Playback speed

Sput · Tue 08 Sep, 2009 21.11

I have a confession to make. I enjoy How I Met Your Mother. It's a US import and I've been known to watch a few via less honest means than E4. Thing is, and this is something that happens a LOT, the playback of these shows over here is so much faster that the voices and tones of the music are noticeably different and sound quite bad. What's the reason for the difference in speed? I can imagine it used to be something to do with tapes but those days are gone.

DVB Cornwall · Tue 08 Sep, 2009 21.32

Read the 576i speed up article on this Wikipedia page.

Explains it better than I could paraphrase.

Inspector Sands · Sun 13 Sep, 2009 10.50

Sput wrote:I have a confession to make. I enjoy How I Met Your Mother. It's a US import and I've been known to watch a few via less honest means than E4. Thing is, and this is something that happens a LOT, the playback of these shows over here is so much faster that the voices and tones of the music are noticeably different and sound quite bad. What's the reason for the difference in speed?

I can't say I've ever noticed it, but I would have thought it's due to the conversion from the American TV format which is 480 lines, 60 frames a second.

It is quite common in films for them to be a little faster/shorter due to the conversion from 24 frames to 25 but I don't think it's normally an issue for TV conversions (maybe whoever did this programme just did it badly!)

I can imagine it used to be something to do with tapes but those days are gone.

TV stations still use tapes, however the likelyhood of a tape deck running slightly fast is unlikely

dbl · Sun 13 Sep, 2009 11.36

I notice that a lot with American programmes converted from 29.97/59.97fps to 25/50fps, there's a couple of clips on YouTube that contains the ER opening titles, if you listen closely you can tell one is converted and the other is the original speed:
Converted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ATwnLDgfs

Original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV5nklx1 ... re=related

Inspector Sands · Mon 14 Sep, 2009 00.43

I've done a bit of standards conversion in the past and I don't think the audio does normally get changed.

1 minute of the original lasts 1 minute on the converted version, the only thing that's done is that bits of the video are duplicated/dropped to make make it fit.

That's how I always thought it worked anyway