The History of Frame Rate for Film
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Explore the history of the frame rate - the engine that gives motion to the motion picture from their earliest versions in silent pictures to the frame rates of broadcast television.
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Whoever writes the scripts for these videos really is a master communicator. I cannot think of any series of videos I have ever seen on RUclips that are as beautifully written and presented as these. They are a joy to watch.
Yes, it's always a pleasure to watch explanation videos where the presenter is calm and professional instead of loud, overly articulated and trying too hard to sound hip or appeal to young low attention span audiences.
amen!
Nevermind that.
Any updates on that bastard kid copper telling you to open the door
KVA1 I totally agree. Sometimes it’s a lot of fun to watch some of these guys. I’m a bit of a fan of McKinnon. However I have to admit I’m getting kind of tired of Squashed Ducks 🦆 music. I’m digressing.
This is the first time I’ve watched IQ. And wow a nice breath of fresh air very well put together and I’ll be checking more of these out.
To me it looks like this guy knows all this stuff by heart. It’’s hard to be so convincing while reading a teleprompter.
This is one of the best and most professional explanations I have seen/heard regarding the history of frame rates. I am post production supervisor for theatrical feature films. I can see the difference between good and bad tutorials. Keep up your good work and many thanks!
+BirdmannTutorials / Feuerbussard Thank you - we appreciate it!
One thing I hoped you would mention is that TV documentaries that show clips from early film cameras make it look like people, cars, trains, etc. are moving at hyper-speed. Picture Model T Fords darting in and out of traffic, and I think you will get the idea. I have always thought this is because they were not playing them at 16 fps, but at 24 fps. Either they didn't know better or they could not play the old films at 26 fps.
I totally agree. If anyone should ask me again about any of these topics, I give them the link to this video. Great work!
You're correct in that the films were being played too fast in order to match the TV frame rate. Modern documentaries are able to avoid this, as we now have the computer technology to be able to interpolate 16 or 18fps film up to TV frame rates without seeming sped up.
this is very well scripted and presented. event though the concepts are difficult to grasp, the plain language makes me feel like i could really understand after a few viewings
I have to say... whenever the question of frame rates comes up... this is the de-facto video I send people to. You did an outstanding job with this... I mean... textbook... this video should be seen by ANYONE interested in doing any video or film work.
Seriously.
askjerry Thank you Jerry!
24fps was set by Western Electric engineer Stanley Watkins who asked what frame rates were commonly used. There was 80 and 100 feet per minute ( this is how it was counted back then ). He averaged it at 90, which gives 24 fps.
I admit I have to watch each video several times to get all the contents, but these are some truly amazing documentaries. They are extremely interesting and I just can't imagine the effort needed collect so many informations.
With no doubt this is the best and most comprehensive explanatory video on frame rates. I've learned in 15 minutes much more than several hours I spent on RUclips and internet trying to understand the reasoning behind the 24fps. Now everything makes sense and goes far beyond the usual explanation that "24fps is more natural for the human eyes". Well done and keep up with the good work on your channel. We, filmmakers, love it!
I love this guy.
Describes things so well and in such an interesting way.
Please continue doing what you're doing, youtube needs to support more content creators like this guy!
Really interesting. Thanks for this, I watched this during breakfast :)
I create amateur videos for RUclips and I use Sony Vegas for montage and rendering. I read some tutorials to figure out what settings where recommended for my needs and never bothered tinkering for fear of doing something wrong. But I was intrigued by those odds values in the rendering settings. Interlacing, PAL or NTSC, sound codec, and the FPS values. That 29.97 fps value in particular left me puzzled.
Your video just helped me figuring out a new facet of my editing tool, I knew the how but you explained me the why. Thank you so much!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL#PAL_vs._NTSC PAL uses 25pfs (a number in that a lot of the people in the UK consider to be where everything is nearly perfectly smooth when it comes to live tv) and the US (like the oddball that they are) uses 29.97. it might also be something to do with how much power comes into everyones homes, as the uk gets 230 volts at 50 hertz, and the US aims for 60 hertz at 120 volts
and for those that don't know, hertz is used in tvs as a "refresh rate cap" I.E. how many times different frames can get put over another. for example, if you live in europe, and have a american made camera from 2006 and before, go outside and record a video of the streetlights. you'll see that as you record, there'll be a light flicker. his is from the camera's shutter, as the camera refreshes at a different rate from how the lights flicker. this is because, even though we cannot see it naturally, the lights flicker at about 50 times a second, going on and off.
kingemocut Watch the video - it's explained.
