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Why does an NTSC broadcast sound lower pitched in comparison to a PAL broadcast?
binns syndrome
Posts: 26 Forum Member
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Why is it when I have seen a TV programme I am usually used to seeing via PAL broadcasts on an NTSC broadcast, it sounds lower pitched in comparison to the PAL broadcast version?
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The Soundtracks are not converted - as they are the same in any TV picture standard.
Often with films shot in 24fps, they would be shown at 25fps. The sound would be therefore higher pitched and people in this country would get used to that and when hearing NTSC when on a US holiday the normal pitch would sound lower.
But PAL is dead now. The frame rate issue is still there I suppose.
If they are still speeding up the frames/second I don't know. But it's possible to correct the pitch shift that ensues.
I don't know if this is still an issue.
In this case the NTSC "lower pitched" version is correct. Very occasionally something shot at 25 fps will go through this process in reverse to get 24p or 60i output.
A great example of this is Friends. The old international 25 fps masters weren't pitch-corrected, so everything is high pitched. The newer HD 25 fps masters are pitch-corrected, so sound like the original 24 fps versions.
I'm wondering if a way around this, in days gone by, would be to replay a film shot at 24fps on a Polygonal telecine machine which can work at varying frame rates.
I have no direct experience myself of these machines, so I'm hoping Dan's Dad might be along shortly and perhaps give an inkling whether that was possible or not.
Our memory of pitch (quarter tone change) is not usually good enough to notice, but in the artificial world of A-B switching we can of course tell. It would obviously be noticeable to more people in films or programmes containing very well known music but of course these days it can easily be corrected and I suspect that very little isn't pitch-corrected, these days..
Obviously if it's pitch-corrected, most people wouldn't notice the speed-up. The only real clue would be music playing too fast.
We had 4 colourised polygons
2 35mm at LGS
2 16mm at TVC
UK / EU film shot for TV use ran at a nominal or locked 25fps
UK / EU film shot for Cinema ran at a nominal or locked 24 fps
US / rest of world film shot for Cinema ran at a nominal or locked 24 fps
US film shot for TV ran at a nominal or locked 24 fps
25 fps film scanned in twin lens machines running at 50 Hz, 2:1 interlace (do I call that 25i these days?) was frame to frame transfer - this was important for Film Recording recordings.
25 fps film scanned in polygon machines running at 50 Hz, 2:1 interlace was not necessarily so, each TV frame was likely a 'mix' of two film frames.
24 fps film scanned in polygon machines running at 50 Hz, 2:1 interlace was not so, each TV frame was certainly a 'mix' of two film frames.
A significant amount of transmission time was derived from both 24fps film, both 16mm and 35mm, worldwide film and US TV.
The picture quality from twin-lens machines was vastly superior to that derived from polygons, hence
polygons were generally the last machines to be allocated to a job, often 'least' important like 'Play School' - Cynthia Felgate was known to complain.
(Twin Lenses were usually allocated to 'Blue Peter' - I wonder why?)
The 25/24 =~4% speed up was considered acceptable given the advantages of frame to frame reproduction.
Polygons came into their own sourcing:-
Watching Murray now, so not really concentrating, but ask away if none of this makes sense.
Apart from, of course, the continuing relevance of those PAL receivers that still derive their input from a 'set top box' as either a PAL signal via SCART or similar, or modulated PAL on a UHF carrier
and the continuing relevance of millions of archived tapes, professional or otherwie, that hold modulated PAL signals within their oxide.
Ah, I thought it would probably come down to overall picture quality versus etc etc. Thanks for the information.
Charming, politeness costs nothing. I wasn't referring to people like you and me, who clearly listen for such changes (consciously or subconsciously) and can easily spot them.
Fact is that the vast majority of people don't care about and won't notice a quarter tone pitch change unless it's pointed out to them by someone like you, not even for well known music or speech. Some will notice if it's pointed out, in music or speech familiar to them - but even then, they don't usually care.
Why do you think film and TV got away with it for so long? Because most people don't notice it and/or don't care! This 'problem' never was a big issue, for that reason. It was certainly a more elegant solution than messing with the frames, give me smooth video any day.
With regards to whether the difference in pitch is noticable, it's VERY noticable when you've been watching one 'version' of a show, and then watch another. After months of watching Frasier repeats on C4, I watched an episode on DVD for the first time in a while yesterday and found the difference in people's voices very jarring.
I did wonder if the C4 Frasier had been pitch corrected, as was discussed earlier in this thread, so this morning I decided to test that theory by playing the DVD of the episode which was airing (the brilliant Derek Jacobi episode!) on my laptop simultaneously with the C4 broadcast. And the DVD's have definitely been through the speedup process. It's actually amazing how much faster it seems when you're watching them side by side and the DVD is racing ahead!
It might just be a conversion of the NTSC version using a standard convertor. This would just be taking the version that has had pulldown applied for NTSC, then converting it to PAL by dropping fields. Anytime i've seen it the picture looks poor so this might the case.
If the dvd was ahead picture wise it won't be pitch correction, as they would both be in sync but just with a lower pitch.
I disagree - I think it's really obvious when Sky show early editions of The Simpsons which aren't pitch corrected - Homer's voice in particular sounds completely wrong,
But, as been pointed out above, most people are unaware of it, and fewer care about it.
The vast majority of the population are perfectly happy with (what you and me) would describe as poor technical quality be that the vision, the sound or the speed.
How many large plasmas have you seen in pubs or peoples houses being fed with a 4:3 aspect from the Sky box stretched to 16:9 by the TV? I've seen loads. I saw one in a pub the other day with the above faults and being fed by RF. I mentioned it to the landlord but he said "nah, It's fine!"
Likewise, DAB radio is loved by those who have a stable signal as it is easy to tune and doesn't suffer static. The fact that the sound quality of the 128k (or lower) MP2 stream is crap passes them by.
Picture quality of some channels on Freeview is abysmal due to low bit rates. People still watch though.
I'm using the above as examples and not criticising either DAB radio or Freeview, both of which are capable of very fine quality. Unfortunately the accountants who neither know or care about technical quality are in charge.
Same applies to properly converting US sourced TV and films. It is cheaper to speed it up than convert it properly and (almost) no one will notice or complain.
I was aware of both things. I still regret that British people are getting a sub-standard version of something regardless of whether they know or care. And of course there are the British folks who complain that American TV shows have poor video and audio quality quite unaware that the video and audio quality is fine in America (and Canada), and it is only PAL conversion issues that is making them think what they think.