‘Bad news’, wrote 3FM DJ Mark van der Molen on Twitter at the beginning of this month. Many series and films in the range of the new streaming service HBO Max are played 4 percent faster than they were recorded. And so Tony Soprano sounds out The Sopranos different on HBO Max than in the original series.
Bad news.. remember that Adele concert on television which was sped up by 4 percent? The same method uses @hbomaxnl also. Here’s a comparison of the theme of GoT. The original and how it sounds in NL on HBO Max. In short, every series and every movie is 4% faster..? pic.twitter.com/c9lE6eZCOA
— Mark van der Molen (@MarkvdMolen) March 8, 2022
The accelerated films and series are intended for the European market, where HBO is a television channel in some countries. For technical reasons, cable TV requires slightly faster versions.
Moving image consists of a succession of still images. Think of those booklets in which on each page a figure moves slightly to the right. If you quickly run through the pages, you will see the figure make a smooth movement.
Those still images are called frames. A ‘unit’ of moving image is frames per second (fps): the number of still images a camera captures per second. For the recording of film, the standard is roughly 24 frames per second everywhere.
But for broadcasting, it’s not the same all over the world. In Europe a speed of 25 fps applies, unlike in the United States, which broadcasts on a different frequency. As a result, films and series can be broadcast there in their original speed, in Europe films and series are accelerated by 4 percent due to this difference. Almost every film on television in the Netherlands is played just a little faster than it was recorded.
The advent of streaming services and digital televisions has largely made the 25 frames per second standard obsolete, as it is no longer a traditional broadcast. Netflix, Disney+ and other HBO Max competitors show movies and series in their original speed. HBO Max has accelerated versions on its streaming platform, HBO in Europe only has versions that have been made suitable for the European market. Not about the original American masters of movies and series.
The difference between 24 or 25 frames per second is almost invisible to the naked eye. But if you play a film faster, it has consequences for the sound. That sounds a little higher. Some directors, such as Peter Jackson of the Lord of the Ringstrilogy, were so dissatisfied with this that they corrected their DVD boxes for the European market so that the sound sounded just like in the United States.
A spokesperson for HBO says that the company wants to offer everything at its original speed ‘in time’. New films and series are shown in their original speed. Here in Europe Tony Soprano is talking just a little higher up until then than he sounded when the series was filmed.
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