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Hobbit Film Underwhelms At 48 Frames Per Second
bonch writes "Warner Bros. aired ten minutes of footage from The Hobbit at CinemaCon, and reactions have been mixed. The problem? Peter Jackson is filming the movie at 48 frames per second, twice the industry standard 24 frames per second, lending the film a '70s era BBC-video look.' However, if the negative response from film bloggers and theater owners is any indication, the way most people will see the movie is in standard 24fps."
Is this another version of the same issues people complained about when seeing their favorite newscaster (or "other" things) in HD?
Do we need some "masking" of the mundane reality of scenes (e.g., things "looking like sets") to sufficiently suspend disbelief?
What proportion of the population can actually tell the difference between 24fps and 48fps? Have there been any peer-reviewed studies to find out?
Could you show me what this "70s era BBC-video look" is. Despite having seen lots of 70s era BBC-video, I'm unable to understand what you're talking about based on the description.
If I was going to get angry at that preview, I'd go for the fact that the dwarves end up rescuing the three trolls in a battle.What's next, giving The Little Mermaid a happy ending?
The only reason people don't like it is because they are used to film looking another way. It has nothing to do with what is actually happening on screen, or some magical quality that allows 24fps to transport you to another place.
If all films changed to this, in three years no one would have an issue with it. In 10 years, people would say that older movies looked to "fake."
It's all what you are acclimated to.
I'm one of the luck few with sensitive eyes. Watching movies at 24 fps is jarring. I can't wait til they move up to 60 or 120.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I mean, the "it looks like a 70's era BBC documentary" gives you a hint there. Who the heck knows what a 70's era BBC documentary even looks like?
I'm sure it will be hated on as much as 3d though. "It looks too much like real life! Also it's new and therefore I hate it."
Everyone would say 24 FPS looked like old cell phone videos. The only reason people don't like high framerates is because that's what they were trained "cinema" should look like.
People have decided that 24fps is "cinematic" since that's what movies have been for so long and so they expect it and hate on things that aren't. They need to STFU and just take some time to appreciate a more real format.
We have cameras at work that shoot 60fps and I just -love- it. It is so silky smooth. When you first see it, it almost seems like something is wrong. Then you realize what is missing is the stutter of 30 (or 24) fps. Things are fluid, much more like they really are. Motion looks great.
We need that in movies. Spatial resolution is getting really good these days, we need better temporal resolution. Get that framerate up there and things will start to look much more real.
People have just come to associate the stuttery crap that is 24fps as being "cinematic". They need to tie a can on it and get over it.
lending the film a '70s era BBC-video look
Well, it's a story about olden-times in England, isn't it?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Just watch it. It's amazingly obvious. This isn't audiophile/videophile BS. It's easy to tell the difference between 15, 25, 30, 60 fps in video games. It's very easy to tell that the movie on the big screen is double-frame-rate. It's about as subtle as Michael Bay.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Awesome, does that mean it has tom baker and liz sladen in it? Instant hit!
Anyone who has watched a movie on a modern 120Hz+ HDTV knows exactly what they're talking about.
Suddenly "film" looks like "video", and it "just doesn't look right". To the point of being annoying.
And it's so clear, that sometimes you can see make-up lines on necks, and other signs of "fakery" used in productions, that totally take you out of the moment and spoil the suspension of disbelief.
When I got my new HDTV, I had to spend an hour or two playing with the settings to "detune" the image so as not to be so damn clear and sharp and, for lack of a better word, "shiney". It took a while to get the colors to look okay, to get the sense of motion/motion-blur right, etc.
It's still not perfect, but at least it's not visually jarring and annoying.
I have to wonder if, when the movie is distributed, there will be guidelines for configuring the digital projectors to optimize the movie experience for viewers not used to the "new" look...
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
"THE HOBBIT, frankly, did not look cinematic."
Is it because we are conditioned that the low frames per second represent a 'movie?' I remember seeing an FPS one time at 60 fps, not realizing right away that it was supposed to be a FPS and not a movie and my first and immediate response my brain gave me is, "wtf is this?!" It seems different frame rates make me think it's a different 'experience' of sorts, a game, a TV broadcast, etc. (Even say the 60fps black and white from back awhile ago... was it 60fps?) So I think I understand the feeling, even though I tell myself that I prefer the 48 frames per second. Because I then see the action in some other movies, say, Gladiator, at 24 fps and I see just how bad the action is represented.
