<i>"It doesn't look 'cinematic', lacking that filtered or gauzy look we're all accustomed to"</i><p><i>"Not all will like the change. 48 fps has an immediacy that is almost jarring."</i><p><i>"...he elaborated his thoughts, and essentially, the crisper looking image had the odd effect of making everything seem almost too realistic".</i><p>Lighting and set-design issues aside (sets shouldn't feel artificial), these comments seem ridiculous to me. It would be like a Triumph TR3 or Sunbeam Tiger owner lamenting over the Mazda MX-5 (Miata), saying that it's not an authentic British-style roadster unless it regularly hemorrhages its fluids when stationary in your driveway, occasionally fails to maintain an idle, or if an artifact of one the builders can't be found hidden in the trunk. Oh, wait -- people <i>actually</i> made those sorts of complaints.<p>People dislike change, even when it ultimately is for the better. I'm sure there were plenty of complaints when the industry moved away from nitrate film as well. Heck, since this film is digital I'm going to go find the "Death of the Projectionist" article I'm sure exists.
I think it all breaks down into three categories:<p><pre><code> * People who like it
* People truly not liking it because they're not used to
it, but someday they'll look back and think 24fps looks awful
* People trying to send hipster social signals by being more
cinema snob than thou
</code></pre>
Not sure what the exact breakdown is, but I wouldn't underestimate that third category.<p>If it seems like I've not left space for people genuinely and indefinitely not liking it... no, I haven't. It's a proper superset of capabilities. If for some bizarre reason 24 fps is truly called for, it can be used. I expect that to happen about as often as we bizarrely have a sudden need for 12fps footage in the movies of today, which is to say, never. (No, I don't mean slow-mo, I mean a sudden frame rate drop for its own sake.)
> <i>Terms like "artificating" and "juttering" are terms still best known among hardcore tech heads, not moviegoers, and frankly, that's because when most people watch movies, they aren't seeing those "problems."</i><p>I suppose they just have to ask my mother "Hey, what did you think of the first minutes of Quantum of Solace?"<p>The argument for 48fps is a simple one to make: With faster cuts and pans, photographing a scene 24 times a second only gets you so far.<p>24p was mostly an economical decision - made decades ago. Unlike, for example, digital audio, which is modeled after the maximum detail that the human ear can perceive, 24 fps was simply set at that limit because that's when people stopped noticing the flicker - in movies at that time.<p>I would say that any change as big as this will take a while for directors to get used to. I don't think it will get quite as ugly as 3D, though, and I'm not sure why people are trying to make this connection. A lot of digital content is already in in frame rates far beyond 24 fps, so we're getting more and more used to this every day. Finally, this new technology is just another tool - now it's up to the directors to use it in a way that entertains audiences.
I have one of those TVs that does a good job at extrapolating frames (Samsung 7000 led) and when you turn that functionality on, it does make everything look more 'fake'.<p>It makes movies feel more like theater than cinema. When I first got the TV, I really noticed the makeup and excessive hairspray on men a lot. Also, the props in sci-fi movies looked like they were foam or plastic (since that is what they actually are). Iron Man's costume, for example, looked very plasticy. I don't know why that is. Our brain must be filling up the missing frames of 24fps such that everything looks more real.<p>It only took a week or two to get used to it and now I mostly don't notice it anymore and actually prefer the crisper looking images. It's especially great for documentaries such as Planet Earth where everything is more life like.<p>I know some people have difficulty getting used to it because the guy who sold me the TV told me he was getting some returns with complains of things looking fake on the TV.
To everyone raising their noses at these cinema hipsters who doubt the attraction of 48fps: take care. Human perception is a fickle thing and does not always follow the logical path one might expect.<p>Consider the uncanny valley, where adding fidelity to an image actually reduces the perceived pleasure rather than increasing it.<p>In my experience, even the jump from 24fps to 30fps is enough to lose the feeling of 'magic' that people are used to in the movies. There's a reason that most non-reality, non-sitcom TV shows are filmed in 24fps rather than 30fps (the native framerate of television).<p>It may be that the movie industry will find a way to make movies that take advantage of the characteristics of 48fps, but it's not going to be like sticking a new video card into your rig and receiving an instant experience improvement. The fundamental way that movies present themselves (photography, scene design, set design, storytelling) will have to change.
