've played PAL VCD coming from down under on my Pioneer DV302C and DV525. It doesn't care what format (PAL or NTSC) the VCD has. It just play it. It don't even have an option to set for it. As for putting both formats on one single disc, I've not tried it so i don't know that for sure. What i've done is put multiple video bitrates on one single CD (i.e. standard VCD, 1300kb/s, 1800kb/s, 2000kb/s, 2500kb/s, 2600kb/s), and all of the clips play fine on the Pioneer. I would imagine that the different formats will play fine as well.

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), May 03, 2000.

Wingstarr, your pioneer 525 Accpeted 2600 rate vcds?? wAS THAT A TYPO?/ iF NOT WHAT DID YOU DO, MINE WOULD NOT ACCPET (AFTER NUMEROUS TESTING) ANYTHING HIGHER THEN 2500. THANKS DAMN IT I HIT CAP LOCKS AGAIN, MY CRUDDY TYPING

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), May 03, 2000.

I have no trouble playing a mixture of NTSC & PAL on the same VCD from my Philips 725 but its connected to a multi system TV so when it gets the NTSC bit it actually switches to NTSC and I see it in its native format. I think the other replies here maybe based on non multi system TV's and the DVD player may be doing an on-the-fly conversion for the non multi-system unit. I have the Hollywood+ decoder card installed in the computer and that will do both methods to a studio TV monitor that is part of the edit "suite".

However, I had trouble with VP4 menu structures in both formats with the multi system TV because the menu play items did not seem to have a instruction as to what format to use and the shape was often wrong, my guess is that the on-the-fly conversions to a non system TV does not have the same problem.

Just another bit of information previously reported here.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), May 03, 2000.

Ulrich

Most German TV's are multi-system, my German Loewe is only one of several that do that, Grundig etc etc. My daughter lives in Frankfurt and a PAL or NTSC mixture on a VCD works fine.

Cheers

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), May 03, 2000.

No problem at all. I have a 1992 CDi machine that plays NTSC and PAL VCD flawlessly on a PAL TV.

-- Jean-Luc Picard (jl.picard@startrekmail.com), May 04, 2000.

Doug,

Yes it does take the 2600kb/s video bitrate. I capture my video clip using the RT-6 mpeg1 hardware encoder with M-filter at this rate and trim the clip using ifilmedit and burn with nero. This bitrate is the max which will play without problem on the DV525. If I go any higher then this bitrate, the sound will start to skip slightly and the video will play at a slightly slower rate. I did try it even at 3000kb/s, and i don't even want to mention about the audio part :) picture quality wise, it is the best here, but it's moving in slow motion :)

-- (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), May 05, 2000.