According to Princevault:

"Depending of the country, running times varied from 113 minutes in the USA, to 111 minutes in Japan, and 107 minutes in Europe."

I've just checked and my version is 106,54 minutes.

WTF??? Are there 3 different edits including one that's 6 minutes longer than the european one I've always watched???

my guess, maybe the formats ntsc and pal are running different. Sometimes american films are running a bit too fast..... but let others speak about this, it's only a guess from me.

The Shining was something like 20 minutes shorter for the European version.

Depending on the market (TV, Europe) Hollywood films are known to get re-edited for content. It's possible they didn't think a European audience would get certain references or maybe the British Film Board required it?

PAL wouldn't shave off 6 minutes, but it's very possible the transfer costs were more affordable in a shorter cut.

I'm speculating, but maybe someone knows a concrete reason.

[Edited 7/11/14 16:03pm]

I wonder what edits there are for that Japanese one?

Back in the old VHS days and even with some old laserdiscs, PAL used to just run a film a bit faster (going from 24fps on the film to 25fps for PAL) so if the time difference is that fraction then it might be a PAL speedup. The speed would also very slightly pitchup the audio. They did this to avoid more time consuming field splitting/retiming. PAL was close enough to film rate that it was considered okay.

US and Japan home video versions had no choice but to run it through a frame drop down system where certain fields and frames were repeated in a pattern to convert it to 29.97fps. I used to have to this for stuff back in the day of converting film/animation stuff to NTSC SD.

But doing the math, 113 would become 108 minutes. That could explain the European discrepency.

If there was any additional content in a release outside of the US and Europe ones, we'd have known about it years ago and it would have appeared on bootlegs.

The only circulating different edit is the workprint version which has slight differences, but is only circulating in rather poor quality.

Militant said:

If there was any additional content in a release outside of the US and Europe ones, we'd have known about it years ago and it would have appeared on bootlegs.

The only circulating different edit is the workprint version which has slight differences, but is only circulating in rather poor quality.

I think this thread is talking about cuts, not additions. The US version is the longest.

Are u guys saying that the tape was sped up or slowed down depending on the format, as much as to make a 6 minutes length difference and the viewer wouldn't notic that the film is too slow or too fast?

Come on...

databank said:

Are u guys saying that the tape was sped up or slowed down depending on the format, as much as to make a 6 minutes length difference and the viewer wouldn't notic that the film is too slow or too fast?

Come on...

Converting 24p to PAL[edit]

24p material can be converted to the PAL format with the same methods used to convert film to PAL. The most popular method is to speed up the material by 25/24 (4%). Each 24p frame will take the place of two 50i fields. This method incurs no motion artifacts other than the slightly increased speed, which is typically not noticeable. As for audio, the ~4% increase in speed raises the pitch by 0.7 of a semitone, which again typically is not noticed. Sometimes the audio is pitch shifted to restore the original pitch.

ufoclub said:

Converting 24p to PAL[edit]

24p material can be converted to the PAL format with the same methods used to convert film to PAL. The most popular method is to speed up the material by 25/24 (4%). Each 24p frame will take the place of two 50i fields. This method incurs no motion artifacts other than the slightly increased speed, which is typically not noticeable. As for audio, the ~4% increase in speed raises the pitch by 0.7 of a semitone, which again typically is not noticed. Sometimes the audio is pitch shifted to restore the original pitch.

.

24p didn't exist.

Nobody in the US mastered to PAL first in those days.

It was 35mm to NTSC, and from NTSC to PAL/SECAM, and maybe 35mm to PAL/SECAM.

Pretty sure PAL is sped up by 4%.

On top of the frame rate, colors in PAL are entirely different.

I'm sorry but I don't understand a bit of those technical things u're talking about

Is there any way u guys can translate in plain English?

Thx

Different countries used different standard formats. There were meetings, and goups of people argued before deciding on the resolution, and frames per second that they would all broadcast.

So the problem is the USA created NTSC video as their broadcast format, but Europe adopted their own standards in PAL and SECAM. The formats are different. The resolution is different, and the frames per second are different. Without needing to understand the technical aspects, what you need to know is this difference in the formats creates an idiosyncratic timing quirk that your eye (and sometimes ear) shouldn't notice. In order to go from one format to another format, you have to resolve the differences and adap to the increased/decreased amount of frames, and resolution, and other issues.

.

If you unrolled an original film print of Purple Rain you would see there are literally 24 individual pictures shot on a strip for every second of footage when played normal speed. If you took and NTSC Video and went frame by frame, you would see closer to 30, with some frames being repeated, or half frames in a goofy mathematical pattern. So Video and Film are different frame rates.

.

I'm still not sure 4% sped up accounts for that short of a cut or if there was some scenes edited down subtly for the International release.

treehouse said:

ufoclub said:

Converting 24p to PAL[edit]

24p material can be converted to the PAL format with the same methods used to convert film to PAL. The most popular method is to speed up the material by 25/24 (4%). Each 24p frame will take the place of two 50i fields. This method incurs no motion artifacts other than the slightly increased speed, which is typically not noticeable. As for audio, the ~4% increase in speed raises the pitch by 0.7 of a semitone, which again typically is not noticed. Sometimes the audio is pitch shifted to restore the original pitch.

