A question about music in TV and film...

Something I've noticed over the years is the tempo of music used in some films and TV shows, and how they seem to be deliberately increased. A couple I have recently seen with credits with faster music is Get Smart (Four Minutes by Madonna) and Zack and Miri Make a Porno (We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off by Jermaine Stewart) Also, after watching Curb Your Enthusiasm on More4 last night, the theme is also sped up over the titles.

Is there a reason for this practice or is it some technical issue that I'm oblivious to?

If a film is recorded in 24p (24 frames per second), it has to be converted to 50i (25 frames per second) to be shown on TV, or on DVD. Usually, this is done by speeding up the film slightly, which is barely noticeable with the actors' speech, but much more noticeable with songs - hence why the playing time on a DVD is shorter than in the cinema.

Blu-ray is natively 24p - hence you won't notice any difference between the cinema and on the disc in terms of sound. Of course, if your TV doesn't support native 24p, then you may notice stutters during motion.

Wow - that's really interesting.

Can think of at least a couple of films where the music sounds decidedly slower than the official soundtrack release. Guess now I know why ...

I thought it was related to the frame rate, but I never thought it'd make that much difference. I have both of those films on Blu-ray, I'll have to double check what speed the music plays. Thanks for that

I believe it's around a 4% increase in speed when you convert an American NTSC programme to PAL for example. So American programmes I've watched for my entire life on PAL TV/VHS/DVD like Star Trek, Family Guy etc, when i finally got a proper conversion on Bluray, i'm often distracted massively by the fact the sound is too slow. When really it's exactly as it should be for the first time.

You'd be surprised just how many people don't notice such things, but it really distracts me.

Most Blu-ray films are encoded at 23.976p instead of 24.0p so are slowed down by 0.1% compared to a normal cinema using film.