PAL TruSpeed -- how do I make it work ?

[MacEachaidh]

Hi all,
I have WinDVD Platinum 8, and am using it on WinXP+SP2 to play R4 PAL-encoded DVDs. I have a 3.5 GHz Pentium processor, 1 Gb of RAM and a Creative Audigy II soundcard.

Neither the manual nor the helpfile says anything of detail about the "PAL TruSpeed" option, except

Select the PAL TruSpeed check box to automatically correct PAL speed errors and adjust audio pitch.

Well, I've switched the TruSpeed option on, but it doesn't seem to be achieving anything. The same DVD sounds identical on my system, whether played back through WinDVD with TruSpeed enabled, or played back through PowerDVD or Nero Showtime, neither of which has the TruSpeed feature. The pitch is the same through all three players, and still about 4/5 of a tone sharp.

It's unclear from the documentation what to expect of this TruSpeed option -- does "automatically correct PAL speed errors" mean that the video also should play back without the 4% speed-up inherent in a PAL transfer, or does it just modify the audio? It's unclear from the wording what the option is actually intended to do. Whatever it is, it doesn't seem to be achieving it.

Can anyone tell me more about the TruSpeed option, and what it actually is supposed to do ?

More, can anyone please suggest why this might not be working, or what I need to do to make it work ?

[MacEachaidh]

G'day all,
I wonder: has anyone got any suggestions about my concerns with PAL TruSpeed not working ?

COREL product support say they have no info on this product.

I realise people in North America won't have a lot of experience with PAL, but are there no users here from other parts of the world ?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[sjj1805]

PAL TruSpeed™
PAL is the dominant video standard in Europe. When NTSC movies are transferred from film to PAL DVDs, popular in Europe, they play 4% too fast. This often results in subtle variation of the video and audio quality. With WinDVD Recorder, you no longer have to put up with that!
InterVideo's patent-pending PAL TruSpeed automatically corrects the 4% speed error and adjusts the audio pitch to maintain natural sounding audio.
So if you are in a country that sells PAL DVDs and you want to watch American films, WinDVD Recorder is the only DVD player that will play them at the correct speed and with adjusted audio

[MacEachaidh]

Ummm ... I don't know what to say, mate.

I mean, thanks for the reply, but you've simply cut-and-pasted the paragraph from the only reference to PAL TruSpeed in the site's knowledgebase. It doesn't answer the questions I posted -- it tells me nothing about the function, or how to make it work when it doesn't.

I do understand the difference between PAL and NTSC encoding, and I also understand very clearly *why* there's a 4% difference in frame-rate in the two display standards. And even though I"m not in Europe, I'm in Australia, and we also have PAL-encoded DVDs here. But PAL TruSpeed makes absolutely *no* difference to my playback -- whether it's enabled or not, the DVD plays at the same speed and the same pitch. PAL TruSpeed makes no difference, and I don't know why.

So I need to understand:

1) Am I correct in my understanding that PAL TruSpeed should remove the 4% speed-up and the 4% increase in pitch, and make the movie on the DVD play at the same rate as the original film ? Am I correct in my understanding that this is what the feature is supposed to do ? You're in Britain, I see. Do you have TruSpeed enabled on your system, and does it work for you ?

2) When it doesn't do its task, when PAL TruSpeed is making no difference at all, why is that the case, and how do I resolve this problem ? What can I check, to try to find out *why* it's not working, and make it do what it's supposed to do ?

3) The section you quoted is not only ambiguous, it doesn't seem to make any sense at all. It says:

"When NTSC movies are transferred from film to PAL DVDs, popular in Europe, they play 4% too fast. This often results in subtle variation of the video and audio quality. With WinDVD Recorder, you no longer have to put up with that! InterVideo's patent-pending PAL TruSpeed automatically corrects the 4% speed error and adjusts the audio pitch to maintain natural sounding audio."