.

24p didn't exist.

Nobody in the US mastered to PAL first in those days.

It was 35mm to NTSC, and from NTSC to PAL/SECAM, and maybe 35mm to PAL/SECAM.

Pretty sure PAL is sped up by 4%.

On top of the frame rate, colors in PAL are entirely different.

I'm not sure what you mean by 24p didn't exist. All standard cinema house movies were and are in 24fps as projected (since the beginning of Hollywood). They were shot and projected on film in theaters at 24fps. Then these movies were transfered vie telecine (projector to video camera) to a master video tape. If it's PAL, they used to speed the projection of the frames up to 25fps as simple means of transfer to the analog video format to fit the 25 (or 50 fields) on the PAL videotape. For NTSC they had more of a challenge to fit 24fps to 30fps (really 60 interlaced fields). That's were they would repeat fields and do what was called pulldown. That's why if you would look at a VHS or Beta recording of a movie one frame at a time, every 4th frame seemed to repeat.

Above, you just said nobody in the US mastered to PAL first in those days. Don't know what you mean by this either. We're talking about PAL in England and Europe. The original post mentioned the running time being different outside of the US. Where does US mastering first come into play? Who's on first?

These days they do a digital scan of the negative instead of a telecine machine.

[Edited 7/12/14 21:38pm]

treehouse said:

Different countries used different standard formats. There were meetings, and goups of people argued before deciding on the resolution, and frames per second that they would all broadcast.

So the problem is the USA created NTSC video as their broadcast format, but Europe adopted their own standards in PAL and SECAM. The formats are different. The resolution is different, and the frames per second are different. Without needing to understand the technical aspects, what you need to know is this difference in the formats creates an idiosyncratic timing quirk that your eye (and sometimes ear) shouldn't notice. In order to go from one format to another format, you have to resolve the differences and adap to the increased/decreased amount of frames, and resolution, and other issues.

.

If you unrolled an original film print of Purple Rain you would see there are literally 24 individual pictures shot on a strip for every second of footage when played normal speed. If you took and NTSC Video and went frame by frame, you would see closer to 30, with some frames being repeated, or half frames in a goofy mathematical pattern. So Video and Film are different frame rates.

.

I'm still not sure 4% sped up accounts for that short of a cut or if there was some scenes edited down subtly for the International release.

Thanks

So basically a full lenght motion picture can be SIX minutes longer or shorter just because of that and we wouldn't even notice it. Weirdest thing I've learned this year

databank said:

treehouse said:

Different countries used different standard formats. There were meetings, and goups of people argued before deciding on the resolution, and frames per second that they would all broadcast.

So the problem is the USA created NTSC video as their broadcast format, but Europe adopted their own standards in PAL and SECAM. The formats are different. The resolution is different, and the frames per second are different. Without needing to understand the technical aspects, what you need to know is this difference in the formats creates an idiosyncratic timing quirk that your eye (and sometimes ear) shouldn't notice. In order to go from one format to another format, you have to resolve the differences and adap to the increased/decreased amount of frames, and resolution, and other issues.

.

If you unrolled an original film print of Purple Rain you would see there are literally 24 individual pictures shot on a strip for every second of footage when played normal speed. If you took and NTSC Video and went frame by frame, you would see closer to 30, with some frames being repeated, or half frames in a goofy mathematical pattern. So Video and Film are different frame rates.

.

I'm still not sure 4% sped up accounts for that short of a cut or if there was some scenes edited down subtly for the International release.

Thanks

So basically a full lenght motion picture can be SIX minutes longer or shorter just because of that and we wouldn't even notice it. Weirdest thing I've learned this year

I once had an Empire Strikes Back laserdisc which was erroneously (or incredibly lazily) sped up to 30fps with no conversion or frame repetition. The results? It moved more like live video, and the audio was noticably higher pitched when compared back to back with a regular VHS copy. I wish I still had that. It was completely bizarre because this was for an american NTSC release. This was in 1990.

ufoclub said:

databank said:

Thanks

So basically a full lenght motion picture can be SIX minutes longer or shorter just because of that and we wouldn't even notice it. Weirdest thing I've learned this year

I once had an Empire Strikes Back laserdisc which was erroneously (or incredibly lazily) sped up to 30fps with no conversion or frame repetition. The results? It moved more like live video, and the audio was noticably higher pitched when compared back to back with a regular VHS copy. I wish I still had that. It was completely bizarre because this was for an american NTSC release. This was in 1990.

This is crazy. I wonder if this could explain some of the duration differences between some versions of some TV live shows that we have different versions of (US, EU, Japan)?

databank said:

ufoclub said:

I once had an Empire Strikes Back laserdisc which was erroneously (or incredibly lazily) sped up to 30fps with no conversion or frame repetition. The results? It moved more like live video, and the audio was noticably higher pitched when compared back to back with a regular VHS copy. I wish I still had that. It was completely bizarre because this was for an american NTSC release. This was in 1990.

