Need help transferring video from camcorder to CD/DVD

Factual Questions
1

OK, so here is the scenario.

My dad is over visiting me in the US again. He has brought his camcorder with him on which he myself, my american brother-in-law and him out shooting on a range. My BIL wanted a copy of the film but when my dad puts it on DVD in the UK it won’t work over here in the US. The UK is region 2 and the US is region 1.

We tried connecting his camcorder to my TV and it plays but the picture is in black and white. When we hooked it straight to my DVD recorder it looked like the tracking was off or something because the image was kind of flickering and scrolling up and down the screen.

I can get the exact specs for the camcorder and any further info, but based on this, does anyone thing it might be possible to put the video on to a US DVD so my BIL can have a copy? Any thoughts on who might do this? I thought about going to somewhere like Wolf Camera, but when I asked the local one here, they said they could not do it because they did not have the capability.

2

The UK uses the PAL/SECAM line system for TVs. The US uses NTSC.

A US DVD player or camcorder outputs NTSC. A UK player outputs PAL/SECAM.

That is why his camcorder will not play well on your telly.

I am in a similar situation in that my family is in the UK. I bought them a VHS player that plays NTSC encoded tapes onto a PAL/SECAM telly.

It works great and I send them four or five tapes per year.

If you want to do digital (DVDs etc) search around for a multi line system player/recorder.

Edit: here you go. I think this is where I got my VHS player from: All Region Code Free DVD & Blu-ray Players NTSC PAL

3

You could also take the tape to someone who normally converts old movie film (8mm) to VHS/DVD. They should have the software to capture the video and output it into whatever format you need whether it is NTSC or PAL. I remember the option in Final Cut Pro that you could set which format you wanted it to be exported in. Or maybe that was the DVD burning software we used. I can’t remember, either way they should be able to help you out.

4

Most modern DVD players will happily play a PAL DVD here in the states as long as it is not region coded (or your DVD player is region free). Why was the burned DVD region coded in the first place though?

Regardless, you should be able to open the DVD on your PC provided that you DVD drive is either region free, or you are using a region code removing program like DVD-Idle.

This way you can rip the DVD to your hardrive, and make a new copy.

If you don’t have the know how/computer to do this you’ll have to pay a good amount of money to a video/photo store to get yourself a copy. If you have the time and all else fails I’d be happy to help you out.

5

I recently used Nero 7 to convert a PAL DVD to NTSC. It worked fine but was a little slow and there was a noticeable drop in quality. I think DVD Santa does much the same thing and is cheaper.

6

AFAIK, the DVD region codes do not apply to consumer-level recordable DVDs; they were an anti-free-trade measure imposed by the big movie studios for their commercially-pressed discs. (They are completely-optional for movie producers as well.)

You are probably dealing with either PAL/NTSC incompatibilities, or recordable-disc-type incompatibilities. You mention hooking the recorder up to US equipment, so it sounds like the PAL/NTSC problem.

Does the camcorder say that it is PAL on it?
What kind of DVD is it recordiong on? (8-cm? DVD-R or DVD+R or DVD-RAM)

My DVD players, bought here in Toronto, will play PAL and NTSC. One’s a JVC; the other’s a nameless $50 Chinese unit. The JVC will non play + discs, just - discs and pre-recorded discs. The Chinese one will play just about anything DVDish.