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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?
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.
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
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.
I don't have links handy but they aren't terribly hard to find. Most of the population (more than 90%) can tell the difference between 24 and 48. Most (over 50%) can tell the difference on any 10fps jump (i.e. 60fps to 70 fps) up to 80 fps IIRC. Beyond that it starts to dwindle, but there's still a substantial chunk (20ish%) that can tell a 10fps difference at 120fps. By 240fps you reach the point where basically no one can tell the difference between that and anything faster, no matter how much faster (e.g. 240 vs 480 fps benefits basically no one).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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
"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?
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.
Stop thinking of "movies" and "TV shows" as being separate entities. It's all basically the same (actors on fake sets), and the only distinction that exists is all in your mind.
In fact a lot of 2000-era movies don't even use film anymore..... they're using HD videocams. Same thing TV productions use.
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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.
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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
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.
Actually the "motion blur gap" is only half the width you think it is - in the olden days the shutter would be closed for half the time to allow the film to spool on, so each frame is a snapshot of 1/48th of a second.
Shooting at 48fps, I would expect them to aim for a 1/96s shutter speed. I've worked on motion graphics at 50fps, and 100% motion blur still looks bad at the higher frame rate - 50% looks perfect.
Increasing motion blur to 1/16s on a 48fps shoot would be a complete mess.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
why not? Should be easy enough. By default set everything to 24 fps, and just select some scenes and flag beginning and end frames for doubling up to 48 fps.
Pirates that upload DVD-ripped movies eyeball each scene and manually adjust the bitrate all the time. (the better ones do, anyways) They do this to fit the movie onto a 700 MB fixed size. Basically you allocate more bitrate to scenes with motion, and less bitrate to mostly still scenes. Software can do this automatically, but humans with an artistic touch can do a much better job.
And that's just *one* guy doing this for a whole movie in one evening. Should be nothing to a studio.
You could of been nicer about that, you know.
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24fps is actually the LOWER threshold. The level below which most people no longer perceive smooth motion.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
And your opinion can be safely ignored. Did you know that in conventional 24 fps film projectors, the shutter displays each frame twice? Do you know why? Because 24hz would produce flicker! Old films which ran at 16fps flickered, because when projected they were being displayed at 32hz. The concept of refresh rate certainly applies to even conventional cinema. You could construct a projector to display every frame 6 times, for 120hz (which is what those new Tvs do), or you could display each one once and have everybody's eyes explode.
Just because it is shot at 24fps, does not mean it has to be displayed at 24hz.
"Then" and "than" are basically the same, for all intensive purposes.