This is crazy. I wonder if this could explain some of the duration differences between some versions of some TV live shows that we have different versions of (US, EU, Japan)?

This would probably only be an explanation with older material pre-digital days. Timing would be different (a little bit shorter) on PAL VHS or Beta tapes, then their US counterpart VHS or Beta tapes. And this would only be for cinematic films shot at 24fps on film for movie theaters.

ufoclub said:

I'm not sure what you mean by 24p didn't exist. All standard cinema house movies were and are in 24fps as projected

24p is a format.

24 fps is a frame rate.

They are not the same thing.

.

Film to tape transfers involved color correction, and panning and scanning. It was intensive and costly. Many films were only timed for NTSC format, and then they did a tape to tape transfer to PAL.

.

Much later, after formats like 24p were introduced, and software allowed for easy conversions, people began to buy PAL cameras in the US, shoot PAL, or just transfer to PAL as a preference, because of it's film like frame rate. If you learned video production in the late 90's then it may be hard to imagine, but in the 80's shooting in PAL or even creating PAL deliverables in the USA was a headache.

morningsong said:

Feels like physics. So everybody got every word, every note.

.

Unless they released different edits in addition to the goofy format stuff.

treehouse said:

ufoclub said:

I'm not sure what you mean by 24p didn't exist. All standard cinema house movies were and are in 24fps as projected

24p is a format.

24 fps is a frame rate.

They are not the same thing.

.

Film to tape transfers involved color correction, and panning and scanning. It was intensive and costly. Many films were only timed for NTSC format, and then they did a tape to tape transfer to PAL.

.

Much later, after formats like 24p were introduced, and software allowed for easy conversions, people began to buy PAL cameras in the US, shoot PAL, or just transfer to PAL as a preference, because of it's film like frame rate. If you learned video production in the late 90's then it may be hard to imagine, but in the 80's shooting in PAL or even creating PAL deliverables in the USA was a headache.

You can't tell that the "24p" usage was in a portion of an article I just pasted? It even retained the formatting. I never wrote that term.

If you look at my first post, I already specifically used the term 24fps and broke the whole thing down.

"Back in the old VHS days and even with some old laserdiscs, PAL used to just run a film a bit faster (going from 24fps on the film to 25fps for PAL) so if the time difference is that fraction then it might be a PAL speedup. The speed would also very slightly pitchup the audio. They did this to avoid more time consuming field splitting/retiming. PAL was close enough to film rate that it was considered okay...

But doing the math, 113 would become 108 minutes. That could explain the European discrepency."

See, you originally posted this "PAL wouldn't shave off 6 minutes". That is incorrect, it would.

databank said:

Are u guys saying that the tape was sped up or slowed down depending on the format, as much as to make a 6 minutes length difference and the viewer wouldn't notic that the film is too slow or too fast?

Come on...

.

You can just google PAL and NTSC and notice the framerate. Then look up the framerate of movies.

ufoclub said:

You can't tell that the "24p" usage was in a portion of an article I just pasted?

.

24p has no relevance to this discussion.

You seemed to be using the terms 24p and 24 fps interchangeably, in error.

treehouse said:

ufoclub said:

You can't tell that the "24p" usage was in a portion of an article I just pasted?

.

24p has no relevance to this discussion.

You seemed to be using the terms 24p and 24 fps interchangeably, in error.

You're incorrect again. I only used the term 24fps in my explanation. I never typed 24p unless I was quoting you. Actually, you and the article were the only ones to type and use the term 24p and you're the only one dwelling on it as if it is relevant.

In the third post you actually said "PAL wouldn't shave off 6 minutes," This is incorrect.

ufoclub said:

You're incorrect again. I only used the term 24fps in my explanation. I never typed 24p unless I was quoting you.

I was replying to your cut and paste about transfering 24p. You posted it. It had no business in this discussion.

treehouse said:

ufoclub said:

You're incorrect again. I only used the term 24fps in my explanation. I never typed 24p unless I was quoting you.

I was replying to your cut and paste about transfering 24p. You posted it. It had no business in this discussion.

This statement is wrong. That cut and paste completely and clearly explained why the running time would be faster on a PAL conversion. Do you think it has any relevance whatsoever to the original post that the article used the term 24p vs 24fps, which you then kept reviving? That was obviously not the key meaningful portion of information.

It had more business on this thread then you stating false information on your initial post, or later simply reiterating info I had already posted in this discussion.

In the other thread you were reduced and began to nitpick irrelevantly, and the same in this thread. Just admit you were wrong. I do. It's quite alright to be wrong as long as you admit it.

ufoclub said:

treehouse said:

I was replying to your cut and paste about transfering 24p. You posted it. It had no business in this discussion.

This statement is wrong. That cut and paste completely and clearly explained why the running time would be faster on a PAL conversion.

.

Which is why someone, in this case me, had to explain what the hell you cut and pasted?

You gave out confusing info and I clarified it and made sure what YOU cut and pasted about an off topic file format that didn't even exist in 1986 wouldn't mislead anyone.

The rest is internet boringness. We're done here.

treehouse said:

ufoclub said:

.

Resorting to personal attacks reads as insecurity, and it's not furthering the topic.