a classic Weisserism

[GavinRees@aol.com]

In a message dated 18/2/00 5:07:37 am, you wrote:

<<
>I've NEVER heard of such a thing. More likely, the difference between >NTSC 
and PAL standards (many of the masters are PAL and have to be
>time-corrected) results in the running time shift. If someone wants 


<<But if it's just US and Japan there wouldn't be any PAL standard involved 
(unless some of the masters were European).  And anyway how much of a pitch 
difference could you get with speeding up a tape for that small an amount?  

LT>>>


Answer: massive!

Even a 4 percent difference between recorded speed and playback speed can 
make the audio virtually unusable. That is why people shooting on pal 
camcorders (25 fps) to transfer to film (24 fps), set their DAT recorders at 
a slower speed so that they can recreate the original audio after transfer. 
You don"t notice the slight quickening up of the image, but you would notice 
the change in pitch. 

Saying that NTSC to PAL transfer should result in any form of shift in the 
audio unless it is done unbelievably incompetently. The tapes run at the same 
speed you just drop a few fields from the original NTSC video, and 
interpolate between others.  

Saying that Weissers comments do sound a little on the fishy side. Perhaps 
you would get that effect at the time a movie was mastered onto PAL. And then 
taken off a PAL master to NTSC. For a cheap-skate Japanese studio it would be 
attractive to dump down a video master onto PAL. Visually speaking it is a 
higher quality, and you can use a cheaper telecine. The only problem is that 
you run the risk of speeding up the audio unless you correct it. I suppose 
the reasoning might be  that a European audience couldn"t tell the 
difference, and so why bother worrying about it?

Gavin Rees