I was creating a new movie in Mac OS-X 10.4.11 iLife’s iMovie 6.0.3 and it selected NTSC as the default video format. I was creating it WITHOUT first connecting a camcorder. It seems if you create a project with a camcorder connected iMovie HD will adopt the default NTSC.
USA/Japan = NTSC = 720 x 480. The frame rate is 29.97 fps.
Europe = PAL = 768 x 576. The frame rate is exactly 25 fps.
This ofcourse will be a big problem once you want to burn the compiled NTSC movie onto a PAL DVD in iDVD. So save yourself this headache you need to select “25.0 fps” in iMovie HD, Preferences, New Project Frame rate. This will change the default to PAL (25.0 fps)
