Re: question: worldwide formats and conversions

Well. We're a budding international organization, and initially we thought we'd be doing most of our shooting and editing either in India or Nepal, where I'm writing from now. I was thinking the same way you were -- if we're doing most of our work in a PAL world, then I should be working with PAL equipment.

But now it looks like we are setting up offices in the US, where we will have a strong presence and the PAL idea doesn't seem as genius as I initially thought. So now I'm questioning selling the equipment, or at least upgrading some of our existing equipment to shoot at NTSC frame rates.

Even here in India and Nepal I see a lot of Bollywood DVD's released in NTSC format, so it made me question my whole process. Indeed most of the TVs and players I see sold on the streets of Kathmandu are multisystem. So I assume if that's happening here, then it must be the same in other parts of Asia, in Europe and in South America. But I'm just guessing.

So the questions that remain for me are:

1) If we're heading to the states, then should I stop shooting PAL altogether? Sell what I have and gear up again with NTSC equipment?

2) What is a "multisystem" DVD player? Is it truly multisystem in which each DVD is played in it's native standard? Or does it have some kind of standards converter in it that will play your movie, but compromise it's quality?

3) If the DVD players are performing the conversion, what's going to look prettier -- something you converted yourself with Nattress or the DVD player?

UUgghh.