I really *do* want to see more motion/information on the screen and I'm willing to put myself through reconditioning to do so.
But I'm not sure everyone else will, or even understands it this way.
Has anyone else noticed this effect?
It's like newer TVs with blur reduction.
I can't stand it when it's turned on, it gives everything a "soap opera" look. Intellectually, I know what I'm seeing is "better" but emotionally I hate it. After 30 years of watching everything with motion blur, my eyes just expect it when watching the TV.
Just send me the 10 minutes, and I'll review it in the comfort of my home and let you all know how it is :).
We already have video games running at much higher framerates, it's about time the movie industry caught up with the times. Most nature documentaries are already filmed at a few hundred fps and then have to be sampled back, which is a shame.
I'm sick of jerking/studdering/tearing during fast action and large pans.
I went out and purchased a 120hz monitor not for 3D, but so I could have smoother action in fast paced games. TF2 and L4D2 look amazing when you have twice as many frames.
Because the shutter is fixed, the exposure time of each frame is directly related to the frame rate. Lower frame rate = longer exposure = more motion blur in the frame. Shorter frame rate = shorter exposure = less motion blur in each frame. You need more light to shoot at a higher frame rate to keep the same aperture setting.
So, if they do project this at 24 frames per second (by throwing away half the frames in post), the frames will not have the necessary motion blur and it will actually look worse because half the frames are missing. This could also probably be fixed in post, but that would be a pretty big hack for such a large production.
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When my old TV finally gave up the magic smoke, I replaced it with a modern 240Hz LCD panel. The first show we watched on it was Lost. Everyone immediately said it looked fake. It was compared to a low budget History Channel documentary instead of a high budget network show. Within a week or two no one I lived with seemed to notice the difference any more. It was just different, therefore something for most people to complain about, until it became the new normal.
24 FPS ought to be enough for anybody.
yea... The black and white one where its filmed at 12 FPS. I bet the theme song is already in your head.
:D
Now go watch it!
I remember when the first tv's that were interpolating frames came out... Besides for sports, higher frame rates, to me, take something away from what you're viewing. Its like the "artistic" element is tarnished.
It's my understanding that the reason many soap operas look and feel so cheesy (outside of the acting, story, etc.) is that they are filmed at a much higher framerate than is typical and many find it jarring, or bizarre.
The more fast motion/pans you have, the more noticeable framerate is. If I shoot someone sitting and talking there isn't a ton of difference between the 60fps source and 30fps final product (the AVCHD cameras I use shoot at 60fps progressive). You can see it, but it isn't something that jumps out at you. However if I shoot someone running, the difference is extremely noticeable.
I have tried time after time to get used to it but I can't. The overly smooth look pulls me out of what I'm watching and makes it look fake, to the point that it doesn't seem natural. There is something off about it but I don't know what it is, real life doesn't have that look so I think there is some other factor at play here that makes people (myself included) react this way.
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On crappy, 50Hz PAL VHS tapes on an old, tiny CRT display, the way GOD and the BBC intended!
Give me a break. How could 48fps *possibly* not look better than 24fps? As it is, when things move quickly at 24fps in a regular movie I feel like yelling "focus!!" because the blurring is so bad, or it's terribly choppy.
If people are so upset about it they should hand out a pair of glasses with vaseline smeared on the lenses for people pining for that "authentic" cinematic look. Either that or it isn't the framerate that is the problem.
Meanwhile, the "framerate" of the website linked in the article is rather underwhelming.
But if something moves between one field and the next of the interlaced frame, it's 50 fields per second. That's why 48fps is said to look like television.
that's something that also makes it look "cheaper" than the final product will be - something that only a few people would notice consciously - but it makes a huge difference. anyways, the 24fps framerate is one thing that we are conditioned to associate with cinematic movies. i doubt it's really bad looking it's just a type of look associated with tv. the lack of color-grading probably underlines the tv-look even more. the only thing i'm afraid of.... i don't see any theater in my country switching to 48fps projection. and even if some of the big multiplexes do.. those are the ones who only play shitty dubbed versions of films. so i'll probably have the worst of both worlds - jerky 24fps projection without the 24fps motion blur (which will probably make it even more jerkier). this sucks.
