> I am a professional videographer when I am not a starving photographer. Can
> you explain PAL and how it differs from NTSC? I have always been curious. It
> was actually explained to me about 10 years ago, but I work in America and
> never met any PAL users. Now I can't remember anything about that format.
> Take care,
> Gregory david Stempel
> FIREFRAMEi m a g i n g
graham a brown <gabrown@axionet.com> writes:
> I think the difference is the in the number of line per screen.
Hmm. Yes, in practice almost all PAL systems are 625-line, and NTSC is
always (UIMM) 525 lines. But IIRC, Brazil uses a slightly oddball PAL
system with 525 lines.
The difference is in the colour coding. Early NTSC systems had
difficulty getting the colour signal exactly in phase, so the whole
picture tended to drift, and go pink or green, which is indeed why it's
called "NTSC", standing for "Never The Same Colour". But the PAL system,
which was designed at least ten years later used a phase flip ("Phase
Alternate Line"), so if the colour signal was slightly out of phase,
half the lines went pinkish, and half went greenish, which cancels out;
thus in 1960-something PAL provided better colour than NTSC. It's all
academic now, since the circuits just get it right anyway, but the
encoding schemes haven't been changed. (Anyway, the so-called
"Entertainment Distribution Industry" likes it that way, because it
helps them rip people off.)
Brian Chandler
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