I'm just after buying Becket From Amazon UK and it says 142 minutes running time, but now see that Amazon US says 150 minutes???
Is this just including the extras or is there a difference?
After waiting so long for the film, I'd like to get the most complete version.
Can anyone help with this?
The European PAL signal has a 4% speed up compared to NTSC. Since films are shot at 24 frames per second, there is no easy way to transfer them onto either TV picture standard. To transfer to the 30 frames per second used by NTSC (EIA) video systems, technique called 3:2 pull down is used. In this, each film frame becomes alternately two and then three video fields resulting in a slightly exagerated judder in the image. For transfer to 25 frames per second (CCIR-PAL/SECAM) video systems, the film is run 4% fast, ie at 25 frames per second. This means that a 1:1 mapping of film to video frame is preserved, and the additional slight speedup both help to produce a stable and judder free picture.
shareThat's right the PAL Transfer is at 25fps rather than 24fps(actually 23.976fps for NTSC, but that's another story) means that a 100 minutes film only runs 96 mins in PAL video DVD so Becket which actually runs for 148 mins when exhibited at the cinema loses 6minutes when shown in PAL video. Sometimes pitch correction is used to compensate for the increse in treble that the speed up causes, however in many cases pitch correction is not used and a person with a very good ear can tell the difference between a PAL transfer and a NTSC transfer.
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