You know, if I was trying to play my favorite computer game at 24fps I'd be bitching and moaning and reaching for my wallet. Why is it that 24fps in the theater, and 30fps (fudged on television is considered so d@mn fine anyway? Here is someone trying to improve the state-of-the-art and all people can do is complain about it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm a staunch advocate for 60fps frame rates, and yes even 300fps to cater for everyone, including existing 50/60 fps.
However, if there's *anything at all* that 24fps has going for it, it will be the 'motion blur' between each frame that 'enhances' the overall appeal, and gives the film almost an 'echoey' look. However, what would really be interesting is if this 0.04 second gap of motion blur was maintained, but where the footage was still 48fps. I'm assuming the Hobbit uses only 0.02s of motion blur per frame (1/48), but if we were to keep the higher level of motion blur (or even more, perhaps 0.06s!), and keep the framerate at 48fps (so during movement, the blur of footage is moving in smaller increments), this could grab the best of both worlds - a smooth experience and a "cinematic/blurry" one.
tl;dr: How about 48fps with more motion blur to imitate the motion blue from 24fps?
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I highly suspect that these are the same people who will end up watching the movie at 60fps on their 1080p TV, when it finally hits blue-ray.
Honestly, this is a pretty standard pavlovian response.
In France, at the Futuroscope, there is a experimental projection 2D at 48fps since 1988. I enjoyed it for it brightness and flicker free movement. I remember that I was thinking that any movie theater should be like this. The realism sensation is way better that for 3D at 24fps. Can't wait to see 3D at 48fps.
lower frame rate means each frame holds a whole 1/24th second worth of motion thus movements appear blurry.
on the other hand higher frame rate mean less exposure time per frame. TV in Europe is at 50Hz (interlaced 25fps) And due to how the technology works each frame can be a snapshot of even shorter time. Thus on TV, motion looks less blurry. It has some "ultrasharp ultrafluid" feeling, even if the resolution is crappy.
(and as a side note the same is also true for other home screen animation: video games have, for most of their life time, also featured non-blurred high fram rate animation - motion blur only recently apeared as a gimmick)
thus most people are train to consider:
- blurry motion = silver screen
- ultrasharp high speed motion = home screen.
give them a movie shot at 48fps and they'll think they're watching something at home, which they are used to consider as lesser quality.
now keep filming and showing al movies at 48fps for a few years, and the people will get used to it, start to appreciate the sharper picture, and think that ol movie look a little bit "shaky/jumpy" (just like we think about silent movies - 16 fps)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
24 FPS ought to be enough for everybody....
We should have been
So much more by now
Too dead inside
To even know the guilt
Faster frame rates require higher shutter speeds, and higher shutter speeds decrease motion blur. This can make footage look stroboscopic-like and unpleasant.
I noticed this years ago in televised (American) Football. Some shots appeared smooth, while other shots appeared harsh and stroboscopic. I eventually figured out that newer video cameras were being set at higher shutter speeds, so that you could have crisper frame-by-frame reviews of plays (without motion blur). It was terribly annoying.
240 fps TVs are bad for a different reason: they're interpolating frames out and motion interpolation is simply not all that great. In either case, higher shutter speeds are not necessarily better or more watchable.
---
This is a bit like TV that has a frame rate of 30 (29.97) but a field rate of 60 (59.94) because it's interlaced. It prevents jerky motion because the eye believes it's getting a frame rate higher than the true frame rate (e.g. it perceives the field rate to be the frame rate). When film is put on a DVD it has to undergo a telecine process to raise the field/frame rate.
Some people I know [with better eyes than mine] can see flicker in 24/48 film content. They actually prefer video because of the higher frame rate.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
I used to work with televisions, cameras, and etc. and from what I understand, it is all about how the video display is able to present the fps of the video it is reading. If the native FPS is 24, and the display is 60hz, this equates to 2 and a half screen refreshes per second. The problem is the screen is refreshing DURING a frame. That's why 120hz televisions look much better than their 60hz counterparts, not necessarily because of the higher refresh rate, but because they are refreshing exactly 5 times per frame, meaning there is no refreshing of the display mid-frame. this is also true for 240hz displays and 600hz plasma televisions, and typically the reason why you will not see a great improvement over 120hz.
Televisions have been designed around the 24fps standard, not 48hz.
