Re: Kate videos

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

>I have seen the Kate Christmas Special, the SNL performances, and several
>other Kate clips on video. Most of the audio is fine, but the video part of
>what I've seen is atrocious, like it was filmed with a camera from a TV set
>or something. Is this normal for the older stuff, or are there better quality
>copies out there somewhere? If anyone could send me a good quality copy of the
>Christmas Special I would be most appreciative, and would gladly pay postage,
>etc.

   In the Bad Old Days all Kate video was like that. Kate video is
usually in a different video system called PAL. PAL has a different
frame rate, number of lines and color encoding than the NTSC system
used in North America. To convert one to the other, the video signal
must be stored in memory, and as PAL is 25 frames per second (fps)
and NTSC is 30 fps, five new intermediate frames must be created.

   When memory and high-speed digital-to-analog converters were
expensive, PAL to NTSC transcoders cost well over $100,000 US.
Production services that owned these devices charged several
hundred dollars per hour to do conversions. So the "poor man's"
standards converter was to aim an NTSC camera at a PAL video
screen. The older the camera the better. The result was...
better than nothing. Greenish and flickering. Sure to induce
nausea in all but the most dediKateed.

   Now that memory is cheap, Panasonic and Awia have introduced
inexpensive converters, the Panasonic WV-NS1 can do a pretty
good job converting all formats to all others in hi-fi. The
Awia units are monophonic PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL. The
Panasonic unit is less than $2000 US.


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)
                                   katefans@chinet.chinet.com (ours)