NTSC - what a bunch of junk

[TheMud]

Anyway... When you put the 2 technologies against each other PAL is the best...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL

NTSC has a lot of isues... Cant handle colours that well and so on...

[Khephren]

PAL interlace is a flickery bastard, for sure. I used to do all my artwork in interlace. My eyes would strobe for about an hour after i'd come off the machine! Shame they never came up with a PAL 60 mode like the dreamcast had.

of course, now LCD are the norm, the flicker is pretty much eliminated.

PAL games should not strobe, as they are not in an interlaced mode.

[Zac67]

PAL60 is composite video using PAL color modulation combined with NTSC vertical timing (e.g. used for somewhat PAL-compatible playback of NTSC video). When you look at RGB video - where there's no color modulation - PAL / NTSC only differ in timing. So a PAL Amiga running in NTSC mode actually does output PAL60.

[Tripitaka]

PAL uses 50 Hz, NTSC 60 Hz vertical refresh - so NTSC means less flicker.

This isn't quite as true as you make out. Certainly the time periods involved would mean PAL was more "flickery". However, PAL has a better resolution so the size of the flicker is less.

As the perception of vision varies from person to person some people notice the flicker in PAL more, they are more perceptive to time interval, and some people notice the flicker size in NTSC more, they are more perceptive to the flicker size.

Overall the quality of the connection tends to be way more important. Composite is quite frankly a steaming pile of plop, avoid it at all costs.

It also matters of course, the nature of whatever you are viewing. A Workbench screen is generated by the Amiga directly. If one was talking about a video the matter of source material, standards conversion, drop frames and all make the issue far more complex, but I'm not going to go into that right now, I'm far too busy today.

Sadly, in my experience, most of the video industry (I worked for many years as a DVD author for Touchstone productions) have less technical knowledge than they should have. Take out a DVD and check out some still menus, you will find many that flicker like mad, the sub-pic (selection highlight) in particular. This is easily improved by applying a single pixel vertical blur to the menu and sup-pic. Or better still by avoiding odd numbers of vertical pixels to any horizontal lines in the menu design. Not difficult but seldom done, sadly.

And all that's before we even consider the screen itself of course.

[Zac67]

This isn't quite as true as you make out. Certainly the time periods involved would mean PAL was more "flickery". However, PAL has a better resolution so the size of the flicker is less.

Sounds slightly esoteric to me.
Which "time periods" are you referring to? Can't get the "size of the flicker" thing either, sorry...

It also matters of course, the nature of whatever you are viewing. A Workbench screen is generated by the Amiga directly. If one was talking about a video the matter of source material, standards conversion, drop frames and all make the issue far more complex, but I'm not going to go into that right now, I'm far too busy today.

Filmed video material generally is less susceptible to flicker as vertical contrast will usually be less. A computer output can have extreme contrast between odd/even lines which will cause severe flicker due to the brightness difference.

[Tripitaka]

Sounds slightly esoteric to me.
Which "time periods" are you referring to? Can't get the "size of the flicker" thing either, sorry...

The time periods I refer to are the one 50th and one 60th of a second timing for the fields for PAL and NTSC respectively.

The size of the flicker is due to the physical height of the pixels, smaller on PAL than NTSC due to superior resolution.

Filmed video material generally is less susceptible to flicker as vertical contrast will usually be less. A computer output can have extreme contrast between odd/even lines which will cause severe flicker due to the brightness difference.

Indeed it is, unless of course someone in the film is wearing a thinly (horizontally) stripped item of clothing then be prepares for moire madness.

As for computer outputs, yes, you are correct. Sometimes playing with things like Workbench colours can help. Now what was that prog that doubled the thickness of the horizontal lines on WB? I can't remember.

Of course, filmed video material often suffers from more "staggering" with NTSC video than PAL. This is due to the conversion from 24p film to NTSCs 60 fields (30 frames interlaced). Interpolation between frames is required. It is far easier to speed the film up a fraction for PALs 25 frames of course. If you need me to clarify anything else feel free to ask.

[Khephren]

VisualPrefs? I'm sure that lets you double a lot of the line thickness, as well as change the colours so there was less contrast.

There was also 'magicTV' for 16 colour AGA workbench's. God knows how that worked, might as well have been magic to me!

I used to use a combo of these. Of course they were bugger all use for my two main packages- DPaint and Imagine. So strobe eye continued

adding a SCART cable made the biggest difference to me.

[Zac67]

The time periods I refer to are the one 50th and one 60th of a second timing for the fields for PAL and NTSC respectively.

Re-reading the post, I must've got you wrong here (think I read "PAL is less flickery here").

However, I still don't follow you on the "physical height" of the pixel. Sure, PAL has a higher resolution, but on a CRT, a scan line drawn is always the same height and covers the same area. On PAL there are more lines (tighter spacing) than on (full frame) NTSC, so the pic appears slightly brighter - which means more contrast & more flicker.

On an LCD it's another story, but then again - that's a progressive display and shouldn't be flickering at all.

[Khephren]

On an LCD it's another story, but then again - that's a progressive display and shouldn't be flickering at all.

Tell that to the el cheapo LCD i just plugged my Xbox into. Copied my workbench over to Xwinuae, and it's flickering really badly. It's like 1988 all over again

[Sandman]

IMHO, this is what killed the Amiga for me back in the day and forced my switch to PC.

While we had more colors than VGA PC's, the only liveable resolutions you could run the Amiga in made it look like an Atari 2600, unless you had a RTG card but who could afford one of those (Not me!).

I remember seeing a friend playing Wing Commander on his 486 and it looked great. Wing Commander on my Amiga looked pale by comparison with the the pilots hand looking so grainy it looked like he had chicken-pox!

[Khephren]

wing commander did not run in interlace. it ran in 320x200 (same rez as PC VGA version). Amigas standard mode (in PAL areas) is 320x256, which is higher so that's not why it looks grainy. The reasons why it's grainy are: It's for ECS, which normal colour max is 64, VGA is 256. VGA wing commander runs in a chunky pixel format, amiga uses slower bitplains, so they used less bitplanes to speed it up. Also they ran it in 320x200, probably for ease of conversion, and to keep the speed up. Also, it's ported from the 16 colour EGA version, which is butt ugly.

The CD32 version (which also runs on the A1200)  has loads more colours, and looks more like it's VGA counterpart. Although it still runs at 320x200.

[guest7146]

NTSC - Never Twice the Same Colour.

Hardly surprising.  Americans can't even spell the word colour, let alone create it!

:lol:

[nicholas]

NTSC - Never Twice the Same Colour.

Hardly surprising.  Americans can't even spell the word colour, let alone create it!

:lol:

NTSC TV programs look like clothes that have been through a boil wash by mistake!

[Khephren]

Never seen NTSC TV. Was it really that bad?

[nicholas]

Never seen NTSC TV. Was it really that bad?

Yep, we are spoilt with PAL.

[Pentad]

NTSC - Never Twice the Same Colour.

Hardly surprising.  Americans can't even spell the word colour, let alone create it!

:lol:

LOL!  When I was in film school (we shot a lot of video to save money) we called it:

Never The Same Color


I hated NTSC then and now.