Question about an older film.

[George Ebersole]

I recently purchased an R2 DVD of an older film entitle "Jules Verne's Rocket to the Moon" (1967). (The American title is "Those Fantastic Flying Fools").

 

Parts of it look very smooth. The motion at some points is almost like video, but the film doesn't look like it was sped up from the original 24 or 25fps. That is the dialog doesn't sojund sped up, nor are the actions apparently sped up. It just looks very smooth.

 

I'm wondering if anyone knows what could account for this. Might the film have been projected slightly faster during the telecine transfer and I just don't notice it, or is there some other process that smooths out film motion that I'm not aware of?

 

Thanks for any reply.

[Perry Paolantonio]

Is the disc NTSC? Most of Region 2 is PAL - if that's the case and you're watching on a computer, then it would be showing at 25fps. and should be a 1:1 frame mapping to the original film.

 

If it's NTSC, it was probably transferred at 23.976. If it was a new transfer to HD, it would have been done at this frame rate. If it's an older transfer, it would have been done to an interlaced format at 29.97, with pulldown. In either case, if properly encoded it will show at 23.976, as a progressive stream, with no pulldown artifacts.

[George Ebersole]

It is indeed an R2 PAL disk, and I am watching it on a computer.

 

Thanks. Even knowing that, I have to admit that it looks eerily clean and smooth at points.

[George Ebersole]

I'll add that it almost looks like hi def video at times. A really incredible print of an older film.

 

The film itself I think was the last period race comedies from the 1960s. It's a so-so film with lots of money thrown at production values; locations, sets, costumes, and onscreen talent. It's not my favorite film, but it does show that you can inject new life into an older film with a proper transfer.