A client of mine shot me an e-mail recently with a couple of questions regarding video deliverables and standards conversion.

All excellent questions, and I thought I’d share some of my answers with you.

First, let me restate that one of our main services here at Video Labs www.VideoLabs.net is indeed standards conversion. 

Here is my quick-read blog about our high-end SD converter, the Alchemist Ph.C: http://tinyurl.com/6egswq

However, except for vhs, we do not do SECAM.  In my 3+ years here at Video Labs, I have yet to fulfill an order for SECAM.

For the very few SECAM inquiries I have received, it has turned out that they could also handle PAL, so we have provided that.  (Many SECAM countries have mandated PAL compatibility.  And I have even sent PAL delvierables to France - the home of SECAM.)

DVD videos do indeed need to follow the standards formats whether they are played in a set top box or computer.  Now, there is the situation, for example in Europe, where most viewers have “modern” tv sets (they are not actually true converters, but they make it work somehow within the circuitry) that can handle NTSC DVDs.   However, the reverse is not the case.  In other words, we in the US cannot play PAL DVDs in our set top boxes or our computer DVD players.

There are exceptions (and plug-ins, etc.) when it comes to DVD player software in computers, but for the most part,  the DVD software included in a computer is set for the standard of the country the computer is sold in.

Now when someone says QuickTime files, they can mean either uncompressed QTs of the above SD videos or compressed files (i.e. web files?) 

Uncompressed QT files must follow the standards of broadcast video since their main purpose is to act as a “transport” of the program – for example getting a program from an editing system to a dub house.

But for compressed files for the web, it’s a different story.  The various players (Windows Media, Flash, QT etc.) adjust playback to whatever the frame rate of the compressed file is, thereby in essence making television standards moot in this realm.

Video Labs can also provide HD mastering to tape and duplication.  FYI, we also do HD captioning: http://tinyurl.com/6bpxje, and we can do standards conversion of HD within our Final Cut Pro in conjunction with our Kona card (i.e. we do not have an HD Alchemist Ph.C, but we get it done just the same). 

From there we can output to PAL HDCAM or PAL DVCpro HD tape (fyi, our DVCproHD deck is the EX format).

OK, that’s some tidbits to pass along for now.  More later.

P.S. You may want to bookmark this link to a list of countries and their related broadcast standard: http://www.sivideo.com/9stand.htm

Your comments are welcomed below.

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