cfloyd3

When I made the thread I certainly wasn't expecting to see a company representative speak on it. I would like to thank him for coming on to discuss one of my most looking forward to DVD's and whomever asked him the questions of the PAL issue as that was something I personally was unaware of. Insightful thread.

baracine

I believe I'm the one who mentioned your version of Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which is a superlative product.

If I understand you correctly, PAL-NTSC problems can be surmounted in such a way that the final transfer produces a correct speed rate without ghosting. Feel free to elaborate on technical advances you know about that we don't.

I had a feeling these problems were not terminal. It's just that nobody ever goes to any length to correct them in our material world.

I am looking forward to La Dolce Vita and the Fellini TV extras sound terrific.

Pants

I'm very happy to see a representative from the company on here to clarify some issues. Correct me if I'm wrong:

Koch Lorber can only present what the rights holders give them. So if the rights holders only have a PAL master to give you, then that's all you've got and that's all you can release. You make an NTSC transfer from that PAL master. In the case of La Dolce Vita you can't get the original 35mm elements from the rights holders to do a proper NTSC transfer, so instead you do a PAL conversion.

Will La Dolce Vita, as released in R1 by Koch Lorber, be 4% shorter?
Will La Dolce Vita, as released in R1 by Koch Lorber, have the sound pitched slightly higer due to this speed up?

pro-bassoonist

Without being a member of the Koch company I can assure you that:

1. Yes
2. Yes

Format conversion and sourcing are two different areas. Unless the NTSC version is directly sourced from the original film negative the above mentioned issues will appear. Slight adjustments could be made however "ghosting" will still be present.

Pro-B

JayHM

La Dolce Vita was most likely shot at 25fps, like most European films. In which case, the shorter version is the actual original running time.

FilmFanSea

No--all modern films are shot to run at 24fps. The 25fps is the PAL television standard, whereas the NTSC standard is 30fps.

skatefan20

Can anybody here comment on the image quality of the Korean edition:

http://www.dvdasian.com/cgi-bin/dvda...ml?id=mMgwvuyY

pro-bassoonist

poor. Avoid.

Pro-B

baracine

My two cents: If the PAL original has the 24 discrete images per second of the original film in superior PAL resolution (plus one extra frame per second when played back in PAL), it is theoretically possible to do a transfer from this source just as it would be from the 24 frames per second of a regular film source with "today's improving technology". It's a question of tweaking the 3-to-2 pulldown, just as you would with film to make 24 images fit the 30 images per second of NTSC.

I think that's what the nice man from Koch was trying to say but didn't actually say and I sure wish he would say it.

Mark_vdH

That would also mean that most Criterion releases of European films (8 1/2 and their other Fellini dvds for instance) are transferred at the wrong speed without anybody ever noticing?

Now that would be funny, but I think FilmFanSea is right.....

Tim Hinsley wrote:
Couldn't the material that the PAL masters were made from be used?

Thanks for the input.

baracine

I have just e-mailed Mr. Hinsley with these very questions. Let's await his answer, shall we?

Mark_vdH

I also wondered if this was possible. It seems theoretically possible to re-assemble each frame and then transfer the whole thing at the correct speed. There is no actual material lost when transferring a movie to video, is there?

baracine

Well, yes, there is. As was mentioned before, film is an analog medium that has a greater resolution than at least normal commercial video. A copy is still only a copy, unless you get into the sphere of High Definition video. The best thing you can do is hope to approximate the original image and problems always subsist, like the "jigger" (irregular) motion of travelings (panning) in NTSC and the 4 % speeded-up rate of PAL.

Having said this, each individual frame of PAL (composed of two screen replenishes of 1/50th of a second each) contains the available information of a single frame of film in a format that has more resolution per frame than in NTSC, where the notion of "an individual frame of film" is problematic since the conversion of 24 frames per second into 30 frames per second (60 replenishes per second) necessitates a manipulation called a pulldown, of which there are several different varieties, each claiming to be better than the other but each presenting at least a few blurred (or repeating) frames per second.

So, all things considered, PAL is the ideal video format for preserving the information of each individual frame of a film, even though it is projected at a 4 % speed-up. Simply slowing down this speed during transfer to NTSC produces ghosting but, like I said, why would it not be possible to recreate the original 24 frames per second film from the individual higher resolution PAL frames and then transfer it to NTSC in the regular film-to-video fashion?

FilmFanSea

To expand on my earlier comments (which JayHM ridiculed in a subsequent post, which has since been deleted): What I meant by "modern" was 'after the Silent Era' (when the exposure time was quite variable; 24 fps became the standard for sound films).

I understand that many European television productions are shot at 25fps, to ease the transition to the PAL format but AFAIK, European feature films are still shot and projected at the 24fps standard.

References:

Motion Picture Editor's Guild Magazine: How Film Is Transferred to Video I am certainly no expert in this area: I've never been to film school; I've neither shot nor projected a film either here or abroad. But from everything I've read, a European feature film from 1960 would have been shot and projected at a sync speed of 24fps. (Besides, why would Fellini have given a damn about the PAL television standard, anyway? I doubt he would've approved of seeing his beautiful mise-en-scène butchered through panning & scanning on small Italian televisions, so why shoot his films at a sync speed to make that process easier? Makes no sense.)

