Case Study: Farid El Atrache Films
Analysis, Explanation & Solutions
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| Mervat Amin and Farid El Atrache in Nagham Fi Hayati, 1974 |
"Why is it high pitched?" It was a simple question without a simple explanation.
He was a young American commenting on the Farid El Atrache song "Hibeena." Like many other young people in the West, he fell in love with the music while playing the popular video game Grand Theft Auto. These new Farid fans were curious and wanted more. They searched for it on YouTube and discovered Farid singing the song in the 1974 film Nagham Fi Hayati.
His observation was correct. The audio from the film was high pitched. And as many other commenters noted, the sound was not as good as the high quality version they knew from the game.
As a lifelong Farid El Atrache fan, it bothered me that someone interested in his music would be let down. I decided to make a new "Hibeena" video - replacing the film sound with CD quality sound. And just like that, the Farid HQ YouTube channel was born.
It was clear from this very first video, that there was a difference in speed between the film and the commercially available high quality recording. Over the next four years, I spent thousands of hours making hundreds of videos, studying countless recordings associated with Farid El Atrache's film music. A clear pattern emerged: nearly all Farid El Atrache films, as broadcasted on television, had been sped up by an average of 4%.
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Farid El Atrache & Mariam Fakhr Eddine in Yom Bila Ghad, 1962 |
This issue should not be considered exclusive to Farid El Atrache films. On the contrary, many, if not most old films throughout many regions of the world are also affected. But for the purpose of this article, only Farid El Atrache films were analyzed.
While most viewers do not notice the slightly faster motion in the films, the effect of speeding the audio is more obvious and problematic. Speech becomes fast and chirpy. But most importantly, songs that are considered eternal classics are presented faster, with higher audio pitch, misrepresenting and distorting the original works.
First I will present the signs and technical evidence of film speeding, collected through analysis of the films and recordings themselves. Then we'll look at the cause of the issue: the imperfect process of transferring 24fps film to 25fps television format using the telecine machine.
Part I: Evidence by Media Analysis
Film Songs From 1957-1974 - an Easy Comparison
In the eleven films between 1957 and 1974, starting with Inta Habibi, Farid recorded only one version of all his film songs. This means the same exact recording was used for the film, as was sold on record albums, and played on the radio. The only exception was the song “Wehyat Eineki.”
High quality recordings of these songs were made commercially available on vinyl records, cassettes and CDs, by reputable music labels such as Voice of Lebanon. Today, most songs are owned by Mazzika and can be streamed on YouTube, Anghami, Spotify, Deezer, and more.
If you take these official high quality song recordings published by these music companies, and compare them with the same songs that appear in the films, you will consistently find that the songs are about 4% faster in the films. This faster speed causes an audio pitch increase, that does not match up with standard music pitch frequencies.
The video below compares the recordings of one song from each of Farid's last eleven films. Notice the higher pitch in the films.
The company Rashid Sales, founded in 1937, the oldest distributor of Arab music in America, has released original film trailers with clips that are about 4% slower than same film clips broadcasted on Arabic satellite channels today. In the video below, you can see and hear the difference in the film "Ayza Atjawiz."
The reason the trailers are not sped up is because the USA uses the NTSC format for video and TV. As you will see in part II below, the NTSC format does not suffer from the same film-to-TV transfer issues as the PAL or SECAM formats used in most of the rest of the world.
Part II: The Origin of the Problem and Solutions
Traditional Conversion from Film to TV Increased Speed by 4%
In order for a motion picture film to be shown on television, the film stock must be transferred into video. The machine used for this transfer is called the telecine. For most of the world, the traditional process of transferring film to TV with the telecine machine caused films to be sped up by 4%. Let’s take a closer look.
The standard frame rate, or frames per second (fps), in motion picture film 24fps. However when it comes to TV broadcast, most of the world, including the MENA region, uses the PAL or SECAM formats, which operate at a framerate of 25fps. During the telecine transfer process, a conversion from 24fps to 25fps must be done so that the picture does not flicker on television. As confirmed by award winning director and producer Larry Jordan, a 24fps film must be sped up by 4% to become 25fps. The resulting video is sped up, but is still smooth. However the audio is not only sped up, the pitch of the audio also increases by 4%. That is the equivalent of about 70% of a semitone. A semitone is the audio pitch frequency difference between two adjacent piano keys.
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| Telecine Machine |
Countries that use the NTSC video format such as the USA, Japan, and parts of South America, are not affected by significant speed changes from telecine film transfer. NTSC operates at 29.97fps, and when transferring 24fps a method called "2:3 pulldown" must be used. The mathematics of this method work nicely, resulting in a small, insignificant .01% speed change opposed the 4% speed change caused by transferring to PAL/SECAM. To put that into real-world terms, a 2-hour NTSC film is extended by only 7 seconds after conversion. But a 2-hour PAL/SECAM film is shortened by nearly 5 minutes.
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Most countries use the PAL or SECAM television video standard |
How Important is the Problem?
Personally, I think it is major problem, especially for films which place a high value on their audio content, such as Golden Era Egyptian musical films. These musical films are a vital part of documenting and preserving the work of such legendary singers like Farid El Atrache, Abdel Halim Hafez, Sabah, etc.
From my experience interacting with thousands of consumers of these films, most do not seem to care or notice. People have been watching sped up films on television their entire life, and they simply don't know anything different. Many have no idea they has been sped up. The ones that do know have simply accepted it as a normal reality.
The urgency of the matter certainly hasn't reached the level which would motivate the film owners to take corrective action.
Solutions
- Fix the Speed - The ideal solution would be for the film owners or broadcast networks to slow the films down to correct speed. Today, this can easily be done with a digital workstation. But would satellite channels want to add 5 minutes to a 2-hour film, eating into precious advertising and promotional time? Given the lack of urgency among the consumers, this seems very unlikely.
- Fix the Audio Pitch - Another solution would be to correct the audio pitch without correcting the speed. This too can be done easily with a digital workstation. This would allow TV networks to continue running the same amount of advertising as they do now. However, it would not be as natural as fixing both the speed of the film, and the audio pitch as suggested above.
- Fan Created Content - This solution has already been happening through fan-created content that is posted on the Internet. Channels like Farid HQ create enhanced music video clips, replacing the film recordings with high quality recordings at the correct speed. However there has not been a fan channel that has attempted to correct and publish an entire film.
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