Lowering the sound pitch of PAL movies without having to slow it down?

Why do you want to keep the video at 25fps? You would get better results if you did slow it down.

Make sure you double check your source.  I'm aware some of the PAL transfers of Star Wars were pitch shifted.  (The source for Moth3r's preservation is an example.)

I agree with Moth3r, if you do have speed up and your audio is pitched higher, just slow the video and audio down.

You could also consider getting a hold of an NTSC audio source and using that with your video (which is what I did with Moth3r's preservation).

TheHelmetDork said:

Well, seeing as I'm trying to convert my PAL-region Star Wars DVDs to AVI or others, I'd like to know how to properly lower the sound pitch without having to slow it down, and being able to implement this into the PAL clips without any bugging.

With Windows Movie Maker this gets out of sync pretty fast, as far as I've tried.

Certain programs let you change the speed of the audio while retaining the pitch, or vice versa. 

To change speed, but not pitch, I'd export your original speed audio tracks from your video editor, and import them into Audacity (a free program, available for all platforms), and use the "Change Tempo" effect.  Just type in the new desired length and let it render.  Then export from Audacity, and re-import to your video editor.

Or if you already have it at the right speed, but need to change the pitch, do the same thing, but use the "Change Pitch" effect.  This would be slightly more complicated though, as you probably won't know exactly what parameters to put in, and you'll have to tune it by ear.

Hope that helps,

-T

Give more detail about your workflow, e.g.:

What did you use to extract the audio/video from the DVD in the first place?

Does Audacity read the AC3 file direct? What format does it output?

Does Windows Movie Maker read MPEG-2 video, or did you do any conversion first?

What format do you want your final AVI? (Xvid + MP3, or something else?)

Sony SoundForge does this pretty well, but it'll never be perfect because of the method involved.

Go to: Effects/Pitch/Shift.  Set "Cents to shift pitch by" to -72.4 and check the box for "Preseve duration".  The mode option gives you several profiles you can use.  Some will sound better than others.  Preview and see what you like.

(This tidbit is ripped from one of pupil's old posts.)

It looks like TimeFactory for MAC (ugh!) will probably do what you want (I think).

It is mentioned and recommended on Doom9 here.  I've never used it myself, but it certainly sounds like it might do a good job on pitch shifting/time compresson etc.