The Office S1 PAL pitch & framerate?/playback issues

[jonathan1jansson]

I'm having issues with a PAL DVD containing Season 1 of The Office (US). It reads and rips with no errors or other issues, but the resulting .mkv files are all "too fast", in the sense that their durations are slightly too short and the audio is pitched about 1.2x up from what it should be. I have the same issue when playing from the disc in VLC. I think I've narrowed it down to some kind of framerate/FPS error, but have no idea how to solve it. Had to use manual mode to rip if that is of any significance, since it would for some reason remove every cell but the first from each episode leaving them at just 4 minutes playtime.

Any suggestions? After ripping I've tried transcoding into mp4 using Handbrake with all kinds of settings, but nothing seems to fix the speed issue. I've ripped serveral other discs (all PAL region 2 as I'm in Europe) with no issues whatsoever.

[Sunoo]

PAL runs at 25 FPS, NTSC is 30 FPS.

30/25 is 1.2.

That’s just how some NTSC content makes it to PAL land.

[pneumatic]

PAL runs at 25 FPS, NTSC is 30 FPS.

30/25 is 1.2.

That’s just how some NTSC content makes it to PAL land.

I've NEVER seen 25 sped up to 30. That would be ridiculous if it happened. I very much doubt it. 24 is regularly sped up to 25 for PAL DVDs, yes, and even that chipmunks the voices and makes 100bpm music 104bpm with two thirds of a key higher pitch (sounds almost like a full key higher). But 25 to 30 would just wreck everything beyond oblivion there is no way

Anyway, assuming it is true and 25 was sped up to 30 then you can actually fix that rather easily in Avisynth with a single line of script: AssumeFPS(25, sync_audio=true) which slows the video and slows the audio.

Super curious to see a clip if this file, can you upload it somewhere?

[Sunoo]

I've NEVER seen 25 sped up to 30. That would be ridiculous if it happened. I very much doubt it. 24 is regularly sped up to 25 for PAL DVDs, yes, and even that chipmunks the voices and makes 100bpm music 104bpm with two thirds of a key higher pitch (sounds almost like a full key higher). But 25 to 30 would just wreck everything beyond oblivion there is no way

Anyway, assuming it is true and 25 was sped up to 30 then you can actually fix that rather easily in Avisynth with a single line of script: AssumeFPS(25, sync_audio=true) which slows the video and slows the audio.

Super curious to see a clip if this file, can you upload it somewhere?

I don’t know what to tell you, it happens. Feel free to take a quick look at the reviews for this DVD set on Amazon UK if you like: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-re ... B00JEZM1OU

[pneumatic]

I don’t know what to tell you, it happens. Feel free to take a quick look at the reviews for this DVD set on Amazon UK if you like: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-re ... B00JEZM1OU

Wow ok good find. And I see there are heaps of other reviews there complaining of it as well.

I still can't make sense of how it could happen though -- the release is marketed as being in PAL video format which is 25fps, and the show was shot at 24fps, so it would only need a 1fps (4%) speed up. No idea why they went 24 -> 25 -> 30. Must have been a mastering error of some kind I would imagine. My best guess is they did the usual PAL 4% speedup from 24 to 25, then some numpty who shouldn't have been allowed anywhere near DVD authoring clicked the wrong button and sped it up to 30, before their managers somehow signed off on the release without bothering to double check. I suppose this is all consistent with the enshittification of society. Even in general, DVD's authored in the mid to late 2000's are always higher quality than recent re-releases. That was back when PAL and NTSC were the main video formats so if you worked in the industry you had to understand them. Nowdays they are esoteric relics of the past which the current generation doesn't really understand much about them.

[pneumatic]

One of the reivewers on Amazon is saying it's only sped up by the usual 4%. Maybe that's what OP's noticing? But then why would OP not notice this on many other PAL DVDs which are often sped up from 24 to 25? I certainly notice it and always use AssumeFPS(24000,1001,sync_audio=true) for my PAL DVD's.

Something's not adding up. OP, please if you can post a mkv file somewhere, eg. google drive.

[pneumatic]

Alright, after reading another thread on another forum I'm going to place my bet on what's happening here: the DVD in question has only been sped up by 4% from 24fps to 25fps, as is common practice, and OP is just noticing it on this particular DVD because he's very familiar with these actor's voices.

This is certainly true in my personal experience as well - when I recently got Seinfeld in 24fps I felt like they were completely different actors with a potato stuck in their throat or something. It was very jarring if you're used to those actors for 10+ years of listening to the chipmunked versions of themselves.