If the European sync speed standard has indeed changed to 25fps for theatrically projected feature films more recently, I would be interested to know the details (e.g. when the transition occurred).

Josh Z

You are correct. Theatrical film production since the sound era began has been 24fps in all countries (except for Imax and other specialty formats, but that is another matter entirely). La Dolce Vita was shot at 24fps, just as a European feature film from last year would be. 25fps is only used for direct-to-TV European productions.

JayHM

And I DID go to film school, and you can blame one of my film professors for the misinformation. (I'm glad the internet is a more accurate source of info than a $100,000 education...)

FilmFanSea

I'd sue if I were you, Jay.
No problem--thanks for posting the follow-up.

Brian

baracine

PAGING MR. HINSLEY! (Is this thing on?)

V Morante

Mr Hinsely will be out on vacation until Wednesday.

unclehulot

Well, I do have perfect pitch, and in this case I have frequently listened to the soundtrack, and I'm a BIG Nino Rota fan, so it's one of those cases where the MUSIC being 1/2 step high drives me nuts! Same with the R2 of THE LEOPARD, which is one reason I got the Criterion (it also has better audio, thank god). I have the Medusa, and I'll be damned if I will buy another copy that's sharp in pitch. Criterion, god bless them, has avoided this problem. Hopefully, not too many others share my curse on this one!

Am I correct in assuming that if and when HD on disc becomes a reality this whole issue of conversion speedup (and ghosting) will go away (along with the rest of my life savings)?

pro-bassoonist

I dont see how my post above which you have quoted states an opinion that disproves anything you have to say here. I did mention that there are 2 specific ways for anyone to detect the pitch correction-

1.If one has been exposed to a film source not affected by PAL conversion for a long period of time

2. The film happens to be in your native tongue and one has AGAIN been exposed to it for a long period of time hence knowing the obertones, specific pitch frequency, etc...

I am also with a perfect pitch and can recognize the orchestral standard of 440-436.

With this said I challenge you to listen to visiting European orchestras (if you happen to be in Chicago, LA, NY,Boston) they all perform at 441-444 pitch base. American orchestras perform at 338 often even lower. Not once have I heard someone complaining about the pitch difference. Keep in mind that a difference of 436-442 equates in a much bigger discrepancy than what you would encounter in a PAL to NTSC conversion which is arguably around 4%.

Pro-B

V Morante

Hello Baracine,

what questions do you have?


Couldn't the material that the PAL masters were made from be used?

Thanks for the input. [/B][/QUOTE]

As Tim mentioned before me, unfortunately, we only had the PAL master to work from.

The only 35 mm print we had access to was a different cut of the movie and there were scenes missing not to mention it was in horrible shape.

jough

I realise I'm coming into this a little late...

Glad to hear that this is FINALLY coming to a decent quality DVD.

It's unfortunate that only a PAL master was available.

Hopefully it won't look too awful, but I may give this a rental before deciding on a purchase. I wasn't happy at all with Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I believe was also converted from a PAL master?

Mostly my dissatisfaction with the new version of UoC (as opposed to the horrible looking Fox Lorber version from a few years ago) has to do with not including the original audio, and the lack of extras. A commentary would have been nice, and there are many facets of the film that could have been explored in featurettes.

In any case, I'm aware of the problems inherent in transfering a 25fps PAL telecine to a 29.97fps NTSC (NTSC isn't really quite 30fps, which makes for other fun problems) and hope that ghosting and jitter can be reduced to the point where it doesn't distract from the presentation.

If you've ever seen a PAL->NTSC conversion transfer generally the entire film is basically unwatchable and looks more like video than film - see the TLA version of "The Pianist" for a worst-case scenario of this effect.

Anyway, I trust that you'll do what you can to make the disc at least *watchable* without causing a seizure from the jitter, and I must thank you for including the original mono sound track. The lack of the original ST on the Cherbourg disc was irksome - I bought it, but I questioned whether I'd ever buy another Koch Lorber release again.

So I'm wary, now. That Koch name has a bad bad reputation in this business.

V Morante

I cannot speak for the FOXLORBER release but I can comment on the KLF release of UOC.

We worked directly w/Eclair Labs in France. Agnes Varda was nice enough to make a 35 mm print available to us. Eclair Labs did major restoration work on the print and then went straight to NTSC Digibeta and did yet more work to clean things up.

As for the audio, the original mono track was transferred directly from the print. And that is what's on the DVD along with a 5.1 mix we had done at another facility. There was supposed to be a stereo track but Eclair Labs never delivered it. i found this out after that fact when the DVD was a week from release and Agnes called me to see if we could delay the release as our master only had the mono on not stereo. Apparently she origanally requested that Eclair labs provide it and they never did.

All of the work at Eclair Labs was done under the watchful eyes and with the final approval of Agnes Varda.

As for the extras, we tried to get more content but were unfortunately not able to secure anything in a timely manner.

We were bound by contract release thew film with in a specified amount of time and so we moved forward with what we had.

baracine

My main question is: Will there be a 4 % speed-up or not?