f) ‘la remise à cadence’ – adjustment for speed when calculating duration in video

A further consequence of the fact that transfers from film to video are often made at an incorrect speed is that duration values can also be misleading.

For example, if a film shot at 16fps and lasting, say, for 12 minutes is transferred to video at 24fps, then on playback, the video version will last for only 8 minutes.

Although the playback speed of video is relatively fixed at 24 or 25fps, depending on the region of the world, for reasons explained here, it is not possible to be so sure of the frame rate at which the film passed through the camera in early cinema, particularly if they were hand-cranked.

However, 16-18fps was a widely recognised norm, so as a rule-of-thumb, if one comes across a video version of a film in which the movement is obviously accelerated, it is probably appropriate to add 30% to the given duration in order to calculate the playback duration of the film in its original filmic form.

In French, there is a convenient term for this process – la remise à cadence. No such specific phrase exists in English, but in the posts on this website, we shall refer to this process as “adjustment for speed“.

© 2018 Paul Henley