If you have a tape recorded on equipment sold in the UK, then your recording will use the normal UK television system called PAL. You won't need to read any more of this unless you really want to. Even if you took your camcorder abroad, the recordings will still be PAL and you have nothing to do.
If however your tape was recorded on equipment originally sold in, or intended for, a market other than the UK, you will need to find out what television system your recording is in. There are three main television systems; PAL as used in UK, Hong Kong and much of Europe; NTSC as used in USA and Japan (and others), and finally SECAM as used in France, parts of the Middle East and the former USSR. For full lists see these three pages:
On www.video99.co.uk you will see these little boxed against each format. If you see a green YES against the system which your tape is recorded in, then the tape can be transferred to DVD, but please email me first if it is not a PAL recording just to let me know. If however you see a red NO against the television system for the tape format you are interested in, it might still be worth emailing me to check, because I am getting new equipment in all the time. I have created the complete list below. When there is a blank in the box it simply means that a particular television system was never likely to have been recorded on that type of cassette.
Television system recordings supported by www.video99.co.uk |
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| Video Format | PAL | NTSC | SECAM | Notes |
| Betamax | YES | YES | YES | Including Beta I/II/III for NTSC (very few UK companies support all of these). |
| VHS/SVHS | YES | YES | YES | SECAM was recorded as PAL on S-VHS machines, so no special player required. |
| Video 2000 | YES | NO | SECAM very rare on V2000, NTSC never officially released. | |
| Video8/Hi8/Digital8 | YES | YES | Including NTSC Long Play (few UK companies support this even if they think they do). | |
| miniDV/DVCAM | YES | YES | Also HDV in
25/30/50/60 frames per second. |
|
| DVCPRO | YES | NO | PAL only for DVCPRO. | |
| microMV | YES | YES | ||
| Betacam/BetacamSP | YES | YES | ||
| Digital Betacam (DigiBeta) | YES | YES | ||
| N1500/N1700/SVR | YES | NO | SECAM very rare on these formats, NTSC never existed. | |
| Umatic(low/hi/SP) | YES | YES | YES * | Including NTSC High Band/SP (few UK companies support this). SECAM in low band, not on high band (very rare). |
| MII | YES | NO | MII in PAL only. | |
| CVC | YES | YES | Partly | video99 must be the
only business in the world to run CVC tapes in both NTSC and PAL (SECAM
colour quality limited) |
| DVD | YES | YES | ||
Generally I record your DVD in the UK PAL format which can be viewed
on
equipment throughout Europe and all PAL and SECAM countries. But
if you
particularly need a DVD to be in NTSC for viewing on USA DVD players
for
example, please
email
me since we have that capability. Note that the television system
is not
directly related to DVD regions. All the DVDs we create are
region free and
so can be played on any DVD player in the world, we only need to get
the PAL or
NTSC television system correct for the country the DVD will be played
in. If taking DV-AVI video files, they will be recorded with the
same frame rate as the original tape unless you request otherwise, to
keep the quality as high as possible.
Last updated February 2015