IAVMMCM running time

[anathema]

Originally posted by Chilly Down
But, again -- Luke maintains that the UK version is LONGER, not shorter. So the time speed up wouldn't explain it; in fact, it would make even less sense.

Yeah, I was trying to avoid saying that he was wrong Maybe a typo - 'UK' instead of 'US'? Luke?

The UK broadcast definitely runs to slightly over 84 minutes 43 seconds.

 

[frogboy4]

The NBC VHS tape lists the running time as 88 minutes. The actual time from title card to end credits it 88 minutes 10 seconds.

Since it was shot digitally, I think there were no conversion issues. It is popular with some filmmakers to shoot with PAL formatted cameras to give their pieces more of a film-look. It's also easier to convert the 25 frames into 24. But I doubt that's how this film was shot. It' was likely NTSC.

 

[anathema]

Woo-hoo, my 100'th post!

Originally posted by frogboy4
The NBC VHS tape lists the running time as 88 minutes. The actual time from title card to end credits it 88 minutes 10 seconds.

Which is entirely consistent with the 4% speedup

Since it was shot digitally, I think there were no conversion issues. It is popular with some filmmakers to shoot with PAL formatted cameras to give their pieces more of a film-look. It's also easier to convert the 25 frames into 24. But I doubt that's how this film was shot. It' was likely NTSC.

Nope - no chance of that. If it was shot digitally, there's no such thing - PAL and NTSC are analogue formats. Digital is entirely different. Plus, I can spot NTSC artefacts at a hundred paces, and there's none. From the picture, I'd say it was definitely shot at 24 progressive fps, which makes NTSC even less likely.

In this instance, conversion issues would largely be confined to the number of lines per picture. For the US broadcast, the tape would have been converted to 525 lines, and 3:2 pulldown applied to generate the required 30fps. The UK broadcast would have been converted to 625 lines, and simply sped up to 25fps.

The film-look that's irritatingly popular with TV directors these days is sometimes achieved with a progressive-scan camera (as in this case), but usually by 'filmising' interlaced video, which is about the stupidest idea to come down the pike in the last 50 years. It works by basically dropping every other field, so you lose half the vertical resolution (and get a nasty film-like flicker to boot). It's not popular with the viewing public over here! This latter trick is entirely possible with US video as well, although I don't know if anyone actually does it. I think it's used over here because prog-scan cameras cost more, and real film costs more again.

 

[frogboy4]

I've read several articles through the years on that issue and there are PAL and NTSC-based digital cameras. What format do the 1s and 0s adhere to? Stardust? LOL! Seriously, there’s inherent fps for each camera no matter what the type.

 

[anathema]

Slight misunderstanding! PAL and NTSC are analogue composite colour formats; nothing more, nothing less. The underlying system of lines and fps is entirely irrelevant. (Brazil, for example, uses a 525/30 system with PAL colour; no one seems to know why). The UK had a 625/25 system for a few years before colour was added to it, and the US used a 525/30 system from the very start. Colour arrived much later. The original UK system was 405/25, and while it's entirely possible to add colour to it, we'd moved to 625/25 by that point.

These days, however, it is common to refer to 625/25 systems as 'PAL' and 525/30 systems as 'NTSC', which is what you're seeing in the articles (plus, the cameras almost certainly have analogue outputs as well, which will be either PAL or NTSC). Chances are both types use the same digital colour format :-

A digital camera generates its images in exactly the same way as an analogue one, it just outputs them differently. One common format is YCrCb, which is a serial component format (it's the one used on DVD - in fact the only difference between a 'PAL' DVD and an 'NTSC' DVD is the line/frame structure - the colour format is identical), but this is still just a way of representing the colour information. Structurally, you still have so many lines per frame, and so many frames (or fields if interlaced) per second. And I've not even mentioned stream or pixel formats yet.

 

[frogboy4]

Cool. I just remember when the boom of digital film a few years back - many American filmmakers were using overseas digital cameras to shoot their films because of the fps. 25 gave it more of a film feel.

 

[Chilly Down]

Originally posted by anathema
Plus, I can spot NTSC artefacts at a hundred paces, and there's none.

It's the NTSC Hunter! "We got a live one here, mate!"

 

[anathema]

Originally posted by frogboy4
Cool. I just remember when the boom of digital film a few years back - many American filmmakers were using overseas digital cameras to shoot their films because of the fps. 25 gave it more of a film feel.

The 'film look' is nothing to do with the lower frame rate, it's caused by de-interlacing the picture. Interlaced video effectively runs at _50_ pictures per second (60 in the US), which gives it a much more fluid look than film. Deinterlacing 30fps video will make it look like film (at least as much as is possible without actually shooting on film in the first place . So will shooting at 30fps progessive, but without the nasty artefacts.

There's an extremely good example of the difference between interlaced video and progressive film in 'The Muppets at Walt Disney World' - look for the sudden change in picture fluidity when the shots cut between the Muppets in Mickey's office, and a shot which includes Mickey himself (particularly those shots of Mickey and Kermit - it almost looks as if Kermit's been stop-motion animated, the change is so jarring!)

 

[anathema]

Originally posted by Chilly Down
It's the NTSC Hunter! "We got a live one here, mate!"

"This tape is absolutely crawling with Quad scratches! I'm gonna have to PaintShop them!"

I spend way too much time staring at video monitors!

 

[frogboy4]

I didn't write the article. I'm just reporting the contents. What you have said is not entirely true. The theory is that 25 fps translates fluidly when converted to a regular film format (to be shown at festivals) than 30 does. Yes, there may be a dropped frame, but that is reportedly the appeal of PAL (or 25 fps) digital cameras with budding filmmakers. That was the gist of the article. Wish I could post it, but it has been 2 years since I read the thing.

Oh, that Mickey and Kermit scene was terrible. I don't know what method they used for that, but it seemed as though they both had different frame rates. Kermit was 30 and Mickey was 12 frame animation filling the 30 fps speed. You could see where Kermit would move and Mickey wouldn't and there were holes when Mickey had his arm around him. I don't have the tape, but remember that scene pretty clearly. Just cheap. And this from the folks that gave us Roger Rabbit. If there's ever a need to use such a scene again I hope they will reshoot it with today's technology.