‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ sums up CBC’s approach to the matter of standards conversion at its European operations.

CBC needed a solution for its news bureaus in London, Jerusalem and Moscow, all of which feed video back to its Toronto headquarters via London. A complication arose in that Toronto, as with all of CBC’s Canadian operations, broadcasts in the NTSC 525-line video format, whereas Europe and Jerusalem work in PAL 625.

So, why not just shoot in the NTSC format and keep it simple? Initially, that’s exactly what CBC did.

‘However, we found that shooting in NTSC when the Europeans were using PAL meant that we couldn’t share footage [with them] easily,’ says Bob Conroy, director of production for CBC news, current affairs, and Newsworld. ‘As well, whenever we tapped into pool footage, it would be shot in PAL. We would have to convert it to NTSC before we could edit it.’

This is when CBC had a brainwave back in 2000 – why not shoot in PAL on Sony Betacam SX camcorders, and then convert the footage to NTSC when feeding it back to Canada? And so they did.

‘We do all our work in PAL, then put it through a [Video International A/V Bridge] standards converter in London, as we feed our material out to Toronto,’ Conroy says. ‘This lets us work in the same format as our European counterparts, yet it also gives Toronto what they need, either in raw or edited versions.’

The only exception, Conroy points out, is London-based CBC cameraman Brian Kelly, who shoots current affairs footage in NTSC, because his raw material is shot with the sole purpose of being sent back to Toronto for editing.

One might expect the upcoming 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens to pose standards conversion issues for the pubcaster, but CBC explains that NTSC pool feeds will be available, so in that case no conversion will be necessary.

-www.cbc.ca