I actually like the 1970s video look, there's a certain wam, comforting feel to things like Dr. Who, I Claudius etc, which seems to have been lost, probably in the switch from vidicon cameras to solid state. For that matter, I like the psychedelic colours you get when something explodes and overloads the sensor, but I'm probably in the minority there.
I wasn't planning to see The Hobbit, but this has piqued my interest somewhat, assuming it's not some artifact of it not have been colour-graded or something. That said, the local cinema is unlikely to run it in 48fps anyway...
The studio has announced that the movie will be released in two parts. The general audience will see the 24 frame-per second "A" frames version in theaters, and only die-hard fans will be given an entirely new perspective with the $65 collecter's edition "B" version of the movie.
a solution might be to show the movie at 48 fps but keep most of the source 24 fps... ramping up to 48 fps during scenes that require it (such as camera panning)
So basically what you'd do is shoot everything in 48 fps, but for most scenes take out every other frame, and just show the remaining frames twice. Then it would look like a regular 24 fps movie.
For scenes with lots of motion, DON'T take out every other frame, show the full 48 fps.
Seriously, what could be wrong with 48 fps? That it didn't flicker enough?
The problem isn't that it is fundamentally better, it's that it is a change from what people expect. Every time I see a high fps recording of something the motion looks like it's going to fast. I fully expect the video and sound to drop out of sync but it never does. The results look fantastic and smooth as they should, but it takes my brain conditioned by years of 24fps shit a while to adapt to the new look.
Any change from the norm is likely to attract serious criticism, whether good or bad.
The reviewers are unavailable for further comment. Somebody took them to a play, and their heads exploded. Shakespeare in the park is a bloody mess. Would have been perfect for the battle scene if they were staging Henry V. Alas, no...
After reading the articles and comments it sounds to me like because we're all so inured to watching crap (because that was the best that a century old and half-century old technology could manage), when we're shown non-crap we complain that it's worse because it's not the crap that we're used to seeing.
Maybe that's how we used to "get into the movie". What we were seeing clearly wasn't real in a real-world sense and once we accepted that at some level we could treat movies as entertainment instead of an actual representation of real life. Now you've having to deal with something that seems much more real and you're confused.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Don't forget the lightning production schedule, that needs to churn out 5(?) episodes a week. Urban legend has it that they get at most two takes on something, and in some long forgotten show some character said "As I look into your thighs... I mean your eyes..." and they didn't have time to fix it.
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Is the switch to 48fps that much cheaper than a switch to 60fps? Most consumer displays do multiples of 60Hz nowadays, and we would be free of jitter, telecine and all that crap.
Way back when, yust before 3D cards took over he world, I fired up old Quake on my more modern machine and ran the software renderer.
I got some godlike fps, but more importantly, the 320x200 image, though blocky as hell, was smooth, baby, smoooooth. It felt like looking through a window at a weird blocky world.
For some reason, no 3D card game has ever done this, though they all tend to push the limits until they're back scraping 30 fps again.
I might try it on CoH or something, turn down options until fps is way back up.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You could of been nicer about that, you know.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I'm sure that one day, you will accomplish something of value in your life, and you will no longer need to use trivialities to build your sense of self-worth.
The only thing the article said was that it was "recorded" at 48 fps... Was the preview Played back at that speed? Was it played back at 60? or was the equipment that it was shown on only capable or set for 24 fps? Showing a 48 fps film on 28 equipment, would surely account for such a disappointment in the reception quality!
If they hadn't been told, would many of them even realize it was projected at 48P?
I suspect this is the same problem that some people face when watching 240Hz TVs with Auto Motion (or similar) turned on. When we upgraded our old CRT TV to a flat screen my wife kept complaining that movies looked terrible, like an old soap opera. I didn't know what she was talking about and it looked fine to me. But she simply wouldn't watch it. I almost ended up taking it back until I googled it and found lots of articles like these:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-33620_3-57410231-278/the-soap-opera-effect-when-your-tv-tries-to-be-smarter-than-you/
http://www.televisioninfo.com/News/Cleaning-up-the-Soap-Opera-Effect-Motion-Interpolation-and-why-480Hz-looks-terrible-on-your-new-TV.htm
Apparently some people associate the look of a higher frame rate with low-quality video. I never watched that kind of TV so I didn't have that association and hadn't been trained to see the difference I guess. I turned off Motion Plus and now we both love the TV.
that sounds like variable bitrate compression - would there be something similar for video, and if not is there a reason the concept works for audio better than video?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Your quotation marks are inconsistent.