As excited I am for The Hobbit, I'm also leery of the 48fps. If you've ever noticed the difference between watching movies on a 120Hz/240Hz, it's definitely extremely noticeable and distracting. It makes movies look like reality TV.<p>Why this is, I don't fully know. The fact that this is <i>filmed</i> at 48 fps (rather than simple interpolating the extra frames) might make it better, but I'll just have to see for myself.<p>What I do know, is that if watching a film at 48 fps is like watching a typical bluray at 120Hz, I'm going to find it distracting. It really does mess with the "feel" of the movie. Whether it's simply cognitive dissonance or not will take time to determine.<p>Here's a relevant article from last year that really hits home for me: <a href="http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html" rel="nofollow">http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.h...</a>
Reminds me of people who said CDs would be a flop because they reproduced sound too faithfully, and consumers would be uncomfortable listening to music that didn't have the distortions and white noise record players produced.<p>In other words... BS.
Perhaps the negative reactions are simply because most people aren't accustomed to seeing insanely high resolutions and frame rates in the cinema.<p>When I first got a high-definition plasma TV (which replaced my 20+ year old CRT), I felt the exact same way: as if all my movies were ruined, because they looked like documentaries. Now it feels like a degraded experience to watch poorer quality films. Perhaps the audiences of 2032 will feel the same about 48 fps/5k resolution.
The argument for 24 frames per second is that:<p>a) adequate sound sync is maintained when projecting film<p>b) reducing the frame rate to the <i>minimum</i> humans need to perceive something as continuous motion leaves the maximum amount of detail "missing". This in turn produces a dream-like quality, and frees up the mind to spend brain cycles on non-visual things, like the story, acting, etc.<p>(a) is now outdated: we can get rock-solid sound playback at any frame rate today, thanks to digital projection. Personally, I find playback of 24fps material on a 60fps LCD monitor to be annoying – there's always that judder.<p>This makes me wonder if we shouldn't drop the frame rate further, to 20 fps. This would have a nice even multiple for our 60 fps LCD screens, and also maximize the dream-like quality we associate with films, but with zero judder.<p>Anyway, food for thought. :)
I googled native 48fps footage and found a couple of tests uploaded to viemo from the Scarlet-X, and didn't notice much, however, I'm wondering if any experts on HN could weigh in on whether flash video does any frame dropping or other degradation that would make such examples different than the actual experience. Are there any examples of sites that have native 48fps footage at a high resolution?<p>Like many other commenters here, I was wary of the use of a higher framerate based on my experience with 240hz TV's, which look so distractingly hyper-real I can't watch them for any sustained length of time, but I'm not sure of how much that has to do with frame-doubling or other "tricks" that might be applied.
It's an established perception issue. Not only people expect blur from the movies, but they also associate the <i>lack</i> of blur with lower quality production.<p>To explain - the same problem exists with never LCD TVs. Many of them has a logic for resampling 24fps source and interpolating it into higher frame rates. In theory, this is supposed to remove the blur and make dynamic pictures more detailed. In practice, it actually does that, but it also makes movies look like soap operas. A quick google search brings up ton of complaints of this nature, and the root of the problem is that soap operas are shot for TV broadcasting and <i>at higher frame rates</i>. Hence, the visual aesthetics one typically associates with them. In other words, you bump up FPS, you get the soap opera impression... which hardly the vibe Hobbit should have :)
I for one am looking forward to 48 fps. I have too often that I am watching a movie and I can see "juttering" as the camera pans across a scene. I find it extremely annoying. I have also noticed that it is in various other aspects of life as well.<p>There is a traffic light near me that has three lights on it, and there is a noticeable difference between when the first light goes from green to orange to red and when the second goes through the same progression. My friends thought I was insane until I took high speed photography of the same traffic lights and proved them that it was off by the tiniest amount (don't remember exact figures). The same thing can be said for PWM'ed LED's, such as the ones in certain cars...
I am cautiously optimistic that this will NOT be as jarring as the "soap opera effect" on modern (120/240Hz) TVs -- which for the most part is caused by hilariously crap interpolation and sharpening filters that TV manufacturers seem to love these days.
I've wondered about variable framerates. Higher framerates are very nice when panning, or during fast motion, but as viewers have noticed, are less "dream-like" during periods of slow motion.<p>With the technology that we have, it'd be possible to have 24 fps (or even lower) during the "slow" scenes, with instant speed up when desired. This would add one more aspect of the filmmaking experience for filmmakers to exploit.
No home video formats support 48fps, though TVs do.<p>"Both blu-ray and ATSC do not support 48 fps at any resolution. Both do, however, support 60 fps at 720p."<p><a href="http://sayspy.blogspot.com/2011/04/framerates-for-movies-and-debacle-that.html" rel="nofollow">http://sayspy.blogspot.com/2011/04/framerates-for-movies-and...</a><p>Does anyone know if there is newer information or standards planned?
> theaters will need to upgrade the software on their 3D projectors to handle 48fps, about $10,000<p>For a planned software upgrade? Is this some kind of obscene vendor lock-in?<p>Is that figure per projector or per theater?