pal movies are generally always shorter than ntsc.. do they play at a differen pitch?

[2Bdecided]

sox certainly does pitch correction....using the WSOLA algorithm from 1993. I think it was designed for speech.

It's pretty good all around. When it struggles, it sounds a little bit like a damaged cassette tape to my ears!

It's probably far less annoying than a 4% pitch shift most of the time for most people - unless you want to restore something back to 24fps, in which case you'll curse it! By the time it's been used twice (once to go 24fps > 25fps, and once more to go 25fps > 24fps) it can sound a bit of a mess.

Cheers,
David.

[mpucoder]

I just ran into an interesting mistake on imdb. For "Superman Returns" goofs (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/goofs) they have the following

Audio/visual unsynchronized: Jason and Brutus play "Heart and Soul" in the key of C-sharp, but they aren't playing any sharps or flats (the black keys).

Actually, in my NTSC version, they are playing in the key of C (I confirmed this by playing the song with them on a musical instrument that is in tune). It would appear that the person who added that comment was watching a PAL version without pitch correction.

[Mug Funky]

@ Lyle_JP:

some of those Optimum ones could have come from where i am (R4). typically we pitch correct, but didn't always do so. the arguments for and against continue :)

the R2 discs are usually the R4 disc with the logos switched and the region codes changed... nothing wrong with that of course. it means a higher budget DVD can be made cheaper to the customer.

[Gew]

The most common thing is a slight pitch up (by ~4%) when film is transfered to PAL. So, when I'm doing eg. MPEG-4 backups of my PAL DVD's, I always filter -- respectively -- the video through AssumeFPS(24000,1001) and the audio through eac3to -slowdown. This does the trick for me. However(!). Naturally, if the audio has not actually been pitched up to begin with, but is rather filtered through any of those "advanced algorithms" (intended to keep audio natural even though shifted duration) mentioned above in this post, well, then I have actually distorted my backups! :p

However, this is sort of a force of habit to me, a routine for backups anyways, so that although I may or may not have a couple of "false positives" (where I myself have messed up the audio speed) in my backup chamber, so.. Well, it's no biggie, really. I couldn't hear the difference anyways! ;)

[GodofaGap]

I just ran into an interesting mistake on imdb. For "Superman Returns" goofs (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/goofs) they have the following

Actually, in my NTSC version, they are playing in the key of C (I confirmed this by playing the song with them on a musical instrument that is in tune). It would appear that the person who added that comment was watching a PAL version without pitch correction.
PAL speed up would cause less than a semitone of pitchshift. It would be closer to C# than to C, but still heavily out of tune.