Old cartoons on DVD... why are they too fast?

I don't know if the cartoons themsevlves are speeded up, hard to tell. But the theme songs are positively too fast. Specifically, Speed Racer and the Jetsons. There might be others, I don't know, but those are the one I've heard. Why does this happen? Do they do it on purpose?

 

Too fast compared to what?

 

Compared to the way they sounded 40 years ago. Yes, I remember.

 

I seem to recall having a conversation with the head of Hanna-Barbera post-production in the 1980s, and they were about to come out with all the Jetsons shows on home video. I asked if they were going to be redone at 24fps, because the syndicated versions were cut and sped-up, and he shook his head and said, nope, the bosses didn't want to spend the money. I'm assuming those same film transfers are still around.

 

"Speed Racer" I ripped my DVD set a few years ago and some episodes were faster than others. The opening "riff" went up a semi-tone for these episodes. The DVD set was all PAL so the PAL speed up wasn't the cause or it would have been uniform for all episodes on the discs and these were random speed up's. Mind you, in the 8 disc set, every episode on discs 6, 7 and 8 were sped up. How do I know? I encoded every episode for use on my hard disk media player and I checked that each episode had encoded correctly. So when you here nothing but the opening 50+ times in a row, you notice!

 

I don't have all the Speed Racer discs, but I do have a few, and as soon as I heard the opening, I thought "HUH????" I thought maybe they re-recorded the opening, like they did for Deems Taylor in Fantasia. So I put the opening number into the computer and slowed it down, then it was what I remembered. I also found the original opening song on You Tube, and that was at the right speed. Top Cat is okay, though. And so is Underdog. Oh, well. No biggie, I guess.

 

Interesting, thanks! But, why would a TV show be filmed at the motion picture frame rate?

The only reason I can think of for speeding up an old TV show would be "squishing" it to allow more commercial time.

 

All American TV series since the dawn of time were shot at 24fps, and generally shown on TV at 23.976fps (close enough), for technical reasons relating to color burst and B&W compatibility.

Exactly. The "syndicated" versions of TV shows were and are often sped up to 26fps or higher just in order to give them another commercial position per hour. I have seen shows sped up as fast as 28fps in come cases, which is outrageously awful. Even 10% (26.4fps) is way, way, way too fast.

 

Thanks. The reason I found that confusing was the television frame rate was 30 FPS to sync with the power frequency, and I FORGOT the projector simply added extra frames for showing things on TV. Forgive me. I'm getting old, and the brain doesn't work like it used to.

 

Correct, live TV shows and videotape series are shot at 29.97fps (close to 30fps) and broadcast that way. Film shows are transferred at 23.976 to a 29.97-compatible format, standard-def or HD, using 2:3 pulldown. The forward speed doesn't change, but some film frames get more fields than others.

 

I have those speeded up speed racer DVD's, the whole set. It IS frustrating to feel like I paid for the cartoons, but have to watch them sped up for commercials that aren't even there. The dialog is especially hard to follow at that speed, (no pun intended)

 

I can watch DVD's at 0.8x speed, which is very handy for things like that, and silent films, which are nearly always too fast. "But silent films are supposed to look like that!" people will say. No, they aren't, dammit.

 

VLC (free) has speed controls as well as video saturation and contrast/brightness controls that can make an old videotape youtube with garish colors much easier to watch, muting the saturation, sometimes the green or red tint, etc.

 

Speed Racer has had a tough time on home video. The current Lionsgate DVDs are from the 90's masters made for mtv airings etc and are the origin of the bad video superimposed titles. All of the discs are severely over compressed by cramming in too many episodes per disc and on top of that practically all are severely time compressed. This is what is causing the speed up you noticed and makes the trademark fast dubbing even faster.

Add in that these were done to Betacam tapes and despite using the Japanese source prints are horribly contrasty and washed out. The mono audio is compressed down to 96 Kbps/s. In Japan they had a great box set for DVD fully remastered and spread across eight discs. A Bluray version was restored for HD but is hugely expensive and without subtitles.

To see how these shows should be in the States simply go back to the older VHS copies. The later ones from Artisan FHE are properly done and a few hit Laserdisc and are extremely good. The early 90's "The Movie" combined episodes 7-8 and 26 with vintage spots. They were able to go back to the Japanese 35mm source prints and the old OOP Pioneer DVD is the best US release of Speed Racer period.

Also note that the U.S. version utilized 16mm reduction prints shipped over from Japan. Thus every US episode is a bit hazy and fuzzy. And of course trimmed in violence and humor.

As you can tell this has been a pet peeve of mine for years and its taken quite bit of digging around to figure this stuff out. I've been tempted many times to get the Japanese set and try to create an English hybrid version but it's around $500 and the U.S. DVD audio is so poor that VHS is better.

It would be extremely easy for a studio or outlet to make a correct release here using the new HD master. Then simply add English subs for the darker Japanese version and sync the U.S. Dub along with its opening and closing credits.

But nobody wants to step up to the plate. I'm still shocked they even released the DVDs in the first place.

 

"Right Stuf" did an absolutely fantastic job with Kimba. Worth every penny. There probably isn't enough money at the bottom of the Speed Racer barrel for a major player to take on the project. And there aren't enough old guys like me who watched it when they were a little kid to generate serious interest in it. If only we were all independently wealthy.

 

Where's "Marine Boy"? Not on YouTube thanks to Warner Bros and my first copyright strike! And not on TV either.

 

Typing this up has made me even more determined. If I can build a new PC and get the Japanese boxset for much cheaper...
And then I found this.
It's finally happening. Holy s***!



No idea if the English audio will be included, but I don't see why not as it would be impossible to sell in normal markets without it. Presumably this will be the Japanese HD master and if including the US dub feature all of the previously Stateside edits restored as was done for the 90's The Movie. The only new work that would need to be done is to re-transfer the US opening and closing.

 

Omg don't tease me bro... I just bought the dvd box set a few months ago,, looks like I will be upgrading to blu-rays if this is true.

 

It's a horrible show, but I can't deny that it has a lot of fans and I'm always glad when a historically-important show gets preserved in HD. Even a show as bad as this deserves a good transfer and deserves to be saved.

But I want all the episodes of Jem & the Holograms to be burned. Please.

 

Horrible show? HEY!!! (ok, its pretty horrible show, but the movie was worse).
In my own defense, I was only 5 years old when I used to watch it every afternoon (with strawberry milk and vanilla wafers), so it has sentimental value, and brings back good memories.

 

Horrible? Personally I think it's actually quite good and pure escapism.

 

Great theme tune, but the animation is so cheap and choppy, makes it a bit hard at times to get immersed in it.