Audio quality on PAL movies

[RobertElfstrom]

I have a Question about the sound quality on PAL versus NTSC movies.

One of my friend telles me that the sound quality on PAL movies is lower then the quality on NTSC movies.
The reson that he things that is that PAL movies have a FPS of 25 so when a American movie is releast in Europe
the movie is recompressed to go in 25 FPS and the audio stream must be recompressed to be in sync with the movie
so the quality of the sound will be lower.

Is there any thrute in what he is saying or is he full of BS ?

[brashquido]

Sounds like a load of bollocks to me. But then again, I'm not the most knowledgable person on that kind of thing.

[MaTTeR]

I wouldn't give any merit to the type of story. If it is true they are recompressing the audio then they do a very good job of it, so good in fact that we can't hear a difference:D

[DJ Bobo]

@ Robert
It is Bullsxxt
The only thing that they do is speeding up from 24 to 25fps, which is nearly unnoticable. No recompression or what else is done, the sound quality isn't affected at all.

[RobertElfstrom]

Ok,thx you guys.

I will tell him that it's isen't true.

[SpEeDaMiGo]

I wouldn't say it's all bullsxxt. I've some audiophil friends who tell the same. Have you ever listened and compared the english original track on a PAL (region 2) and NTSC (region 1) dvd on a very high quality hifi system. I have (friend spent around 8000€ alone for the speaker system) and I've noticed some difference; maybe it's subjective. IMHO the more a track is edited the worse it sounds, and correcting pitch when speeding it up to 25fps will definitively have some effect.

[DJ Bobo]

@ speedamigo
I can only repeat myself: "which is nearly unnoticable"
And there are very few people that own high end equipment (really very very few). You can even see on HiFi test magasines, that they say "this CD player is better than this one". Why? because they noticed something on one of their pityfull graphs ;)
What I wanna say with this: audiophiles can't be happy if they don't get the very original, and even so they have something to say about it :o

[Prosper]

The quality loss would be nil compared to the quality loss due to the lossy AC3 (or even dts) compression applied to both NTSC and PAL. And then transcode that to MP3 or OGG? The quality difference between PAL and NTSC is nothing compared to that.

[SpEeDaMiGo]

@bobotns & Prosper
I agree with both of you, especially about the AC3/DTS loss. I didn't say there was a great difference, and the "some difference" may well be very subjective and exaggerated (maybe even psychological caused: I expect the NTSC to be better, so it is ... blabla).
Maybe there are some movies where the pitch correction applied during conversion is sh*t.
Finally I agree: unless you have a godlike hearing and hifi system you won't notice anything.

[RobertElfstrom]

Prosper: Can I have your computer ?

Please?
Pretty Please?
Pretty Please With Sugar On Top ?

:D

[Prosper]

Originally posted by RobertElfstrom
Prosper: Can I have your computer ?

Please?
Pretty Please?
Pretty Please With Sugar On Top ?

:D

Sure, OK.
(heh, j/k. Oh, and I have to add a 7200RPM 120GB WD hard drive to the sig)

[BipolarChucker]

Originally posted by RobertElfstrom
I have a Question about the sound quality on PAL versus NTSC movies.

One of my friend telles me that the sound quality on PAL movies is lower then the quality on NTSC movies.
The reson that he things that is that PAL movies have a FPS of 25 so when a American movie is releast in Europe
the movie is recompressed to go in 25 FPS and the audio stream must be recompressed to be in sync with the movie
so the quality of the sound will be lower.

Is there any thrute in what he is saying or is he full of BS ?

Altered because I was wrong! :rolleyes:

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by BipolarChucker


What your friend is saying is that the DVD is released onto NTSC first and then it's recoded into PAL just by increasing the frame rate and thus speeding things up. If this was the case PAL movies would be at least one/two minutes shorter than NTSC releases, which both you and I know they aren't.

thats exactly what happens. pal movies ARE a few minutes shorter. ;)

[BipolarChucker]

Originally posted by Zhnujm


thats exactly what happens. pal movies ARE a few minutes shorter. ;)

I quite happily eat humble pie then. Needless to say I'm shocked. I'd have thought they'd do better than that!

Blade on PAL is 115mins, NTSC is 120mins. Should have checked before I opened my mouth I guess.

[Zhnujm]

i think its the best they can do. converting the framerate or some kind of telecining would reduce the quality/smoothness much more than a simple speedup.

[Sven Bent]

Originally posted by RobertElfstrom
Prosper: Can I have your computer ?

Please?
Pretty Please?
Pretty Please With Sugar On Top ?

:D

why would you have such a slow computer :-)
http://www.dailyrush.dk/users/sven_bent/
now THIS is a hotrod...my little baby

[Slogra]

Well, there are often more than one language on european DVDs. So sometimes they lower the bitrate of the audio tracks to fit everything on the disc...