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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Is the future 60fps?

*sigh*

I'm getting a little tired of these enormous posts from such a position of authority.

Here's the thing...I've been earning in the film & TV industry since I was 17 (35 now) and you know what? I'm quite happy to confess that I don't know shit. There's way too much to learn and I'm truly happy about that... the learning is the fun part.

Long imperative posts all too often come across as preachy, and I'm sorry JonathanLB, you do really seem to come across that way in most of your postings.

You've written that you're just stating your opinion, but it reads earlier like a dismissal of others points of view, not a reasoned debate. I can see why others were getting so wound up.

Let's please keep this fun and on topic, I don't personally want to click on a topic I'm curious about to find a this sort of tit for tat.
 
Greg Voevodsky said:
Now, 24 frames is cheep and less natural but it is far better than overly sharp 60fps unless they lower the shutter angle enough to add natural looking motion blur - but that will cost twice the hard drive space as 30fps shot with 60th shutter.
Click to expand...

Suppose..... we shoot do 60p with a 360 shutter angle for drama?
60fps playback, but more "normal "motion blur, equivalent to a 30fps 180 degree shutter.

Does a solid 60fps playback add anything to the viewing experience?
Is the "flicker" of 24fps actually an important feature?
Or is it more about a "natural" motion blur?
 
Guys, yeah, please let's keep it on topic. Please JonathanLB, also try to keep it on topic, let's not reply again about who said what in a bad manner.

The 60fps issue is an interesting problem, because --according to my research earlier-- it is the FIRST time that it has been tackled in such a scale on a forum thread -- especially because this forum is filled with directors. So, it's important to stay focused in the conversation, I am sure future readers will find it very enlightening!

So, where were we? Ah, yeah, the camera should do no digital sharpening... Does the RED ONE forces digital sharpening when shooting 60 or 120 fps, or it can be made not to? So basically, if for good 60fps look & feel digital sharpening is a no-go, is the RED ONE the right camera to choose? If not, which one could do that?
 
I think the Red is a sharpening-free camera as far as I've read, starting with lots of resolution instead of trying to fake it, which is great. Most of the issues with video cameras have come from the onboard sharpening. I think it will be a great camera to test out the effect of various frame rates.
 
i think: it's not a matter of getting used to

i think: it's not a matter of getting used to

the "24p effect" is as psychological that it get's biological - it's a matter of how our brain works - maybe in 1000 years, when our grand-grand kids "get used" to the constantly accellerating speed of our lifes - maybe then 60p will look to us as 24p nowadays.. and reality shows will run at 240p that we will not miss one detail of a fraction af a second ;)


martin
 
I hope people like Eugenia won't get into some Standards Committee, because this would be the end of film :)

No seriously, I think 24fps is now matter of style, as well as grain and shutter. But I like this style very much! And as I can see there are many of us. :)

Because the form is important part of storytelling.

I do all commercials in 25p (Europe).
If I show 50p or 50i to anybody (even clients), they don't like it. They say it looks like tv news or home video.


It's a matter of your preferences, but if you want "reality" then you shouldn't use color grading either...
 
Eugenia said:
Please read PoiBoy's and Stephen Williams' replies as to how 60fps would look better. You might need the right camera for that though.
Click to expand...

Hi Eugenia,

I don't think it would look better 'More Real like TV possibly' It all depends on what you are after.

Stephen
 
Eugenia said:
Vladus, do you shoot as suggested above though? Please read PoiBoy's and Stephen Williams' replies as to how 60fps would look better. You might need the right camera for that though.
Click to expand...

"Would look better" is very subjective. I don't think smooth motion looks good.
And as I say, I've never met anyone who thinks 50/60fps is better. Its more fluid, but that doesn't mean it looks better.

You're right about one thing. Eventually, people will get used to it. But I hope it wont be in next 50 years :)

I shoot 35mm film, mostly 180 degree shutter, mostly wide open to get most shallow depth of field. We scan it to 2K and after grading and online we deliver SD PAL. And it looks awesome.

Once I've tried to timewarp a 100fps shot in 50i project (which is almost the same as 50p in human perception) and it looked disgusting. It lost the filmic style.