Filmmaker IQ i always do watch them all the way through, i just like going into the comments and making an ass of myself because i comment about something before the video's done haha.
Thank you for this excellent breakdown of what drives framerates in modern media and especially for airing the responses to the experiments in higher framerates for movies. I haven't studied this in any great detail but my hypothesis for the reason that, in particular, The Hobbit looked cheaply made is that the higher framerate allows your brain to perceive more detail in the image, which works against the suspension of disbelief that the narrative requires of the audience. Just as a book requires the audience to visualise the entire world of the story, film requires the audience to believe that these actors are standing on a stone castle watching a dragon soar (and roar) through the air. Giving too much detail allows the human brain to determine not only the shape and colour of an object, but also its mass and material. That's why the painted foam stonework which at regular 24fps looks solid and real (because the story convinces your brain it is so) is revealed to be simply a prop, and all the mass and fear is taken from the cg dragon. Its just a hypothesis but it seems logical that in an industry that lives on suspension of disbelief, over realism in the image is the last thing you would want.
Thank you for this non-patronising presentation. Really cool, learned a lot.
I'm a television engineer and now a broadcast engineer. This is a great explanation of the use of frame rates through history.
Even stuff I didn't know.
The medium that will push frame rates forward from the obsolete, complicated and cost reducing film-based past to the digital age is the Internet. With the adoption of native 60fps playback ability by RUclips, it is now up to us, the video creators, to utilize and create content in 60fps. Lets Play and video gamers have already adopted this frame rate and it looks fabulous.
I've chosen 60fps as the base for all my videos and I encourage other RUclipsrs to also adopt this smoother and crisper frame rate. :D
***** :D
Amen to that. 24fps has its place for aesthetic purposes, but I believe 60fps movies and animations will soon become a common alternative in cinema. I have also switched to 60fps for my RUclips videos and I love the smoothness.
You went from day 1 to practically till date, covering every single thing I need to know about film. Without any horseshit. Bruh amazing video...thanks!
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was projected at 120fps in 3D at 4K resolution. Some people got sick after watching those higher frame rates on a very large screen.
strange as it should have the opposite effect
This is the best channel on youtube. Simple as that.
I can't tell you how many hours/days of my life I lost in the 90s dealing with 3:2 pulldown and interlace as a broadcast editor. Life was rough out on the frontier...
what i love in your videos is the passion in your voice, we need more teachers like you John!
Really amazing and interesting contribution. Many thanks for that!
Now we have the explanation why NTSC is often called "Never The Same Color". :D
This channel's courses are the best you can find online. They are the most technologically accurrate and very clear.
One of the best channels on RUclips.
I never envisioned I'd sit and watch a video on the hostory of frame rates. But fifteen minutes and twenty seconds later, here I am! What a wonderfully fascinating video!
Great job. Very informative. I saw the Hobbit in HFR and I actually quite enjoyed it. It definitely looked a bit weird, though: the descriptions you hear of it looking made-for-TV and the sets looking fake are totally true.
I don't think this is inherently a problem with HFR though, I think it's more that film-makers haven't learned how to use it properly yet. You always hear apocryphal stories of directors doing extraordinary things with scenery and props because "it will look better on film!" than in real life. And they've been doing it so long that we've internalised it as normal: the fact that a plastic axe, painted to look aged and rusted, might look better on film than a real iron one, or the fact that people need to wear make-up on TV in order to look like they're not wearing make-up. We just take it for granted.
HFR will come into its own once directors, set-designers and DPs figure out how to make good movies that use it properly. At the moment, it's like seeing someone without their make-up on: the cracks are visible and it looks a bit cheap. And we're just not used it.
P.S. I'm pretty sure the vowel sound in "Phi" is pronounced to rhyme with pie, not pee.
As it was named by a German, the pronunciation is correct. Germans pronounce Greek letters the same way Greeks do, unlike English speakers.
