I got my R2 TP Pilot today - and my R2 DVD Player as well. The sound quality is much better than the crappy R1 Asian import most of you are familiar with but unless my player is incorrect the length of what I have is 90 minutes - the same length as the crappy import. I thought the crappy import was sped up.

IMDB says for the pilot length:

 
90 min / 94 min / USA:113 min (video version)

What is this 20 minute discrepancy?

If I'm not mistaken the Asian pilot disc was lifted from a PAL source and so, like the R2 disc, would be affected by 4% PAL speed-up. If it's running at 90 mins in length, you should find that if or when the pilot ever makes it on to a correctly mastered R1 NTSC DVD, it'll clock in at around 93 to 94 mins.

The European feature-length pilot I think runs to 114 mins (if memory serves), which means it'll be more like 109 to 110 minutes on a PAL tape.

Does that help?

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So then, you seem to be confirming my suspicion that had I bought a R2 set of season 1, that includes the pilot, it would be sped up the same 4% because it is also in PAL format. I bought the "Hong Kong" pilot instead, and the voices are all the wrong pitch. It's Coop's voice that sounds especially wrong. So had I bought the R2 set of season 1 then, would the whole thing sound that way?

I have several nagging questions about this "problem", and even though I've ask it several times in different forums I've yet to get an answer.

 Does the PAL speedup mean that, in those parts of the world that use it, people are hearing voices at the wrong, higher pitch? I guess if you've never heard the proper pitch you wouldn't know the difference. But having worked as a DJ, and being atuned to things like pitch, watching the "Hong Kong" pilot was excruciating. I guess I'm glad I didn't get the R2 set.

 I have read that some when some DVDs are mastered for PAL regions that the pitch is altered to correct for the speedup during conversion. I wonder how common that is? Was this done for Twin Peaks? Is there a way to know which titles have had this treatment?

 Another question I have is, does the speedup and pitch alteration only occur when NTSC is converted to PAL? If something is originally produced in PAL, like a TV series, then surely it's PAL DVD wouldn't be affected by speedup. And with film, is it inherent in the framerate differences that don't mesh that the 4% speedup is unavoidable?

Anyone?

Here are a couple of articles about this problem, and even though I've read them, and others, I still have these questions. If the answers are contained in what I've read then I guess I'm a little slow and need it explained to me simply. I should read these again:

http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/PALSpeedUp/PALSpeedUp.asp

http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/Articles/PALvsNTSC/PALvsNTSC.asp

"Do you see creamed corn on that plate?"

http://tinyurl.com/yqwurw

OK, did some more research.

All films are played at 24 frames per second throughout the world - in all movie theaters - it's been like that probably for most of the 20th century. Fortunately, American TV sets, which use NTSC, can accomodate film speeds. Whoever designed PAL though didn't look far enough ahead into the future. PAL TV sets display pictures at 25 frames per second (on the positive side they have slightly higher resolution than NTSC). Imagine that a TV set is constantly flickering. PAL TV sets flicker 25 times a second, American sets essentially flicker 24 times a second. That means that any movie that is put out on DVD for a PAL TV will play faster (and the pitch will be higher). 4% faster/higher. That means that all non-American viewers watch movies on their TVs that run 4% faster than what was intended and what they see in the theater.

I've heard of the pitch adjuster but the movie is still going to run faster.

Edit: The only time people in England get to watch something on their PAL TV sets at the appropriate speed is when they watch TV shows specifically recorded for PAL. Note that I think these shows would actually run slower when run on a NTSC TV. Imagine a 2 second PAL movie which has a total of 50 picture frames - since NTSC TVs only display 24 frames per second it would take 2 seconds plus a 2/25 of a second more to show the originally 2 second movie.

Since the PAL DVD has all the data for the movie it should be possible to watch a movie from a PAL DVD at the originally intended speed on a computer with the appropriate software.

Also, this whole PAL-NTSC thing goes away once HDTV gets phased in completely. Then, we'll have one universal system throughout the world. 

Phew, that's a lot to take in...

Anyway: I guess we in PAL zones most of the time are only used to the faster playback and higher pitch, so we don't know how noticeable the difference is. It is said that the pitch difference should be barely noticeable, and I think that to the majority of people that is probably the case. Perhaps only people who are exceptionally familiar with a certain actor's voice in a certain role would hear the difference. I've never bothered to compare the timbre of voices in the pilot to my R1 S1 set. Maybe I should...

(BTW: most UK TVs are capable of playing back at 24 fps, so if we buy NTSC discs we can watch stuff at the right speed.)

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Multi-region DVD players automatically play R1 DVDs at the slower speed. I've never lost sleep over PAL speedup but hearing Naomi Watts on the R1 disc was a shock. Her voice sounds much deeper.

I don't think the players speed up or slow down for the discs: the discs are encoded to play at a certain frame rate based on the region for which they are intended. At least, that's my understanding of it.

It's a whole different ball game with tape, however. If you have a PAL tape machine that can play NTSC tapes, it does this by increasing the speed of the motor. Thus if you buy a 3 hr blank tape intended for use in the UK, when used in an American machine it will only record for about 2 hrs. The tape speed is faster in the US, I believe, in order to compensate for the lower quality (or resolution) of the TV sets. 

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Yeah I agree it just plays the frames at a slower speed.

Thank God I don't have to soil my hands with VHS tapes ever again.

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Yes, since video editing is kind of interesting to me. Once I get things down pat it should be much less work. I want to convert my Lost Highway widescreen DVD next. Plus, now that I have a burner I can do some cool stuff like make a Buster Keaton short film compilation DVD among other things.

So, I've noticed another issue with the conversion from 25 fps to 24 fps. Occasionally, you will see the image stutter - apparently because a frame is missing. This is most noticeable when the camera is panning. The weird thing is that when you rewind and watch the scene over again the stutter is gone. So, still waiting for the R1 pilot...

Some other things about the R2 version of season 1. There are 4 discs but each disk contains 3 episodes instead of 2. The first disk contains the pilot plus episode 1. Disc 4 is all extra features. The packaging is otherwise identical to the R1 version.