OK, so first off, a *movie* isn't NTSC if it's on film. So that's confusing and simply incorrect, but it *appears* to be saying that PAL TruSpeed will correct the 4% speedup in audio and video incurred by a PAL transfer, bringing the pitch and running time back down. That's what it *seems* to be saying.
But then it says:

"So if you are in a country that sells PAL DVDs and you want to watch American films, WinDVD Recorder is the only DVD player that will play them at the correct speed and with adjusted audio."

and the reference to "American" films is confusing.
This makes me wonder -- is it actually talking about watching NTSC-encoded DVDs on a PAL system? Have I got it all wrong, and PAL TruSpeed actually speeds the NTSC transfer up to match PAL pitches and display rates ?

Do you see why I'm confused and uncertain ?

Also, I'm asking about this feature in WinDVD Platinum, the player software. Isn't WinDVD Recorder actually a completely different product ?


Mate, if this all reads like I'm being self-righteous or indignant, please understand that isn't my intention, and that I don't actually feel that way. If I sound rude or demanding, I'm not meaning to be. I may sound dogmatic, but it's only because from your response you don't seem to understand what I was asking, and so I'm trying to be as clear and specific as I can. The documentation doesn't even address this feature, let alone any trouble-shooting options for it or conditions under which it might not work, and Tech Support has not been responsive in any way. I bought the software specifically for this feature, on the basis of what I was promised it would do -- because the pitch increase in PAL transfers bothers me a lot (I'm a singer and musician, and the 4% speed-up puts everything on a DVD off-pitch). But the feature doesn't work, and I don't know why, and I don't know what else to do to try to get this resolved or addressed.


Thank you for your patience, and in anticipation of your response.

[zarzuelauk]

MacEachaidh, I share your bafflement at the "response" you've received from the Site Administrator, which is no response to your problem at all.

I have none myself, except to say to you (a) I did get PAL Tru-Speed "working" on my new machine when I upgraded to WinDVD 8 Platinum; and (b) rapidly turned it off again when it regularly [i] caused little blips in the sound track approximately once every half-minute; and [ii] caused "white-out" video blanching as a side-effect, on most of the R1 DVDs that I tried to watch.

In other words, the Site Administrator's claim is pure Mickawberism for at least two of us.

I wish to ask him in addition, please, for a suggested solution to *my* PAL Tru-Speed problem (the blips in the sound track) and respectfully request him not to merely cut and paste the jolly little lecture on the difference between PAL and NTSC.

If he doesn't know, please could he ask someone who does? A failure to respond with at least some sort of technically sensible reply will result in this user, at least, looking elsewhere for a software DVD solution: WinDVD's lack of support and general flakiness is becoming unacceptable - and nobody seems to care about users outside USA any more.

[MacEachaidh]

G'day zarzuelauk,
For my own part, thanks for your response and your own feedback on the issue.

Your description of the symptoms displayed on your own system point towards what I was suspecting might be at the root of the problem, and that is the specs of three separate aspects of our systems: our DVD drives (motherboard, memory and firmware revision); the speed and capabilities of our graphics cards and the size and speed of their onboard memory; and our CPUs and how well they respond to the "hardware acceleration" option in WinDVD.

For instance, I'm personally suspecting that the white-outs you're experiencing are due to stutters in your system trying to cache and process the data from the DVD at a different speed in real time. But whether that's because your system isn't up to the challenge in some aspect, or due to actual limitations in the coding of this feature in the software, who can tell. My system doesn't get even as far as yours, so it's reasonable for me to assume that it must not be up to the demands of this feature. But I'd like to know. And if I need to upgrade a hardware component, I'd like to know which one, and what I need to upgrade it to.

At the risk of sounding sulky, this sort of frustration and lack of information and support seems to be a recurring experience with Corel, most especially since they were bought out by that Vector investment group. The flow of technical information has just withered away; technical support has become rudimentary, cavalier and almost non-existent; and their treatment of customers outside North America is just shoddy -- we pay a lot more for their software, and get almost nothing but disregard in return. Jeez it's frustrating. And if I sound bitter ... well, I think I'm justified.

As for this "TruSpeed" ... well, no-one else offers the feature. I'd still like to be able to get it working.

[sjj1805]

You both appear to be under the impression that members of this forum are employees of Corel. We are not, we are all volunteers who are customers of Corel like yourself.

