Radium wrote:
Is it true that in the days of B&W film and optical track audio, that
the films were formatted differently in different countries?

AFAIK no.

When magnetic videotapes were the norm, USA and Canada used NTSC,
France and Russia used SECAM, and the rest of the world used PAL.

Actually the videotape systems accomodated the TV systems of the countries.
It wasn't quite so simple, the (former) Soviet Union and the
Warsaw pact countries use SECAM broadcast using PAL type signals. Some
Arab countries used it to, hence the name ME-SECAM on mnay VCRs.

The UK, South Africa and Austrailia use the same system for transmission,
which is different than the other PAL countries.

It still exists in DVDs. While they are YUV encoded digital video, the frame
rates are 24/1001, (NTSC film), 24 (PAL film), 25 (PAL) and 30/1001 (NTSC)
frames per second. This has nothing to do with zones and depending upon
the player, they convert it as needed to match the TV system.

Geoff.


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Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
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