Very short rant. Film speed Pal-NTSC

DHFrame

I am sick of watching American movies on television because it's speeded up and they all sound like chipmunks. Watching the social network and its almost comical.

DjFlin

PAL and NTSC have nothing to do with the audio. Only video.

Plus, if you're watching a film on Irish TV, it's going to be in PAL, regardless of where the film was made.

Sad Professor

I don't really watch broadcast television so this isn't a problem for me, but I sympathise. PAL's 4 percent speedup has irritated me for years. It's the main reason about half my DVD collection is from the US. Blu-ray has thankfully put an end to it for the most part, though lazy European distributors still occasionally release the 25fps television master on disc.

I still find I can watch PAL without being too bothered by the speedup provided I'm not overly familiar with how the actors normally sound or with the soundtrack (it's most noticeable with music). So it's generally not a problem with foreign language films. I imagine it's particularly noticeable with The Social Network due to how fast the actors are speaking anyway.

They are supposed to pitch correct the audio as part of the conversion to PAL, but they don't bother a lot of the time. And even when they do they often make a balls of it (see the LOTR DVD).

ManOnFire

The Social Network is intentionally fast , Fincher wanted everything fast paced especially Zuckerbergs dialogue

johnny_ultimate

I'm pretty much desensitised to PAL / NTSC differences after a quarter of a century living in predominantly PAL world. But TV broadcasts bring all sorts of issues - not least aspect ratio shenanigans and ad breaks (I'd say I've watched two or three films on television in the last year). Hell, countless numbers of viewers are likely still using 4:3 sets, so unfortunately PAL and other broadcast standards aren't going away just yet, even if things have been improved by digital technology.

mike65

Films on TV have nothing to do with the PAL/NTSC frame rate difference and everything to do with 24 fps v 25 fps difference!

Galvasean

Thankfully, I'm quite oblivious to the difference. Must be from growing up with it.

johnny_ultimate

Galvasean wrote: »

Thankfully, I'm quite oblivious to the difference. Must be from growing up with it.

To me it's only really noticeable when the film is really long. If a film is three hours long, it could be a whole ten-fifteen minutes shorter for a PAL release because of speed-up. I'm pretty sure this difference is the case with Once Upon a Time in the West's US and UK DVD releases. In something particularly lengthy like Satantango at seven hours, you could be looking at a full half hour gained / lost due to FPS differences.

krudler

I can't say I notice it much tbh

mike65

Luckily it doesn't actually matter, how many people enjoyed Titanic less for the shorter r/t on the box

Sad Professor

What annoys me is that we're still living with the legacy of PAL/NTSC, especially in Europe. I was very annoyed to discover that my Blu-ray of Dogtooth is 1080/50i. The UK Blu-ray of The Hunt is the same. In some cases it seems these films were actually shot digitally at 25fps, while in others they were converted to 50i for broadcast in PAL territories and they never bothered giving Blu-ray customers the proper frame-rate. Trying to find out which frame-rate is correct can be difficult. As a result, I once again find myself wanting to get the US Blu-ray of many films just to get a proper progressive transfer.

DHFrame

DjFlin wrote: »

PAL and NTSC have nothing to do with the audio. Only video.

Plus, if you're watching a film on Irish TV, it's going to be in PAL, regardless of where the film was made.

Well the 'video' is speeded up hence 'hearing faster audio'. Of course it is going to be PAL. What they need to do is compensate by slowing it down.

latenia

ManOnFire wrote: »

The Social Network is intentionally fast , Fincher wanted everything fast paced especially Zuckerbergs dialogue

Interesting, I remember a rumour a few years back that Aaron Sorkin deliberately upped the tempo of the West Wing by a couple of percent in post production to make the dialogue sound snappier.

krudler

Anyone what the story is with the US netflix? if you have it is it playing at US speed?

corcaigh07

Cant say that I ever noticed to be honest, sounds like something that would bug me too

Solair

The conversion of film at 24 fps (frames per second) to NTSC is actually far messier than PAL which is just a minor speed adjustment.

ATSC (the US digital format) retains the same frame rates as NTSC had but, it's a horrible conversion from 24 fps cinema systems to get to the 29.97 frames per second for US TV.

They use a system called '2:3 pull-down'

See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#2:3_pulldown

Most PAL/DVB conversions from film now use 2:2 pulldown which actually does not affect the running speed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#2:2_pulldown

This can be achieved very easily with digital systems these days.

What I never understood is why both DVB and ATSC couldn't simply support a 24 fps progressive scan broadcast when there's a film being displayed. Only very old televisions still rely on the mains frequency 50Hz/60Hz to synchronise with the broadcast signal.

There's no particular reason why we couldn't do something to accommodate a proper display of film in a modern digital environment.

One thing you may not be aware of is that TV companies can sometimes adjust the play out rates of programming to ensure it fits into a particular slot too. They are also known to remove scenes from films to fit a schedule! RTE definitely does this as does ITV.

We should be able to view film in 1080p24 from broadcast sources.