It isn't true that you can do it with dof and grain. Most important is the motion (frequency and shutter)
 
dalemccready said:
I think the Red is a sharpening-free camera as far as I've read, starting with lots of resolution instead of trying to fake it, which is great. Most of the issues with video cameras have come from the onboard sharpening. I think it will be a great camera to test out the effect of various frame rates.
Click to expand...

Dale, you have one of the best demos I have seen. I think Eugenia needs to
look at your demo. Artifical sharpening is usually crap. I have seen footage
from the JVC HDV cameras and most of the time the clips look over-sharpened.
 
Graeme Nattress said:
60fps is not the look of video though. Video isn't 60p, it's 60i or 50i and yes, they do look different to 60p or 50p.

Graeme
Click to expand...

I think most of us are aware that video is 60i (NTSC), but some would still beg to differ on your opinion. A buddy was on an IMAX shoot where they tested 60FPS - it ended up being reshot because (as they stated) it looked too video'ish (is that a word). It's the cadence, it's the look, it's what draws the audience in that matters here.

But why exactly does this thread exist - is this someone's thesis? And all this crap about "old school" - perhaps this is a worthy debate for some, but I find this one of the most ridiculous threads ever on the RED forum (and there have been a lot of contenders in that category).

And sure, perhaps it will all turn into a 60p world some day - but that will be a sad day.
 
insanityfw said:
I go to the movies for an escape from reality, not to see things that are hyper-realistic.
Click to expand...

To me, 24fps looks realistic when you do a good job at hiding stutter. But the most realistic footage that I see is 30fps.

But is the future 60fps?

Do you mean for cinema or television? I have to say, all the "commercial commercials" these days are shot in 24fps. Most likely because the cameras have just recently (from about 8 years ago?) started to include 24fps. And just this year, consumer cameras have started to include them too. And a lot of TV shows are shot in 24fps now too. It's gotten to point where 60fps is almost unacceptable in commercial television, obviously not sports, reality or news though :). 30fps is being used in increasing numbers for reality TV, probably due to it's "Surreal-Video", high resolution of 30p in 60i or looking like something anybody could have shot while still looking professional (it's in between 24fps and 60fps; "Surreal Video"; it's hard to explain the feeling I get when I watch 30fps material). A lot of the old shows from the '80s and '90s were shot in 60fps. Sure, the video quality wasn't that great but shooting something like that now wouldn't quite be acceptable.

Film on the other has been shot in 24fps for decades. It sure beats 16fps. And there weren't that many movies shot in 60fps that wasn't a documentary or mockumentary. And most of them were Made-for-TV movies. Stranded was to my belief shot in 30fps. I liked the look. But I am having a hard time thinking of any movies shot in 60fps. I remember one but I don't remember the name of it. I think it was released in theatres. But I can name numerous documentaries and mockumentaries, such as Bowling for Columbine, Farenheit 9/11, The Blair Witch Project and Supersize Me (there is undefinantley more). IMAX projectors were re-configured to show 48fps but were sadly never used much.

Do I think 60fps is the future? It's the present for sports, news and reality. And I think it's the past for most TV shows (except for live studio audience shows, I guess it feel more like a play when it's like that) and "commercial commercials". It's come to the point where most people have come atune to 24fps and generally get an artistic or cinema feel when watching these shows. It seems like we're moving backwards, right? Well, a unique blend between realism and surrealism comes before actual picture quality. Colour film was available long before the 1960s, but did we use it for all the big movies? No. It took a while but it finally came around. 3D also looks realistic but it's never caught on to many simple movies yet.

So there you have it. My organized opinion.

Random personal opinion: I see 24fps with a 1/32nd of a second shutter speed to be really realistic. 1/48th is good too.

P.S, by commercial I mean big companies.
 
Cardmaverick said:
Graeme,

Just curious, why does video have so many frame rate designations (29.97, 60i, and believe it or not, 30i, not so sure where that last one came from, but I swear I've seen it used)? Did people just not agree and come up with their own way of saying interlaced video?
Click to expand...

They come from the dawn of television with a desire to sync to the mains frequency, which was 50hz for Europe and 60hz for USA.