Well, supposebly manners matter more outside of the United States, but after seeing the AC's rant, I'm not so sure.
basically, if you make something look too close to reality, people start focusing on the small differences between it and reality (as opposed to something being obviously not real)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
should be enough for everybody.
But isn't 120hz LCD pretty much the same thing (combining two frames and making an additional one)? This is nothing new. It does make movies look like soap operas. You can see how bad actors really are, you can tell when a stuntman is used, and special effects look terrible. I saw X-Men 3 in 120hz and you could clearly tell when they were standing in front of a green screen. It was embarrassingly obvious when what's-his-name was moving the Golden Gate bridge while they standing on it. Really, it feels like you're watching a play.
I don't really mind it, though. Provided that the special effects are properly done with 48fps in mind. And if anyone is able to pull that off, it's Peter Jackson.
When I was studying film a while back I read about 24 frames per second versus 30 frames per second. 24 frames gives motion a bit of a blurry look. You see less, but this is the look of 'film' that we are used to and gives it an arty feel. There's nothing wrong with this. It's what we are used to. If you do pick up a video camera, look for one labelled '24P' which means it can also do 24 frames per second.
Sure Jackon knew this and I give him points for experimenting. If it doesn't work out, sure he will ditch it.
Every now and than everyone has bad days. I'm sure he's usually nicer then this.
Don't they jump at any excuse to re-make old movies and plot lines? Like throw a new twist into an old movie thanks to technology (I'm looking at you Pelham 123 with your "internet").
Seems to me they'd be embracing this as the new thing to re-sell old plots, remade with new actors.
Personally I *like* the "soap opera effect", as seen on 120/240Hz TVs. The only problem I have with it is that the interpolation works so much better with CGI material than with live shots, which means that in mixed content (eg. live-action sci-fi movies) the difference becomes glaringly obvious. Actually shooting live video in the higher framerate should help to reduce this discrepency, so personally I'm all for it.
... then why not go down to 16 fps (1/3 of the original 48) or all the way to 12 fps?.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"Then" and "than" are basically the same, for all intensive purposes.
If they've shot twice as many frames as they need for 24 fps, they can remove half of the frames, and use the excised footage for the sequel. I suppose the default would be to remove every other frame in sequence, but really, that's Peter Jackson's call. For some parts they keep all the frames and display at half speed, for others they move every frame in a 2 minute sequence from The Hobbit I to The Hobbit Strikes Back.
I thought the whole reason they were doing 48 FPS was to solely for the benefit of the 3D version. Of course, that only makes sense if they're using active shutter 3d glasses. (24 FPS/eye) It's always better to have too many frames than not enough. They can always remove, but you can't add and be true to life.
That's not the original reason for interlacing (altough the "interlaced feel" you are describing may now be some legacy like the 24fps motion blur).
NTSC/PAL video is interlaced because it was originally meant for display on CRT TVs. If you display "progressive" video on a CRT, when the electron gun reaches (=lights up) the lines at the bottom of the screen, the phosphors of the lines at the top will already be too dark and this will be perceived like a flashing of the image.
With interlaced video instead the electron gun is passing on every single line 60 times per second, reducing the line fading between a pass and the next one.
In related trivia, did you ever wonder why PAL is 50fps and NTSC 60fps? It's because the field rate of the first TV radio transmissions (in the 1950s) was synchronized with the AC power lines (while now it is sent to the TV set through a glitch in the signal itself). And while in the US the power lines frequency is 60 Hz, in Europe, were PAL was later adopted fixing the color problems of NTSC (at the time nicknamed the "Never Twice Same Color" standard), the frequency is 50 Hz. These number refer of course to the interlaced 60/50 Hz "field rate", and not the progressive 29.97/25 Hz "frame rate".
I don't know why, but maybe slower frame rates are more comfortable for seeing movies, and not just because we're used to it.
Consider the scenes you've seen --- perhaps in a music video or something --- when they added a "strobe" special effect, where the frame-per-second was even lower, like 12. What was your emotional reaction? For me, such an effect lends a certain "coolness," or respect. Even the most droll actions suddenly seem "cool" and significant.
