As far as I see sonys DVCAM are available in both, PAL and NTSC, at least that's what a PDF from sony says, that I am reading right now. Probably the most informative page about DVCAM is here:
http://www.sony.ca/dvcam/brochures.htm
The videos you import over firewire are the same on all systems. Only the way they are decoded will differ. So if you add some fx or something, they must be decoded, then resampled and saved. If you only import them on the cheap system, then transmit the files to the pro system, it will be the same as if you imported them on the pro system from the camera.
The diffrence between them is not only the way the DV Avi is decoded, but of course also the quality of all operations.
EG: where a cheap tool would calculate color, saturation and brighness corrections in 3*8 bit and lead to horrible rounding error artefacts over time, a better suite will convert to 48 bit internally (or more) and only convert down to 24 Bit RGB as a final step.
There are many little diffrences between the cheaper and the real pro apps. Basicly they all affect the post production and editing. Importing DV video from a camera is about the same with all of them since it's a trivial task, the data is already there, on the DV Tape.
Depending on what you plan to do with your video material you may think about to use an other camera.
DVCAM is good, although basicly the same as MiniDV, it uses more robust parts and has a higher band speed and therefor less artefacts (that said, with new MiniDV tapes I never had any artefacts). These formats (DVCAM and MiniDV) all use 4.2.0 or 4.1.1. subsampling. So if you plan to use chromakeying, greenscreening etc. you probably need a better color subsampling method (because these are the cause for bad mattelines, blocky contours of the footage). A cheap solution would be to use a hi quality analog camera, then capture it in at least 4.2.2. But this is really only useful if you want to do serious chromakeying.
Hope this helps.
http://www.sony.ca/dvcam/brochures.htm
The videos you import over firewire are the same on all systems. Only the way they are decoded will differ. So if you add some fx or something, they must be decoded, then resampled and saved. If you only import them on the cheap system, then transmit the files to the pro system, it will be the same as if you imported them on the pro system from the camera.
The diffrence between them is not only the way the DV Avi is decoded, but of course also the quality of all operations.
EG: where a cheap tool would calculate color, saturation and brighness corrections in 3*8 bit and lead to horrible rounding error artefacts over time, a better suite will convert to 48 bit internally (or more) and only convert down to 24 Bit RGB as a final step.
There are many little diffrences between the cheaper and the real pro apps. Basicly they all affect the post production and editing. Importing DV video from a camera is about the same with all of them since it's a trivial task, the data is already there, on the DV Tape.
Depending on what you plan to do with your video material you may think about to use an other camera.
DVCAM is good, although basicly the same as MiniDV, it uses more robust parts and has a higher band speed and therefor less artefacts (that said, with new MiniDV tapes I never had any artefacts). These formats (DVCAM and MiniDV) all use 4.2.0 or 4.1.1. subsampling. So if you plan to use chromakeying, greenscreening etc. you probably need a better color subsampling method (because these are the cause for bad mattelines, blocky contours of the footage). A cheap solution would be to use a hi quality analog camera, then capture it in at least 4.2.2. But this is really only useful if you want to do serious chromakeying.
Hope this helps.