Need to send promotional DVD overseas….. what format?

[breaksk8master]

To my understanding the United States uses NTSC and the rest of the world PAL format.

I do all of my editing with adobe premier pro 2.0.

I am an Entertainer and I need to send our a promotional DVD to Agents not only in the United States but also Overseas to the UK and Japan.

So my question is…… how do i know weither to send PAL or NTSC overseas?

Am I already on the right track?

Any advice would be greatly apreciated.

[Anonymous]

Well, you have two problems. The first is your video format, the second could be your DVD format.

As far as video format, a lot of the world uses PAL. If all else fails, call the agents you’re sending videos to and ask them. They’ll probably know. You can also google for your answer. There’s a great world map of what countries use which at this link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC

Once you’ve converted your video to whichever format you need to, you also need to make sure that your DVD burner is either regionless, or can be set to the region you’re sending the DVD to. As a rule, most DVD burners anymore are regionless, but still, a quick reading of the manual never hurts.

In theory, once you convert your video to PAL format and burn a regionless DVD, it can be played anywhere that PAL is the accepted format.

[Anonymous]

Japan is NTSC. UK is PAL.

[worb]

Why not send both? That way you are covered no matter what format they use.

[TheDubster(Greg)]

Here is a Chart you can use to look up which one is the right format. Also remember that country codes are another issue. Most DVD players can’t only switch country region setting 5 times or so. There is such a thing as region free players but most people don’t have access to this.

[deborbon]

Hi there,

I don’t know where you’re sending it to exactly, but most everyone has a computer, that means video format is not an issue. All you have to do is encode your work into universal FLASH using any good video encoding software. Once you’ve converted your demo, just put the darn thing online.

Benefits:
A) You will save yourself the shipping of the CD, burning, duplication cost, etc.
B) If you use a tracking link, you can track how many people have seen or downloaded your demo
C) Immediate feedback

That’s what I would do anyway. This is 2008, why should shipping a single CD be an issue when you have an exploding TV video market online?

Deborbon

[videowolf]

I burned a dvd last year (and made sure that ALL regions were selected when authoring). It played in Budapest with no problems.

[matjusm]

Some DVD players are actually region free or can be made to be so. With my Philips DVP630 (living in Europe) I just had to enter a code into the player and after that I could play any region I wanted.

[BrianFisher]

Here is a great list for all of the NTSC and PAL countries in pdf format.
http://www.rdiconnect.com/support/policy/ntsc_pal.pdf
You can print it out and use it for future reference.

[Author]

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