They should pin a "cause" ribbon on each character, because I have a feeling this will be another movie, following TLOTR, which will feature a lot of WALKING and grand shots close and far of WALKING.
But now it's going to be WALKING in 3-d! Give me hours of that, please!
While 24/48 fps is largely about what people are used to, film vs digital as a recoding medium is an actual loss for the art form.
Film still has an extremely versatile response to light, and no digital sensors have yet been able to capture all of the nuance. Some digital cameras have matched the dynamic range, some the color tones, and some everything, but under very strict conditions. Such cameras are The Red and Alexa.
Thus the move to digital is reducing the options available to autuers. A new generation of filmmakers is being inducted whose options are less than the previous generation. And the audience this has a lowered range as well.
This is what proponents of film are complaining about. This complain will be moot when a sensor comes along that will replace film. That day has not yet come.
(I'm a filmmaker, and I shoot digital, simply because I cannot afford film - yet. But i do understand what I lose when I shoot digital.)
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Why is more realistic something to be striven for? Some of the most renowned art in the world doesn't depict anything realistically at all but rather through some filter such as impressionism or pointillism and it is precisely the lack of reality that is so highly regarded. Film is art, at least in theory, and so it need not look realistic to be valued.
It's intensive porpoises, dumbass.
Actors are pretty good at delivering convincing dialogue but there are a million subtle things that we sense subconsciously in every little movement. This information is mostly missing in 24fps so our minds fill it in with something appropriate - basically our subconscious gives the actors the benefit of the doubt and we see convincing movements. But when their actual movements are accurately captured and played back for us our subconscious sees every subtle thing and it ruins the effect. We can sense that they're just acting and it feels like they're just reading lines.
That's my theory I just made up but it doesn't explain why we get the same feeling when TV's add interpolated frames to double the frame rate.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Here is an example of 48 frames per second in HD for those interested.
Seems the comments are there mainly for seeing the Hobbit, but the video is unrelated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wcd3Eu0SCQ
Looks cinematic to me...Course I'm over 35 so my eyes aren't like they were in my teens but I don't get "it looks like a soap or it looks like a movie" they all look alike to me. Course I havent had tv since 1996, been pirating from axxo rips in the 90's to 720/1080p rips now, I can tell 720p/1080p difference, but I do not see a difference between 30 and 60 fps, I even looked up 24 vs 30 vs 60 fps tests and I can't detect a difference.
ah well.
Let ME guess: You're also American. You're just one of those douche bags that likes to pretend he's European when communicating online.
:)
Or, maybe you are European, and you have a tremendous inferiority complex. Either way, your post doesn't reflect well on you. Good thing you checked the AC box.... (like me
I shot a film using 24P video equipment. The DP screwed up on a couple of shots and shot them 30P. The difference was glaring and the 30P looked like crap. I'm curious to see 48 frame but I'm not convinced and it's not as simple as just jacking up all the frame rates. People keep trying to compare it to video game frame rates but it's apples and oranges. If literal was superior trust me the film industry would have switched to video many years ago. It's a lot cheaper and cheaper is seen as an extremely good thing. Shooting digitally only got practical when digital could match the look of film so film isn't inferior to video. Honestly would you be excited to see The Hobbit if it looked like Paranormal Activity? There's a trade off and after post processing it may be superior but it also may look like crap. I'm more excited by 4K than 48P. I was always a Vistavision fan and higher resolution is always a good thing. Everyone here who is declaring 48P the next great innovation have yet to see it. Don't shoot the messenger until you've actually seen the message. Everyone is taking a lot of faith that of coarse it has to be superior. It may be superior but I'd rather base my opinion on actually seeing the results than guesswork.
the sets might have looked "stagey" in 24fps, too, but nobody compared 24 to 48.
The people who are against the change are probably the same who prefer 128 kbps MP3s because they're used to the way they sound, or who prefer valve amplifiers because "they make a warm sound". The fact that Hollywood movies are heavily formulaic, with e.g. all the scenes shot in Mexico having a yellow tint and those shot in Afghanistan having a brown one, does not help. Critics will probably change their mind once some enshrined director endorses the format or a tech giant give some fancy name to it.