However 50p and 60p just wouldn't fit in the bandwidth available, so they chose 50i and 60i instead. Some people refer to these rates as 25i and 30i, but I don't like that nomenclature as it disguises the motion rate. "30i" has very similar motion characteristic as 60p, and hence should have the number 60 associated with it, the letter i telling you it's 60 fields not 60 frames.

Then color came along, and to stop the color subcarrier beating with the audio frequencies, they made the 60hz become 60 * 1000 / 1001, or 59.94hz and changed all the other rates accordingly. This has had long lasting and negative issues with NTSC broadcast ever since. They should have changed back to integers when HD was introduced, even if they didn't want to do the sensible move of going to PAL rates too, which the vast majority of the world uses.

Graeme
 
Right now, if you look at the pure economics, 24P simply makes the most sense for distribution. If you shoot in 24P you are guaranteed that your film can be shown in just about every theater in the world. 24P also gives you a simple means of world-wide video distribution, as well.

Until digital projection reaches the market penetration of film projectors, you're going to see the need to originate in 24P.
 
Strange that no ones mentioned one of the most compelling reasons why 24fps will be around for a long time, nothing to do with it looking better or not. It's the only damn frame rate that works in PAL or NTSC.

For PAL a 4% speedup and you're set, for NTSC just add pulldown.

Damn Ken beat me to it!
 
25p also fits the need of an international format as it's already PAL ready and can be converted to NTSC via 4% slowdown and 3:2 pulldown, or 25p direct to NTSC via "modified pulldown". Indeed, the latter option is great as it obviates the need for any speed change save that subtle 1000/1001 to get to 29.97fps rather than 30fps.

Of course, as interlaced is "dropped", these tricks don't work as well with progressive encoding and at that point, as all projectors are PAL /NTSC / 24p, they should just broadcast / deliver programming in it's native fps and let the display handle it, switching on the fly as necessary with flagged content metadata. Indeed, this is how internet videos work - they just play no matter what the fps.

Graeme
 
"The ONLY reason film started at 24fps was because it was the absolute minimum number of frames you could shoot per second without having it look completely unrealistic"

NO, 24fps was not picked because of motion/realistic/unrealistic - 24fps was the min frame rate that produced acceptable SOUND ( based on reasonable cost ) ...
 
JonathanLB said:
Nonetheless, this whole video versus film argument really drives me up the wall sometimes, because every single supposed "advantage" of 35mm film is actually just yet another one of its miserable shortcomings. The completely terrible depth of field is not intentional, it's a fact of shooting with a limiting medium, the grain is not intentional, that too is another artifact of an old medium, and the frame rate is a limitation from a now-past era. I don't understand how these horrible limitations have somehow become "wonderful mythical magical elements of filmmaking" or something. It's just silly to me. If you shoot something in perfect 4K resolution with amazing depth of field at 30 frames per second, and it's a visually interesting shot, you're going to have a great image. It's not going to be "video-like" unless by that you mean "far superior to film," in which case, ok, yes, it will be video-like.
Click to expand...

Trying to stay on topic, but this paragraph disturbs me. A complete lack of understanding of the filmmaking process. He's open to his opinions, but clearly he would have been better off stating that he simply prefers the look of images that have lots of depth of field. Instead, it insults those who use the narrow depth of field to tell their story, drawing the viewers attention to certain details, etc. I love open debate, and actually if he were to phrase things a little differently, I think his opinions would actually be better received.

Sorry all, had to say something. Okay, back on topic.

Steve
 
...amazing depth of field???

Shallow depth of field is not only aesthetic element of film-making, but also one of the tools of storytelling.

This guy should get some shitty mini dv camera, with 1/3" ccd to have everything in focus...

I believe Red should be for people who understand at least the basics of making films.
 
donatello said:
"The ONLY reason film started at 24fps was because it was the absolute minimum number of frames you could shoot per second without having it look completely unrealistic"

NO, 24fps was not picked because of motion/realistic/unrealistic - 24fps was the min frame rate that produced acceptable SOUND ( based on reasonable cost ) ...
Click to expand...

Hi Donatello,

Not forgetting a synchronous motor turns at 24 FPS with 60HZ!

Stephen
 
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