Technical question regarding PAL and color...

I have now made a large amount of PAL to NTSC conversions of one type or another over the past several years.

While I know NTSC takes a lot of flak from PAL countries: "Never The Same Color", etc., but in my experience most PAL video, whether it's VHS, DVD, TV or laserdisc, has worse color issues.

In general I find colors are washed out to fairly low levels across the board, except red (ALWAYS red) which tends to be so overblown it clips.

Anyone with more technical smarts able to explain this to me?

"Never The Same Color" is an obsolete adage, originating from the early problems with NTSC analogue/broadcast chroma decoders.

It is certainly irrelevant to DVDs; you might say a DVD can be NTSC or PAL but all that really means is that the framerate and vertical resolution are compatible with those TV standards. The video is of course stored in digital YUV format.

Sorry I can't explain your general observations about PAL colours. Could you give some examples?

I thought NTSC had more problematic reds?

its most likely the equipment you are watching the PAL video on.  Its all to do with the way the NTSC TV (or video equipment) handles the PAL image so it can be viewed on a NTSC TV. The same type of thing (but not to such a degree) happens with  some PAL TV's with NTSC footage (mainly older CRT ones). Check a PAL source and an NTSC source DVD of the same movie on your PC and there is no difference. I have many DVD's that are both the NTSC & PAL versions.

No adywan, I am very specifically referring to 'on a PC'. I have no ability to play PAL on a standalone unit (one of the reasons I do conversions).

Moth3r: Well, the Star Wars PAL laserdiscs were the first time I ever noticed it, but I've run into many cases since then. (I'll have to go digging to find some others to name.)

If you mean my DVD transfer of the PAL laserdiscs, there's a specific reason for the muted colours - I had accidentally set some colour levels off centre when I originally did the capture.

Lol, really?  That's a very odd coincidence.