ckolchak

one of my concerns with popping for a Malata was the speed up on discs. i read some post where people just cant stand it.
well, after trying out a some scenes from a Bionic Woman disc (very high quality UK release and well recommended) and the R4 Towering Inferno, i think i can safely say the speed up just isn't noticeable to me. maybe in a direct a/b comparison i might detect a difference in pitch, but it would most likely be very, very minor. and since this is consistent throughout the film i find it not a factor.
a big relief and now i can look for anamorphic upgrades and other films with a clear concious and no niggling doubts.
whew.

good for me, bad for my credit card bill.

PacMan2006

I agree. I took the exact same gamble as you. I bought a Malata about a month ago and I didn't notice a speed up at all. None whatsoever. I think people build it up to be something significant when, to me, it's just not.

Jepthah

Of course you're not going to notice 2.4 seconds gone out of every minute of 24 fps movie. You're hopefully too busy watching it.

young

actually, i do notice it (especially after i did a side by side comparison of pal vs ntsc dvds) but i don't mind it that much.

bhomatude

Well you won't notice it with The Bionic Woman because there is no PAL speedup with Video-based transfers (assuming this is the tv series). PAL speedup only occurs from the transposing of 24fps material to 25fps. If the source is a ntsc film (24fps) to video transfer (29.97 fps) - transcoded to PAL, then there will also not be the 4% speedup issue.

PacMan2006

Are you saying that television shows on DVD won't have the speed-up?

ckolchak

er...uh
i may have spoke too soon.

i finally sat down to watch a complete episode and i have to admit it did sound a bit off-pitch.
i later did a comparison of the Towering Inferno with the NTSC version and found a bit more to be disappointed with. the anamorphic Pal transfer just wasn't a quantum leap above the non ana ntsc transfer, and again, i could detect the different pitch in certain voices ( William Holdens for example ).
but like Young, noticing it doesen't = that it greatly bothers me.
i did jump the gun and order two movies last night (one a musical) that i am more familiar with.
that'll be the acid test as to whether this is going to be a source of annoyance or not.
BTW- the Bionic Woman, like a lot of hour long dramas from the seventies and beyond was shot on film, not tape.

although this raises a question...if i see a film in a theater projected at 24 frames/sec, and then see a pal disc of the same movie at the same speed...shouldn't the pitch be equivilent?
wouldn't NTSC with its 3/2 extensions be the one altering the soundtrack?

i'm confused.

bhomatude

Yes (meaning no pal speedup)

bhomatude

For 24fps film transfers to PAL 25fps, the only way is to just speed it up 4%. Some PAL transfers are pitch corrected (not many though) - but the video still is 4 % faster... which I unfortunately notice.

Here is a chart that shows exactly what happens when 24fps film is transferred to 30fps (29.97) NTSC utilizing 3:2 pulldown.


Here is a link that goes into detail about progressive scan dvd players and the benefits of watching dvd's flagged for 3:2 pulldown... Link

Electric2k

If you watch something with alot of music in it, it's VERY apparent. I have the German DVD of Purple Rain, and the PAL speedup puts the music in an entirely different key.

Josh Z

For those not technically oriented, what this amounts to is that 24fps film has no speedup when transferred to NTSC video, because the 3:2 pulldown process compensates for the frame-rate difference and slows the running time down.

There is no pulldown process for PAL, because it was judged that the 24fps of film and the 25fps of PAL video were close enough as not not make a significantly visible difference. Also, the process that would be necessary to convert 24fps to 25fps without a speedup would introduce too many other visual artifacts that negate any value in adjusting the running speed.

Pants

A more simple problem I notice with PAL versions is the simple lack of length. When a 90 minute movie becomes 87 minutes the perception of the viewer hardly notices it. But when a 3+ hour movie becomes shortened by as much as 15 minutes you realise that your getting cheated out of the "epic" experience. The movie is comming at you faster, but you are often sacrificing the appreciation of a languid pace.

Hendrik

...I gladly "sacrifice" the "languid pace" of such stupifyingly long and booooring movies as "Lawrence Of Arabia", "The Last Emperor", "Meet Joe Black", "Doctor Zhivago", "Ben-Hur", "South Pacific", "Oklahoma!", "Heaven's Gate", "Out Of Africa", and just about any "Bollywood" movie...

...just MNSHO, of course...

...oh, and by the way, a PAL disc of a 300-minute program is roughly 12 minutes 'shorter' (0.96 times 300 = 288 minutes) than the same program on an NTSC disc... there aren't that many 5-hour films around, though, not even in India...

. . . . . .

Chuck Tatum

Hendrik obviously grew-up being spoon fed video content from MTV, but withstanding that.

The speed-up should be a non-issue unless it detractors from your viewing pleasure. I jump back and forth between PAL and NTSC discs all the time, not really caring because the film is more engrossing that a little video standards error.

For anyone who watches siilent films, you rarely hear complaints about the 18fps shot films being played back at 24fps or 30fps after the 3:2 pulldown.

I mean for that matter the transfer isn't that important either, because I've seen countless movies on 35mm reduced to 16mm prints at schools, and due to the engrossing content - poor audio and washed out video isn't always a distraction.

Anyone who has seen Orson Welles' Chimes At Midnight can attest, that the picture and sound is 3rd rate at best, but the story, performances and visual skills more than compensate.

Hendrik

...ahmm... actually, I saw O!, B-H, SP, LOA, DZ and another unconscionably long one: "Around The World In 80 Days" when they were brand-new (and when movie theaters were big and had really, really BIG screens) - all of which was a long, long time before MTV was even a distant glimmer in a TV producer's eye...

(...yup, I'm definitely an oldster among all the young'uns that people this and other Forums!...sigh...)

. . . . . .

ckolchak

watched a little bit of both
All That Jazz and The Great Escape this morning and was very happy.
only a casual fan of ATJ, but i couldn't really tell the difference in pitch with either the music or the voices and Steve McQueen and company sounded just like i expected them too.
i thought the opening theme to TGE sounded a little more antic, but could just be my mind wanting to detect a difference.
in any case, i'm still very satisfied.

2 things i did notice though;
the new sound mix for TGE is pretty impressive, with a remarkably robust low end, and the picture, though not always razor sharp or perfect, is finally watchable on an 80" screen.
frequently it looks grand.
i felt kind of sad selling off the old non-anamorphic R1 copy, but this SE blows it off the shelf in every way. i was going to just use this to tide me over till it come out in R1, but i don't think i need to get it now.

i also think that the sound from the Malata via a coax is superior to the sound i get from my Panasonic RP56 using an optical cable.
actually i think the optical was better on the Malata as well, so in general, the Malata is superior for audio.
kind of surprising to me.


the more i get to use it, the more i love it.
for someone looking for a primary player, this is the one i going to start recommending.