The Group of forum staff here - the 3 Administrators Ron, George and myself, plus the Moderators and the Senior Members all originated from the Ulead side of things before the first merger with Intervideo.

For this reason support for Intervideo is currently somewhat limited but we do try to chip in with suggestions and we extend a warm welcome to our new members who came here having purchased or acquired a former Intervideo product. Hopefully as more Intervideo members join then more self help will be forthcoming.

[MacEachaidh]

You both appear to be under the impression that members of this forum are employees of Corel.

Nope, never said or indicated any such thing. Sorry mate, but I think you're making excuses.

I realise you're a volunteer -- I rather expected it, because I know from experience on other Corel forums that that is the way Corel tends to do things.

But I rather hoped, given that I had had no responses and then the response you posted didn't address my questions in any way, and I tried courteously to let you know that, that you might flick a request for guidance or information up to the Product Manager or a technical manager on some level. That's what the volunteer admins do on the other Corel forums.

I'm not expecting you to have all the information yourself on every product addressed here, or personally handle every post -- please note that I originally posted to the board in general -- but surely you realise that you (at least potentially) have access to resources and avenues of information and action that we mere customers will never have ? And that so far there are two users of this software here who are trying to use this completely undocumented feature, both of whom are unable to even get it to work.

I was hoping you might use that access to help address what is clearly a gap in Corel's customer service and product/technical information.

If you think that's unreasonable, I would really like to know why you think so, and what you -- as a representative of Corel on this official forum of theirs, even if not a paid one -- think is reasonable for a customer to do in these circumstances ?

[zarzuelauk]

[quote="sjj1805"]You both appear to be under the impression that members of this forum are employees of Corel. We are not, we are all volunteers who are customers of Corel like yourself.

The Group of forum staff here - the 3 Administrators Ron, George and myself, plus the Moderators and the Senior Members all originated from the Ulead side of things before the first merger with Intervideo.

For this reason support for Intervideo is currently somewhat limited but we do try to chip in with suggestions and we extend a warm welcome to our new members who came here having purchased or acquired a former Intervideo product. Hopefully as more Intervideo members join then more self help will be forthcoming.[/quote]

Thank you for the "warm welcome". However, the exercise in hand-washing as to your fellow customers' problems with "PAL Tru-Speed" remains unsympathetic. Nor do you even, as a courtesy of this "self-help" you suggest, make any suggestions at all as to (a) what, or (b) whom we might address as to the technical causes or possible solutions for this serious problem.

If you aren't able to do even the latter, I respectfully suggest that you should approach Corel to find someone who can. Beyond that, you should maybe suggest closing this cosy little forum down, as it patently doesn't even attempt to do what the Corel documentation itself claims, when customers are deciding whether or not to buy Intervideo's Win-DVD software. At least we and potential other victims would know where we stood.

For myself, for your interest, I currently own a brand new Evesham machine with 2 fast Sony DVD drives, Intel Core 2 Quad CPU's @ 240GHz, 2GB of RAM, the very latest and fastest NVidia G-Force card and drivers, and a very high-spec Creative X-Fi sound system. And so if I can't get Win-DVD 8 Platinum to give me PAL Tru-Speed without falling over then I wonder who can?

(Oh, and while we're on the subject of non-working features, I can't get 6 channel 5.1 Home Theatre working either. I'm stuck with bog-standard stereo. Nor does the audio "test" button work either. Is there any audio troubleshooting documentation or support to be found anywhere, whether on this Board or off it, on the Corel site?)

I fear we all know the answer to that one! But, Mr Volunteer Administrator, if you don't know, can you please let us know the email address of someone who does? But now, I am repeating myself....

[MacEachaidh]

Well, 18 months later, and no answer. No help from the forum admin -- who if he has any sense at all must realise he didn't come close to answering the question, and has taken no action whatsoever to find an answer or escalate the problem to someone who can -- and no interest from Corel.

No wonder Corel, as a software breed, is almost extinct. They're strip-miners, with no interest in any effect they have on the (software) environment.