A Hard Day's Night song tracks: which version is the correct speed: DVD or CD?

I notice that both the MPI box VHS tape and the special edition DVD have the songs running nearly a half-step slower than the CD's! (at least in the cases of If I Fell and And I Love Her; haven't checked the others).

Is this more in tune with the original mono tracks from the film (lip-synching issue), or is it the mono CD that is at the correct speed?

 

My first guess would be that the CDs are the correct speed. European film runs at 25 frames per second (PAL), while US films run at 24 FPS (NTSC), so the difference in speed is because they slowed it down by 1 frame a second for US release, resulting in slower speed and lower pitch.

 

I think the songs shot in the TV studio were filmed at 25fps to match the frame rate of the TV monitors shown in some shots, but the whole film was projected at 24fps, hence those songs are slowed down.

 

That would be my guess, too. The CD is definitely at the correct speed.

 

Great! Thanks for this info!

 

I believe that, too but you'd think they'd be able to correct that these days - at least for the DVD - I know, it's not 'as it was originally' but this is a case where I think it should have been corrected, if possible.

 

I don't understand - the whole point of NTSC film conversion is that it's the right speed but is judddery because of 3:2 pulldown. When converting film to PAL you get a 4% speed increase. So how could you get a slow down?

Is it because the film was for some reason made in 25fps and thus needed to be slowed to 24fps before the NTSC conversion??

By the way there isn't really a way to "correct" the speed, but you can digitally correct the pitch.

 

Film is shot at 24fps as standard throughout the world.

It is just the video standards that are different. In parts of Europe among other places we use the PAL standard which runs at 25fps. In America and Japan they use the NTSC standard which runs at 29.97fps

Hence the problems in transferring film to video formats (eg DVD).

 

What Dragun is saying is that the segments filmed in the TV studio were cranked at 25fps so as to integrate smoothly with the TV monitors that are visible and are running at 25fps PAL standard. On playback the film is cranked at 24fps - hence the TV studio segments run slow but the rest is at the correct speed.

Sounds like the most likely explanation to me

 

Oh, so this is true of all versions....but then wouldn't the PAL DVD be the correct speed because it's essentially been slowed down from 25fps to 24fps and then sped back up again to 25fps. The rest of the film would be fast but the studio bits would be at the correct speed.

 

Yes, a PAL DVD in which the frame rate was set at 25fps for the transfer would have the TV studio segments at the correct speed.

I can't tell you if the PAL DVD was transferred like that or if some digital pitch shifting or somthing was employed to retain the original the 24fps audio pitch since I pressed eject after one listen to "I'll Cry Instead" on the Miramax PAL DVD - never have I been so shocked by the sound quality on such a(n) historically important re-issue. I nearly did cry instead.......

 

When interviewed for You Can't Do That:The Making Of A Hard Day's Night,Ron Furmanak said the 'slow' versions in the film are correct...

 

So did George Martin in an interview in Beatlefan back in the 90's.

 

I believe this has to be the correct reason, since all the non-studio songs are at the proper pitch; "A Hard Day's Night", "I Should Have Known Better", "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Don't Bother Me", "Can't Buy Me Love" and the George Martin instrumentals all sound normal (Well, perhaps the pitch is off by a sixth of a semi-tone or something but the TV studio songs are a full semi-tone slow).

I can relate to the fact you nearly cried after hearing the sound quality , but "I'll Cry Instead" wasn't on the Miramax version of the DVD.

 

Now the critical question is, who among us is not lazy and/or busy enough to get up, get a tuning fork or a tuning machine, tune his/her guitar or whatever perfectly, go to the film, CD or LP and check this out? (Certainly not me at the moment!). A track like And I Love Her, for instance, >should< not be in A flat, but in A (if such is the case), for a pop/rock band from the early 60s, even with the talent of the Beatles, to play along the changes comfortably... I imagine... Yes, some songs are capo-ed...

 

Whoops - I was thinking about the first song on the MPI release! I guess the song I heard on the Miramax DVD was "A Hard Day's Night" then - to be honest I've tried to erase all traces of the memory from my mind......