Does anyone expect the cinema market to move beyond 24fps as "the standard"?

[Anders Zakrisson]

As far as I've come in disassembling the elements that give 24fps a filmic look and any faster frame rate a look of soap opera, I've found none.

Personally I don't like the stuttering on pans with 24fps and would much rather see at least 30fps. Since the motion blur from 24fps film is a result of the 1/48s shutter speed (and 180 degree shutter), a digital camera with a 360 degree shutter has a maximum shutter speed of 1/30s which actually leads to more potential motion blur. Although the type of blur will differ slightly (the chopped streaks from 180 degree shutter) I don't believe that 24fps has some unknown magic quality.

Faster framerates and shorter shutter speeds capture more detail in fast moving sequences, something most of us are unused to for the moment. This is less film, but I wouldn't say video or soap opera either.

It resembles when the CD and solid-state amplifiers was introduced, some still prefer the sound of vinyl recordings and valve amplifiers although distortion added to a non-exact recording with a high noise floor. The same is happening now, some don't want the clean, crisp output potentially shot with natural lighting instead of faked moonlight.

It's not video, but it's not film either.

I recently posted a blog post on The obsession with 24fps frame rate, please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere.

Back to the OP, I believe that there's just to much infrastructure invested in 24fps for it to disappear during the lifespan of these cameras. Even if something else becomes the standard, that would mean that we're going all digital with selectable framerates and 24fps is the still viable.

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

Guys i have a question:

There is any way to shoot at 60 fps and print on film keeping that "fluid"Look in projection?

I mean,I kwon that Film run at 24fps with his typical look ,But i am quite sure to remember that i saw in some Movies that when in the scene they use a small camcorder and when they show that footage on the Screen (that looks super digital and bad off course) , that footage looks like 60 fps typical motion ...But the Film is still running at 24 fps...Right?

Do i remember well?
Is possible to show 60fps motion on Film projection in some way(like adding pulldown /repeating frame etc...)

PS:It is possible edit in a timeline different frame rate?

Thanks

G

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Doesn't help to shoot 60 fps and convert to 24 fps for print projection, not in terms of making the shots more fluid and less strobey. It would only make a difference if you could project the 60 fps footage at 60 fps.

And the conversion from 60 to 24 would not involve repeating frames -- you've got too many already -- but combining, blending, and perhaps dropping a few.

 

[Clint Childers]

Like David said before, it is hard to tell a difference between 24P and 30P when there is little motion, and I feel as long as the frame rates are progressive and not interlaced, it wouldn't matter if the frame rate was 48 fps or 60 fps. Being projected at those frame rates. It would still have a cinematic quality about it, it would just be smoother with less blur, with fast motions. Of course the biggest problem with going to a higher frame rate like 48 or 60 for the "standard frame rate" would be the need for overcranking (slow motion shots). Now suddenly you have to shoot 120 fps just to get a 50% slow motion shot. (if projected at 60) where as now, we only have to shoot at 48 fps. Technology of course will grow as RED is proof of that and higher frame rate won't be a problem in the near future, but I don't think it really matters what frame rate will eventually be adopted as "the standard frame rate" because once an audience is consumed by the story they become use to the visual medium their viewing, no matter the frame rate or quality. Matrix Reloaded in Imax blew me away the first ten minutes, but then I became use to it, and didn't notice the quality of it as much. It was like I was watching a normal print of it.

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

Sorry guys ,
I al not sure i have understood your answer...
My question was: if I have a reason to help the story, is it possible to have the typilcal 59.94 fps fluid look in a 24fps Film projection?

Thanks

G

 

[David Mullen ASC]

No.

Apparently this answer was too short of the RedUser software, hence this useless sentence.

But to add further -- you're projecting 24 discreet images per second, each image flashed twice by a double-bladed shutter, but that only reduces flicker, not strobing.

So any improvements in motion have to be accomplished within those 24 images ever second, within each individual frame. So what affects the motion in these frames, assuming normal speed? The amount of movement (how fast the camera or object is moving) in relation to the amount of blur that movement causes due to shutter speed.

The only way to make fast movement look more fluid is to shoot and project that motion broken up over more frames. But that's not an option if projecting 24 fps.

You could increase the exposure time per frame to create more motion blur, but that's a rather smeary look at 24 fps. It actually does end up having some of the feel of 60i photography at 1/60th (shutterless) but not necessarily in a good way. See the action scenes in "Apocalypto" for some 24 fps digital footage shot at 1/24th.

