[dr5chrome]

Hello - I was reading on a few pages that the K1 has changeable video format, but my K1 does not. On another page listing the spec's of the K1 it says n/a next to the PAL/NTSC.

Can the K1 change its video standard? Does it matter?

thanks. dw

[Alex645]

Hello - I was reading on a few pages that the K1 has changeable video format, but my K1 does not. On another page listing the spec's of the K1 it says n/a next to the PAL/NTSC.

Can the K1 change its video standard? Does it matter?

I do not believe it matters anymore. Back in the analog television days, it mattered, but in modern digital monitors and televisions, they can accept either standard and convert them.

The only situation where I could see this would matter is if you had an old CRT monitor (think Sony Trinitron or any pre-flat and thin screen TV/monitor). But they didn't have HDMI ports.

The changeable video format on the K1 menu is referring to resolution choices, interlace vs. progressive scan, frame rate, etc.

[othar]

My K-3 doesn't list the PAL/NTSC option either, but I can select the frame rate in the menu which basically does the same thing (PAL...50/25fps vs NTSC...60/30fps).
For modern playbackdevices it usually doesn't matter which one you use. The different standarts just where necessary because of the different power line frequencies in the US (60Hz) and Europe (50Hz).

[dr5chrome]

Thanks Guys !

[Bob 256]

PAL (Phase Alternate Line) and NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) are holdover terms from analog days but are sometimes applied to digital video, and there are considerations there also. British/European standards favor 25/50 fps while the US and others use 30/60 fps (framerates). If these are HD signals and are fed to an HD monitor, it should be able to adapt to either as othar mentioned, but if you make a DVD or Blu-Ray, a player may have trouble if it isn't made for the right standard. I have several DVDs made with the 25 fps standard and they will not play on my US player, however, I can reformat these videos to the US standard using software. Herein lies the rub. If you go from one standard to the other, interpolation or frame dropping may be involved, and while you end up with a viewable conversion, smooth motion can be compromised (often unnoticeable though). Therefore, it's best to shoot at the framerate which agrees with the most used playback method

K-1 frame rate is selectable in movie menu 1 >> Movie Capture Settings >> Framerate, and can be chosen as several different HD standards there. You aren't choosing PAL or NTSC but only something derived from those standards. (Note: the actual NTSC standard wasn't exactly 30; I believe the exact value (29.97) is also available somewhere in the HD standards, but has little application nowadays being originally linked to the color subcarrier frequency).

Bottom line: I would opt for 60 fps if possible since I live in a US environment but 60 fps also captures just a bit more motion information than does 50 fps, and if you drop it to 30 fps for slow-motion effects, it does a bit better than dropping 50 fps to 25 fps. Keep in mind that 60 fps (progressive) uses twice the storage as does 30 fps (progressive) so it will gobble up your SD card that much faster. The K-1, however, only does 60i (interlace) which uses the same memory space vs time as 30p (progressive) so no 60p options in the K-1 for to worry about.

I've kind of breezed through the descriptions and I'm sure there are some video experts in this forum who can give you better details if you're interested.

[swanlefitte]

Pal resolution is 720x576 pixels. Ntsc is 720x 486. So different aspect ratios as well as fps. With modern 16:9 aspect ration and 1920x1080 pixels either would only make sense to save space or for old tech. For old tech I would use modern software to convert. To save space i would just use the k1's smallest file size.

[nosliwmit]

I didn’t think PAL and NTSC mattered much these days but my 2 year old audio/video receiver, connected to my TV via HDMI, only displays the on-screen menu if I select the correct output format (I forget which). I was quite surprised!

[ProfessorBuzz]

PAL vs NTSC applied to the Composite Video output (was the old RCA connector on your TV and VCR). Not really relevant as today's HDMI interface takes care of it all.