If you’re looking to set your camera to 30fps and the option doesn’t exist and you’re confused because the box the camera came in said it’s available. Then you see the Video System is set to PAL. You change it to NTSC and Voila, it shows the 30fps option. How did it happen? What does it all mean?
NTSC and PAL were the standard systems designed for TV broadcasting in the 40s and 50s. If it’s a global standard, why are there two of them? Well, let’s dive into the history of NTSC and PAL and find out what are the differences between the two.
Back in 1940, TV manufacturers of the time weren’t consistent and this was causing a lot of transmission and clarity problems for broadcasters and consumers. That’s when in the United States, the FCC established the National Television System Committee to set the standard. This came to be known as the NTSC standard which was designed to be compatible with both black and white and colour TVs. Even though modern broadcasters have switched to the digital system, the number of resolution lines and frame rate they use is still continued from the NTSC standard. NTSC is mostly found in North America, certain countries in South America, the Philippines, Myanmar, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.
NTSC had some issues such as it was designed for electrical current that ran on 60Hz whereas Europe ran on 50Hz and there was colour disruption during poor weather. This was solved by the Germans in the late 1950s with the system called PAL(Phase Alternating Line). PAL covers most of Western Europe, China, India, Australia, most of Africa, etc. Here are the key differences between the two.
In terms of colour encoding, NTSC receivers have tint colour correction which ensures some adjustments are made to the signal before displaying it. Its higher saturation even displays off-hue colours. But PAL uses colour signal phase alteration to remove hue errors.
In terms of frames per second(fps), PAL runs on 50Hz electricity hence it is 25fps whereas NTSC runs on 60Hz electricity so it is 29.97fps. Wait a minute, how can you transfer a partial frame? Well, during the era of the black and white TV, it was 30fps. Then when colour was introduced, black and white TVs were not able to interpret colour and brightness signals correctly leading to errors in the display. To solve this problem, an additional chrominance signal was added to the broadcast that black and white TVs could ignore. This extra signal lengthened the time taken to transmit a complete frame making it 29.97 fps. PAL didn’t have that problem as it was designed for colour broadcast.
In terms of resolution, NTSC delivered 525 lines per frame of which 480 was visible. For PAL, this corresponds to 625 lines of which 576 are visible. Picture quality depends on frame rate and resolution. The lower the frame rate, the faster the image is displayed. The more resolution, the more the quality. Hence, PAL has a better picture quality.
So, NTSC or PAL, which to choose depends on what is the location of your audience. If you want a global viewership it’s better to use NTSC as PAL DVD players and VCRs are able to play NTSC whereas NTSC players can’t play PAL Video. Even though, most broadcasting has changed to digital, NTSC and PAL are still used colloquially today to refer to differences in refresh rate across regions.