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

Thanks David,

So when i saw movies that inside the story show for a few second footage recorded on small digital camera , and i had the impression that footage has the 59.94 motion look (even if with the typical small dig camcorder short latitude and low res etc...) was just an impression...

G

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Thanks David,

So when i saw movies that inside the story show for a few second footage recorded on small digital camera , and i had the impression that footage has the 59.94 motion look (even if with the typical small dig camcorder short latitude and low res etc...) was just an impression...

G

It was just a false impression, there should be no improvement in the fluidity of the motion. You'd see the affect of a different shutter speed per frame (60i is often shot at 1/60th, while film is often shot at 1/48th, so a little more blur per frame) and the effect of some fields being combined to create frames, some being dropped.

To simplify this for you, think about shooting at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, and converting it to 24 fps. If you shot with a 180 degree shutter, then the each frame in the 48 fps version has a shutter speed of 1/96th, the equivalent blur per frame of shooting 24 fps with a 90 degree shutter. So if you simply dropped every other frame to get back from 48 to 24, it would look no different than having shot 24 fps with a 90 degree shutter.

If you digitally combined every two frames into one, then the total amount of blur of two frames would be combined, though less smoothly, for the effect of a 1/48th shutter speed -- so it would look similar to 24 fps shot with a normal 180 degree shutter.

Or you could shoot at 48 fps with a digital camera using no shutter, thus 1/48th per frame, and drop every other frame to get 24 fps with a 1/48th shutter -- again, it would look no different than if you just shot at 24 fps with a normal 180 degree shutter.

But if you combined every two frame, now the effect is like 24 fps shot with no shutter, at 1/24th per second. More blur per frame.

But none of these options really improve motion reproduction. However, showing that 48 fps footage at 48 fps would.

 

[Gabriele Turchi]

Thanks David

Got it.

G

 

[Robert Berger]

It was just a false impression, there should be no improvement in the fluidity of the motion. You'd see the affect of a different shutter speed per frame (60i is often shot at 1/60th, while film is often shot at 1/48th, so a little more blur per frame) and the effect of some fields being combined to create frames, some being dropped.

To simplify this for you, think about shooting at 48 fps instead of 24 fps, and converting it to 24 fps. If you shot with a 180 degree shutter, then the each frame in the 48 fps version has a shutter speed of 1/96th, the equivalent blur per frame of shooting 24 fps with a 90 degree shutter. So if you simply dropped every other frame to get back from 48 to 24, it would look no different than having shot 24 fps with a 90 degree shutter.

If you digitally combined every two frames into one, then the total amount of blur of two frames would be combined, though less smoothly, for the effect of a 1/48th shutter speed -- so it would look similar to 24 fps shot with a normal 180 degree shutter.

Or you could shoot at 48 fps with a digital camera using no shutter, thus 1/48th per frame, and drop every other frame to get 24 fps with a 1/48th shutter -- again, it would look no different than if you just shot at 24 fps with a normal 180 degree shutter.

But if you combined every two frame, now the effect is like 24 fps shot with no shutter, at 1/24th per second. More blur per frame.

But none of these options really improve motion reproduction. However, showing that 48 fps footage at 48 fps would.

I was told ,that the BIG studio's want to go to 48fps and showing in that speed, The tv market want to go to 60 fps beause they are used to interlaced. In europe we like to go to 50fps for known reasens.

Robert

Robert

 

[kyleprohaska]

I'm not sure if anyone has thought of this, but if the standard was upped from 24fps to anything higher...instantly overnight you would have costs for post-production processing of any kind whether it be VFX, DVD Rendering, whatever it is...you now have double the frames for the computers to process to output a final product. That means more money, from everyone.

It would be a disaster if a standard was all of a sudden changed, financial disaster that is. If they did move there, it would take a long time for anything like that to become a true standard like 24fps is now. Regardless of shutters or strobing or anything in how you shoot the fps you do, even adding 5 more frames to the current standard and setting a new one overnight (assuming you had the power to do so), it would be a nightmare. That's 5 more frames to render over how many thousands and millions of seconds rendered by companies everyday???

I went a little deep, but it seemed like a viable response.

 

[Petr Dvorak]

I guess I'm sick of 24p.