Never had an issue with high framerate. In fact, I love it. Never understood this 24/30hz realism assertion as all the justifications sound like 'audiophile special pleading.' After playing fps at high framerates for years, and being exposed to high framerate effects from stuff like scenedemos before that, most video looks like a choppy stuttery mess to my eyes. I understand some people have trouble with it but why let that hold back progress? just have a chopper feature built into the player/display. as long as an even multiple is selected, pulldown isn't required. to offset motion blur issues with chopping, have the chopper handle temporal resampling too.
this is like the loudness war. the people are stupid but the technical fixes are simple enough to give everyone what they want.
If you install BS Player, ffdshow, and several AVISynth packages (windows only), you can see what the interpolated effect looks like, which approximates what real high-fps viewing might look like. Here are the instructions on guru3d.com. I would recommend not using the "frame doubling" method, but instead interpolate to 60 hz native refresh rate of your LCD screen - this can be done by changing the second to last script line to "source.MVFlowFps(backward_vec, forward_vec, 60, 1, mask=1, idx=idx1)".
Fire up some 24fps movies. You will notice that things seem to happen faster, and movements are quicker. This is because your brain is no longer putting together a perceivable slideshow - you can get the same "almost looks like slow motion" effect of film from old digicams that at 15fps. This effect will pass, and you start to see that things start to look more natural, the flowing of Thor's robes, the flames of the fire, you have a higher "looks like you are there" feeling. Poorly done CGI effects stick out though, the fast motion quickly reveals artificial non-physics-based movements and the too-smooth computer camera fly-throughs.
For a good example of real 60fps vs 24fps, you had to dvr the 30 Rock live show. They shot the live show at 1080i (30fps interlaced - 60fps motion equivalent when properly deinterlaced), and it looks like video instead of film.
Yeah. I agree. You seem like a nice guy. Let me buy you an expresso some time.
The idea of frame rates comes from the days of silent movies.
CRT's did a terrible job of emulating "picture frames" on the screen. Scanning didn't quite work out. Interlaced fields was a necessary hack.
LCD's do a great job of emulating 'frames'.
But why do we continue to be dragged down by our initial design for presenting moving pictures?
LCD's are pixel addressable. We can change each pixel individually.. not as part of a 'frame'.
What about presenting updates for different sections of the screen at rates to reflect the speed of change in those areas.
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Douglas Trumbull developed a 60FPS movie system in the 1970s called Showscan.
The theater owners wouldn't install all new equipment when there was no guarantee that there would be movies in that format, and studios wouldn't make movies in that format unless the theaters had all converted.
It's not just Emaricens who get e and a confused, Anglish people do it as well.
Lens manufacturers in the 60ies and 70ies and the entire film industry bent over backwards to get rid of the bokeh effect, or at least dimish it. Lenses that reduced or dimished bokeh were way up there in terms of cost and quality. Today compositor and 3D software vendors are struggling to offer the most realistic bokeh effects, and in variations too. People have gotten so used to it that scenes in which bokeh would occur but doesn't (due to digital effects) consider it unreal and 'somehow not fitting' i.e. good looking.
A simular thing happend in the Fashion industry when fashion fotographers would skip the bleach to preview prints before moving them into print production when they were in a hurry. Then the designers and fotographers got used to the look and started printing them in ads, unbleached. Nowadays 'bleach-bypass' is a regular set of digital post production effects and when you want to present and sell hip fashion in an ad, it's just about the only way to go.
I bet this bickering about 48fps movies falls in the very same category.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
All intents and purposes, you mean...
"Then" and "than" are basically the same, for all intensive purposes.
You mean "intents and purposes"?
Its the Camcorder Effect.
when camcorders came out in the 80's they filmed in 30+fps and we came to associate the "look" of higher frame rates with Crappy VHS Home Movies.
Now its ingrained in our heads that when we see high frame rate video we think "Why did Peter Jackson shoot this movie with a Sony Handicam?"
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Higher frame rates are going to look like video, but at the same time it will also allow for better special effects in the long run. People complaining about the "video" look simply because they associate it with "cheap" TV movies are just going to have to suck it up and accept that it's the future, IMHO.
Why go only to 48Hz? Consumers have been experiencing 60fps on their video games for a long time, why not match that? Or better yet, exceed that?