Anyway, like I said Avisynth can fix it, either in realtime if your media player supports Avisynth (eg. MPC-HC, which I use) or you can feed the Avisynth script to ffmpeg.exe at the command line and have it applied as part of your transcoding, if you are doing that.

[jonathan1jansson]

Thanks for all the answers. Will look into posting a clip somewhere, but looking at the Amazon reviews it seems like the issue isn't on my end. I tried slowing everything down in a video editing software where the episodes oddly enough differed: one needed 0.92x and the others 0.96x. But like I said, I'll post a clip tomorrow (hopefully).

[jonathan1jansson]

Double-checked and it's not speeding up to 30 fps, but it's probably been increase from 24 to 25 as many reviewers have noticed.

[jonathan1jansson]

So I think I've finally solved this (not that I have any idea how the DVD could be this botched in the first place): video and audio in all episodes have been sped up by roughly 4%, except on episode 1 where audio has been sped up by 4% and pitched up by 8%...! Ended up using MKVToolNix to multiplex separate files: one video (with corrected fps) and audio (which I changed to the correct pitch - 0.92x of the original pitch but 0.96 of the original speed - using Audacity). Can't figure out how to get the subtitles to sync now, though.

Will get to work doing the same for the rest of the box set. At least the rest of the episodes seem to have both audio and video sped up by 4%, so I won't have to edit the audio duration and pitch separately.

Any ideas on how I could do this in bulk without having to multiplex every single file to correct audio and video separately? Tried to look into AviSynth, but if I understood the wiki correct I can't edit .mkv files with it? (and hence it's name, I suppose)

[benpollard]

Finding a solution to change the speed of subtiles so they synch when a video file is changed from 24fps to 25fps would be great. I've corrected some Doctor Who episodes to the correct frame rate, and have given up including the subtitles.

[pneumatic]

Tried to look into AviSynth, but if I understood the wiki correct I can't edit .mkv files with it? (and hence it's name, I suppose)

Avisynth can take your input mkv file, apply your desired video and audio processing to it, such as overlaying subtitles from an external subtitle file path, and then slow down the video+audio by your desired amount, then output the result as a raw uncompressed video+audio stream which can be played directly in MPC-HC (the .avs Avisynth script file can be opened directly in MPC-HC) or transcoded (recompressed) to another file format using eg. the ffmpeg.exe command line where the input file is the .avs Avisynth script file and the output is eg an .mkv file.

I don't have any experience with Avisynth subtitle filters like VSFilterMod so I can't really give you much advice on that. If you can live without subtitles that would make things a lot easier and basically the avisynth script would be:

Code: Select all

# Load the source clip

	file = "C:\S01E01.mkv"

	video = LWLibavVideoSource(file, stream_index=-1, repeat=true, cache=true)
	try {
		audio = LWLibavAudioSource(file, stream_index=-1, av_sync=true, cache=true)
		AudioDub(video, audio)
	}
	catch (noAudio) { video }


# Slow down the video by 4% (25.0fps -> 23.976fps).  Audio remains untouched and will play faster than video.	
	
	AssumeFPS(24000, 1001)

# Slow down the audio speed by 4% which also decreases pitch by 4%
	
	TimeStretch(rate_n=24000, rate_d=25025)

# Decrease pitch by 4% while maintaining original audio speed
	
	TimeStretch(pitch_n=24000, pitch_d=25025)

If you save the above as a .avs file it can play directly in MPC-HC, but there are some MPC-HC settings that need to be looked at for that to work seamlessly.

If instead you want to have ffmpeg apply the above script to your source file (eg. "C:\S01E01.mkv" in the above example) and transcode to a 8mbps x.264 file with rec.601 colour gamut, limited range video levels (what DVD typically uses) and 320kbps audio, at the windows command prompt:

Code: Select all

"C:\program files\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe" -color_range 1 -colorspace 6 -color_primaries 6 -i "C:\YourScript.avs" -c:v libx264 -tune film -b:v 8000000 -pix_fmt yuv420p -color_range 1 -colorspace 6 -color_primaries 6 -b:a 320k "C:\S01E01_dechipmunked.mkv"

As that takes some time to encode an entire episode and you may want to preview your script results more rapidly you can encode a short time slice eg. the first 30 seconds:

Code: Select all

"C:\program files\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe" -ss 00:00:00 -to 00:00:30 -color_range 1 -colorspace 6 -color_primaries 6 -i "C:\YourScript.avs" -c:v libx264 -tune film -b:v 8000000 -pix_fmt yuv420p -color_range 1 -colorspace 6 -color_primaries 6 -b:a 320k "C:\S01E01_dechipmunked.mkv"