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Post #773495

Author
BeatleJWOL
Parent topic
Help Wanted: A Hard Day's Night? - Can someone do a preservation of?
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/773495/action/topic#773495
Date created
31-May-2015, 4:27 PM

lastjedi said:

i've been working on making a version with the original speed for the songs.because as everybody knows,the songs are much slower in the film.

 Not all, just some; any scenes where there are video monitors suffered from that.

This excellent article provides the following info: http://www.studiodaily.com/2014/08/beatlemania-in-black-white-restoring-a-hard-days-night-in-4k/

During the performance sequence in the “TV studio” (filmed actually at London’s Scala Theatre, in front of a live audience of screaming extras), the music has always sounded oddly slow — and for a reason. Lester sought to show the experience of the band being captured by television cameras, allowing the film audience to see their images on the on-stage CRT TV monitors.  British video refresh rates being at 25 fps, and film cameras one frame short at 24 fps, Lester adjusted his cameras’ frame rates to 25 to avoid the characteristic black bar “roll” seen when a film camera’s frame rate is less than that of a video monitor’s.

“He shot at 25 fps, but with them miming on set to the music played at the proper speed, when it’s projected back at 24 fps, it sounds slow,” Okell explains. “That’s 4% slower, which makes it a semi-tone lower than on the record. The slower speed is imperceptible to the human eye, but definitely noticeable to the ear.”

Digital adjustment of the frame rate of the image or the pitch of the music was considered, but neither would have resulted in a natural look or sound, Martin explains. “Sam and I tried pitching the music up in Pro Tools, but it just didn’t sound good. It might seem odd, but having the song at the right pitch, but the wrong tempo, is more unnatural than having the song at the wrong pitch and wrong tempo.”  So it remained as is.

- See more at: http://www.studiodaily.com/2014/08/beatlemania-in-black-white-restoring-a-hard-days-night-in-4k/

In addition, the speed issue affects the initial performances of "And I Love Her" and "I'm Happy Just To Dance With You" which occurred in the middle of the film.

Personally I'm not convinced that just simply pitching the audio up wouldn't work fantastically, but I haven't tried it myself.