I'm looking to purchase a 3CCD camcorder, either a panasonic or sony, one of the low level ones, to film skating.

Will it make a difference when capturing the footage onto my computer if the camera is NTSC? and if so could I capture it and then change it to PAL? or will this reduce the quality.

I will want to capture the footage, edit it with Adobe Premiere and then export it and turn it into a high compressed quicktime file. And later on maybe create a DVD.

As far as MiniDV is concerned:

Pal = 720x576 running at 25 Frames or 50 Fields

Ntsc = 720x480 running at 30 Frames or 60 Fields

Now, when you're converting NTSC to PAL you have to use a decent conversion method, as you cant just chop 10 fields/5 frames out in a row without the video becomming juddered looking, also, it will have to be upscaled, although - the quality of modern upscalers these days is pretty good so I wouldn't worry about that.

However for the conversion I'd look for a program that either drops frames inteligently, or blends some frames together. And you'd be suprised by the amount of apps that do not do any of that.

Of course all of the above applies in Vise Versa for a PAL to NTSC conversion : P

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It's not about what camera you use or how much it cost.

It's about what you shoot,
how you shot it,
and how you edit it :P