Melancholia Blu-Ray: American/International releases suffer from 24p-slowdown

[hajiketobu]

Originally Posted by Zot!

Right, so I did bring this up back when Antichrist came out, since I thought it curious. The answers that I cobbled together seems to be that the reason Zentropa produces these films in 25fps is because they don't want to update their equipment, and possibly wish to accommodate European TV broadcast standard. The 24fps versions do seem to be fairly "director-approved" however, as that is still most likely what was presented in film festivals (Cannes) and any place that screened the film on film (also the Criterion BD has his approval). Still there doesn't seem to be any excuse for not adjusting the pitch. That should be easily done these days with software. Anybody want to check Antichrist? Some of the classical music could be checked for pitch. At least unlike DVDs, there should be no interlacing, just speed-up.

Originally Posted by hanshotfirst1138

It isn't possible to run Blu at anything above 24 FPS, is it? I assume it was shot with PAL cameras? Why'd Europe stay with 25 FPS after digital changeover? I know their TV production infrastructure was largely built that way, but once things went digital, did they have different stands than 720p/1080i?

Blu-Ray specifications don't support anything above 24p, they actually only support 24p in FULLHD they don't even support HFR 50/60p


Even at the verge of 4K, europe has defined it's television standard for 4k to be 50p. This has to do with light flickering at 50 Hz in Europe and at 60 Hz in America. Although minimal, equipment shot with 60fps could produce flicker when used in Europe under artificial lighting. 24fps is in any which way a technically flawed format and should be replaced in the future by HFR framerates higher than 48 fps. The problem is you can't just make a uniform framerate for all media in all regions. Even if let's say 60fps would become standard in the US, it's still problematic because 60 can't be divided by 24. 120 fps seems to be fair, because it can be both divided by 60 and by 24. So an old 24 fps movie can be played without stutter and also a newer 60 fps movie or tv movie. And the problem of light flickering is also eliminated.
That for America. But Europe still has all the 25p, 50p and 50i, so it would need a Standard of 100 fps.

It's still a long way to go for a global uniform framerate