"for all intents and purposes" ;)
I thought he was quite sweet about it
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
what is happening to /.?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Intensive guy has been corrected three times at this point. Has /. got some sort of comment sharing program going with Reddit or something?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
"M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified."
The physical universe has a pretty good framerate -- about 8.3*10^16fps, according to Planck -- and it's in 3D too!
The author's reaction is typical and, as the article implies, expected. You see the same thing when iPod-earbud music fans hear an audiophile-class sound system for the first time. They're initially confused & disappointed. The more accurate system sounds like it has no bass and no high-end and everything sounds kind of, um, "empty." Those that want to pursue the issue further soon realize that that's the way the real world sounds. Psychoacousticians find that the brain accommodates audio distortion and we subconsciously filter it out when listening to what we know to be reproductions. In other words, our brains expect certain distortions when listening to recordings. When we listen to a more accurate reproduction system, our expectations are unfulfilled and it's initially confusing. Now I'm just guessing here, but I am guessing that the same is true for higher-frame-rate, more accurate video. It's understandable that the author was distressed at seeing video without the barely perceptible flicker, grain, reduced contrast, and artifacts of film. But the real question is how long it will take for a viewer to accommodate to the loss of expected artifacts. I'd bet that, just as in audio, once one gets used to 48fps -- gets used to video with far less distortion -- 24 or 32fps will truly look crappy.
They wouldn't do it just because it's better. However they'd do it if it was enough of an improvement to drive sufficient demand to make it profitable.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
then surely we can do better. I've seen several movies recently wrecked by the awful juddery motion. Sure, beautiful frames, high spacial resolution, but 24fps thunk-thunk-thuink. This "it doesn't look filmy" is just old fuddy-duddies.
Frame rate has nothing to do with it. It all depends on the shutter.
With film, the shutter is rotary (one rotation of a disk during a frame). The shutter speed is determined in "shutter angle". A 180deg shutter means half of the disk is opaque, half is open. If film is 24fps, a 180deg shutter will give ~1/50 second shutter speed.
180deg shutter is called "normal motion blur" and is widely accepted as the typical shutter setting for normal shooting conditions. This actually creates a stroboscopic effect, since motion is captured for half of the frame time, but projected for a whole frame time. Different shutter settings are creatively used - in "Saving Private Ryan", the D-Day battle scenes are shot with fast shutter, which emphasizes the explosions and the flying debris with a strong stroboscopic effect.; on the other hand, gun fight is shot with a very show shutter speed in order to capture the muzzle flares (otherwise the machine guns will have no flash, since the muzzle flash is very short, like 1/1000 sec.). Cinematographers are very creative with the stroboscopic effect. We perceive is as Art, Cinema.
In a typical video recording, the electronic shutter is active for the duration of the frame, therefore all motion is captured and no stroboscopic effect exists. This looks real, less artsy, less Cinama, more soap opera.
Now, you take film at 24fps and show it on your 120 Hz HD TV set. The TV interpolates 3 frames for every 1 original frame and reconstructs a close approximation of the original motion, undoing the "creative" stroboscopic effect of the film. Now everything looks like a soap opera, even "Saving Private Ryan". Some respectful manufacturers let you disable the interpolation feature and the TV just repeats the original frame 4 times.
Interlacing and frame-rate has nothing to do with it. It's the shutter settings that gives the "soap opera" look. See my comment above about the full explanation.
48fps, super ridiculous HD, 3D, and attention to a level of detail like no other movie - coupled with an engaging and humorous interpretation of one of the greatest stories ever told. I can say this with authority.
This will set the standard for movie making and Hollywood is worried that, like most things American, that some else in the world is doing it better.
(Sir) Peter Jackson, based in small New Zealand, has driven himself to create a, not world-class, but world-dominating film making industry. Watch the all credits in The Avengers for what Weta Digital did, let alone the other six or seven projects they have on the go at any one time.
Frankly, all critics will be eating their words.
If the 'sets look like sets' and the landscapes look good then maybe it's just a bad production. Yes, things at 48fps look crisper but if you make a shit movie, the shit will simply be more accentuated.
You can easily cut down from 48 fps to 24 fps, just remove half the frames and double the length each frame is displayed. Will it look better? I doubt it.
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Actually, they are not, as any basic writing student could tell you, and its "intents and purposes."
Oh god, my eyes, they bleed.