First Blood, French HD-DVD release (1 Viewer)

[MattFini]

Has anybody picked this, or the other two Rambo movies up yet?

Xploited has all three, and I've been thinking about getting the trilogy for sometime now, but I was hoping to get some opinions on them before I do.

I like the packages too...cool to see the painted artwork on the covers in this day and age of Photoshopped garbage.

 

[Yumbo]

Yes, it's decent. Will get other 2 later.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

The transfer is reportedly very good. The only reason I would pass it and get the BD is because it has the audio pitch problem. Some people don't notice it though, so you might want to download the MP3 clips that are posted over at AVS and see if it matters to you or not.

 

[Cees Alons]

Jeff,

There's really something funny going on there. As discussed here before: it's hardly possible in practice that HD DVDs would have a "pitch problem".

The studio would have to do it almost on purpose (or be extremely stupid) to make it so.
I haven't noticed it (and I can hear it very clearly if it is present) on any of the releases I bought from France and the UK myself. Nor did any of the posters here (with 1 possible exception).


Cees

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I would guess that growing up with PAL, it wouldn't be an issue for you. I wish it didn't bother me. I'm dying to get that Total Recall HD-DVD! ,

I borrorwed a copy of The Graduate from a friend and noticed it immediately. I got out my DVD and compared them and the difference was very noticeable. Believe me, I'm not making this stuff up, Cees. There's samples you can download if you don't believe me. Every Studio Canal title with the exception of T2 and Brotherhood Of The Wolf has this problem.

Having said all that, I should point out again that most people probably won't notice it at all.

 

[Jeremy Little]

I can confirm that these Studio Canal titles have the issue. Some people notice it, some don't. Either way, it is there.

It sounds like the audio masters were the 25fps PAL format tapes, and when they prepared the HD DVD format it was digitally stretched while preserving pitch. It's probably the only possible way that could have occurred.

 

[Cees Alons]

One question.

My TV has a possible setting of 1920x1080@50Hz. Does your TV or projector have that too? Or is 60Hz the only option?


Cees

 

[ppltd]

I own all three Rambo Studio Canal releases. I notice no audio issues on one and two, but on three, there is a problem.

 

[dkny75]

I own the Austrailian version of Rambo 1-3 and for me I heard the pitch problem on 1.

 

[ppltd]

I should clarify. Just because I did not hear a pitch problem, doesn't mean it does not exist on these disks. With so many posts stating it does tells me that it does and I just didn't notice it. I suppose now, when I rewatch the movie(s) it will be noticable to me.:frowning:

 

[John H Ross]

As a matter of interest, have they finally gotten the Russian subtitles right on the HD version of Rambo III?

To trigger your memories, the first DVD release had the correct subtitles (there are 2-3 lines of dialogue subtitled), the second release release missed the subtitles off, the third release subtitled every bleeding line - including all the waffle spoken by the guards.

Only the first DVD release was correct.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

Nope. 60Hz is the only option on my set. Do you think that could be the reason?

 

[Cees Alons]

It is thinkable that a 50fps video track would be played at 60fps if the projector can tell the player (through HDMI) that it has no 50Hz. Both, the movie and the sound would be slighly accellerated and consumers with a 50fps "ready" TV or projector would deny it (correctly).

But this is pure speculation at this stage. First we would have to find out if indeed those releases existed, and also what happens when it's played on a TV that doesn't have the option. Then we need to establish if those happen to be the "problem" tracks.

First observation could be: if someone is absolutely sure to have an audio track with a higher pitch, then what is the running time of the movie? Exactly as it should or shorter?


Cees

 

[Ed St. Clair]

I'm confused (not unusual!).
How in the world would a "projector" playing 50Hz video sources at 60Hz (is that even possible???) effect the sound?
Wouldn't the "problem" be further down the chain?
Thanks for putting up with my silly q's, just your making my tiny brain hurt.

EDitEDbyED:
I'm not saying 50Hz to 60Hz is impossible, yet is every projector able to do that?
Thanks, again.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I think the concept is similar to playing back a PAL DVD on an Oppo. The disc is 50hz but the output from the Oppo is still 50hz and the PAL speedup is still there.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

50/50, yeah!
Butt their talking 50Hz to 60Hz.

 

[Cees Alons]

Ed,

Let me start to say that there are a several assumptions in that logic that will have to be verified first. But let's assume indeed that some HD releases were authored at 1080@50.

Then the question is: what will a player do if the TV/projector tells it that it can only display 60fps? One "solution" would be: to do nothing and refuse.

Another: present the individual movie frames at 60fps. But because they were meant to be played at a speed of 50fps, in this case, the movie would play much too fast. So the logic might be designed to do something else, something "smart", question is: what?

The same question already exists at the player level too: if a US player would encounter a 50fps stream (again, this is still highly speculative), what would it do? Adjust it "somehow"?

Whatever happens at a wrong speed: the audio needs to be sampled differently too. So that might be the underlying problem when people in the US hear a pitch anomaly on a few DVDs not heard in Europe.

But to explain it differently would mean we have to accept relatively gross and a bit weird errors being made at the authoring stage.


Cees

 

[Douglas Monce]

Speeding up digital audio doesn't change the pitch, only the duration of the audio track. With Analog audio pitch is determined by speed that the waveforms move past the pick up head. With digital audio pitch is determined by the data encoded in the audio. So even if the player were able to play the film faster, the pitch of the audio would remain the same.

Doug

 

[Cees Alons]

Doug,

It would possibly have no effect if the system was able to shorten silent periods only. But that's not feasible. In practice, speeding it up by relatively simple means will influence the pitch (and/or may add a certain coarseness tothe sound). Very advanced systems can shorten the duration (to a degree) of an audio track and not change the pitch.


Cees

 

[Douglas Monce]

Actually in digital audio pitch and speed are totally unrelated. Pitch is determined by the information encoded in the digital data, not the speed at which is is read. In other words the data tells the DA converter that "this tone is at this pitch". Digital audio that is simply sped up becomes choppy (depending on how good the play back system is at re sampling the audio. When editing digital audio you actually have to tell the editing software to alter the pitch of a particular track by a particular percent or by semitones. If not changing the duration of the track just changes the amount of time it takes to play. The only way there would be a pitch change from NTSC to Pal and back again would be if the audio were in some analog format.

Most players I suspect couldn't speed up the film in the first place and if they could the sound would most likely drop out all together, or just be very choppy. You may notice that on some DVD players that can play at 2x speed and can still play the audio, the pitch is unchanged.

Doug