Quote:
Originally Posted by James Luckard
I'm not familiar with Downton on disc, but I'm definitely familiar with the issues that come with putting 25fps UK shows on US home video. I always try to buy British BDs of British shows, as a result.
I wasn't aware, however, that 25fps British TV material could be transferred at 25fps in 1080i/60. How would that work?
I'm only familiar with normal British BDs of TV shows, which are 1080i/50 25fps and then most American discs of UK shows (like Prime Suspect and Wallander) which are usually 1080p, slowed down to 24fps, with resulting pitch shift and slower movement.
I've also bought a few TV BDs direct from the UK that were slowed down to 1080p/60 24fps, like The Lost Prince, and I've read that the UK BDs of Life on Mars and Pride and Prejudice are similarly slowed down. I guess they just decided that would be easier and hoped nobody would notice.
I thought those were the only two options - run the video at native speed and do 1080i/50, or run it slowed down at 1080p/60.
Can someone explain this 1080i/60 option a bit more? Would it end up looking like those old PAL-to-NTSC conversions that were common in the DVD era, where each frame was actually a fuzzy composite of two frames?
|
Can't help with the technical how/why, but 1080i/50 to 1080i/60 can be pretty close. I've always assumed it's similar to the 3:2 pulldown technique changing 24fps film to 1080/60i TV. The Monty Python Flying Circus discs were taken from PAL sources up to 1080/50 in UK for the UK discs and 1080/60 in the US -- I have watched a couple of those back to back on Native Rate and couldn't tell the difference at all. From folks that have watched those side by side, the difference is negligible when done properly (unlike the screwed up Downton Season).
Moving to 1080p/24 is a different animal though as long as it's pitch corrected I have a hard time telling the difference on the video and dialog even watching side by side. Occasionally music sounds odd since the tempo is different even if the pitch is correct.
Everytime I try to read about the actual technique I end up dizzy. I can do the math part, but I just don't know enough about video editing and the software to put it all together.