NTSC(National Television System Commitee)
and PAL(Phase Alternating Line) are Television Broadcast formats.

There are two TV video standards, NTSC and PAL. NTSC is used in North America, and PAL is used almost everywhere else in the world. Most hardware devices (DVD or VCD players) that play PAL video resolution out on a NTSC monitor correctly will cut approximately 24 lines of resolution from the top and bottom of a PAL image. Almost all VCDs are in PAL resolution, as they are manufactured in Asia. This is usually not an issue, because not much details are lost by such truncation. Note : NTSC has 352 X 240 video resolution and PAL's video resolution is 352 X 288. This PAL to NTSC video conversion / truncation problem does not exist when viewed on a PC monitor as the PC just displays the whole image. Nowadays, most TVs and DVD players are multisync, meaning that it will play both NTSC or PAL format, thus VCDs in PAL format will play well on these players.

So far so good

another thing is PAL is 25 frames per second and NTSC is 30 fps. for every frame there are odd and even feilds, so for 30 frames there are 60 feilds. film, which is 24fps will translate to 30 frames at the same speed, the math is hard to explain but i will if necessary. so when you watch a pal movie it is actaully shorter then the NTSC version since it is 24 frames in slightly less then a second when translated.

got that??:p?

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot apprecieate the great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."

-------Pauline Kael

Couple of figure corrections...

NTSC is actually something close to 29.97fps, which is why it has to be put through hiddeous complex processes (pull-down) to convert it to 24fps (suitable for film).

For the purposes of NLEs, PAL is 720x576 pixels (at standard 4:3 ratio) and NTSC is 720x480 - dimensions of each field are half of these figures, which is what elhi has posted.

Ben C.

--
filmmaking.net
(Incorporating the Internet Filmmaker's FAQ)

Please note the opinions expressed here are those of the author only and do not constitute legal advice. The author cannot accept and liability whatsoever for inaccurate or outdated information contained within.
--