4% speedup / pitch

Marc Martin wrote:

> The 4% speed-up is simply an artifact of them being made for a PAL TV
> system. All of the UK broadcast and video versions of UFO have have
> this same 4% speed-up, so in the in the UK (and other PAL countries),
> this is considered UFO's "normal" speed.
>

I know this discussion comes round every few months or so, but
.. as usual I just wanted to comment that it's not really
noticeable. I've seen some of the regular UFO cast in other TV
series and films (especially George Sewell who has been in loads
of other stuff) - and they come across exactly the same on UFO
as they do in other productions. I don't notice a difference in
the tone of their voice.

Actually a question - given that the PAL DVDs do have the 4%
speedup, are they pitch-compensated? It would be fairly easy to
do I believe, so even though it's barely noticeable, it would be
almost surprising if they haven't bothered given the impressive
amount of effort they (and BBC Resources or whoever) have put
into the remastering.

Anyone know?

Cheers
James

>Actually a question - given that the PAL DVDs do have the 4%
>speedup, are they pitch-compensated?

No, I don't think they are. For example, in ORDEAL, the
pitch of the Beatles "Get Back" is noticeably too high.
Well, noticeable to me that is... :-)

By the way, I noticed during the Gerry Anderson commentary,
the background uses the "music & effects" track, so none
of the episode dialog can be heard, but the music and
sound effects are.

Also, I noticed on the photo galleries, the ORDEAL photos
are mislabelled as SURVIVAL.

Marc

----- Original Message -----
From: "James Gibbon" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2002 11:35 AM
Subject: [SHADO] 4% speedup / pitch



> I know this discussion comes round every few months or so, but
> .. as usual I just wanted to comment that it's not really
> noticeable. I've seen some of the regular UFO cast in other TV
> series and films (especially George Sewell who has been in loads
> of other stuff) - and they come across exactly the same on UFO
> as they do in other productions. I don't notice a difference in
> the tone of their voice.
>

To me, the difference is very noticeable. If you compare the Japanese laser
disc(without speedup) with the episode Ordeal to the Image Entertainment
laser disc with the same episode or the Today Home Entertainment with the
same episode which has the 4% speedup, the difference in everybody's tone of
voice is noticeable and the Beatles song played in the beginning sounds
different too.

If you are able to compare the two sources by starting them at the same time
and switching back and forth between the two, I think the difference
becomes more evident.



Ron

--- In SHADO@y..., James Gibbon <james.gibbon@v...> wrote

> Actually a question - given that the PAL DVDs do have the 4%
> speedup, are they pitch-compensated?

No. It isn't actually as easy to do as it appears, as witnessed by
various American series where you can hear it resynching fairly often.

Steve

> > Actually a question - given that the PAL DVDs do have the 4%
> > speedup, are they pitch-compensated?
>
>No. It isn't actually as easy to do as it appears, as witnessed by
>various American series where you can hear it resynching fairly often.

I have audio software on my computer with allows you to reduce the
audio pitch while maintaining the same speed, so that re-synching
would not be required. I have heard however that pitch-compensation
is often not done in PAL transfers because they are often the source
of NTSC masters, which after being slowed down by 4% the pitch
would be too low! Also, the sound quality is better if you minimize
this sort of processing, and besides, in the case of UFO, this
is the speed that folks in the UK are used to and have heard all
of their lives!

Marc