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:
PAL countries
NTSC countries
SECAM countries (note that digital camcorders like miniDV, Digital8 and microMV do not record in SECAM but use PAL.)
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.
|
Television systems |
||
| PAL | NTSC | SECAM |
| YES | YES | YES |
When there is a blank in the box like this:
|
Television systems |
||
| PAL | NTSC | |
| YES | YES | |
..it simply means that a particular television system (in this case SECAM) was never likely to have been recorded on that type of cassette.
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.