@@davidwuhrer6704 Well, the pronunciation of the guy who applied the name to the concept is, frankly, irrelevant when the name pre-exists in the destination language. That said, phi is pronounced both ways in English.
any idea that has been unclear to me for centuries you explained it in a short time... then i got it. you are magical! thank you for all your devoted efforts in making filmmaker IQ
Great presentation from John Hess about the state of frame rates! Thank you!
Probably the best frame rate explanation video I've seen so far. I only have one gripe. I keep hearing from multiple sources that the main reason for TV systems to adopt an interlaced signal was the reduced bandwidth but to my knowledge this is not the main reason and not the whole story. Yes, to have every second line of a field be black does reduce the amount of information being sent, but the main hurdle to get moving images to show up on a screen in your living room was of course that the cinema projectors were mechanical, with actual exposed images on a film strip being projected. The only known means of sending information out to the masses in the early 1900's was via radio frequency airwaves, which is a completely different technology, and in fact a continuous one, that would not allow a frame to be stopped while a shutter was doing it's work. There was no way to stop the image in the TV's (with for example a memory module) and "hold" every image in place for 1/24th or 1/48th of a second (like how our LCD/LED screens work today = 50Hz on a digital monitor = 50fps, not 25 half frames and no black lines like on CRTs). The interlacing and the "black lines" that came with this method effectively replaced the role of the shutter from the film projector!
well it explains why all the American shows i rewatched on netflix sounded so weird. all my dvds were sped up to fit the PAL system which i was use to.
Same here.
By far my favourite video from this channel. This has answered questions I've had about frame rates for years
Great video, John, I loved it (as per usual). I particularly love how you are able to explain technically complex things, so easy-to-understand.
Years ago, while on vacation, we stumbled on a demonstration theater for Douglas Trumbull's Showscan process. We were convinced we were watching an actor on stage introducing the demonstration. Only when the scenes (filmed as part of the "Brainstorm" film) came on screen, did we realize we had been watching a film right from the start. The most startling and realistic film experience that I ever saw. I understand it would have been expensive both for filming and projecting for the industry to adapt, but the combination of 70mm film and 65fps projection was indistinguishable from reality. I always felt it was a shame it never caught on widely.
50i or 60i doesn't necessarily have to be converted into 25fps and 60fps. You can interpolate the fields to create 50fps and 60fps videos. I do it myself, and it looks great.
What a fantastic presentation! I work in television on the engineering side and John hit on everything about frame rates and why the color NTSC standard was made that way versus PAL that corrected all its flaws later on. But also the film look that everyone is now used to and higher frame rates having that soap opera effect.that some don't like. Roger Ebert was an advocate for higher frame rates too. In fact he had Oklahoma! presented at the Roger Ebert Overlooked film festival (now Ebertfest) in it's original Todd-AO 30FPS format. Each scene was shot twice, once in 70mm Todd-AO 30FPS format and then 35mm CinemaScope. So each version of the film is slightly different. Keep up the great videos!
mate you're a bloody legend. what an informative and entertaining video.
Absolutely agree with you. The content of John's videos is superlative.
Great Aussie comment, what a ripper.
I can’t even imagine how somebody could’ve explained that better than you Filmmaker IQ. You’re just marvelous!
There used to be something cinematic about having no sound. What happened to that?
Otherwise, excellent video.
Not sure about that... no one (outside maybe the very first filmmaking demonstrations) watched a silent in film _in silence_ - there was always music and sound effects being added live.
The beginning reminded me of something I heard in one of my first photography lectures in college. "Photography can neither lie nor tell the truth" but I don't remember who that was from but I did find this one similar, "a photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either. It's more of a fleeting, subjective impression." - John Berger, Understanding a Photograph"
So basically the creation of TV and media as we know it today is a continuous series of workarounds to fix problems caused by workaround? Got it!
On a serious note, great video!
You will find that in any technology. Even typewriters have that.
I’m not making movies. Why did I watched this? I’ve learn something today. John, you are such a good explainer of everything cinema, its really a joy to watch your videos. Thank you.
I just found your channel today and have subscribed. you explain stuff very well.
I to hope that 24fps stays around. I remember a bhs of the Empire Strikes Back and how they were trying to get the stop motion footage not look fake and have film blur. Now today these modern filmmakers for some reason want higher frame rate and no blur? to me that takes away how a film should look.
They spend too much time playing Call of Duty (where high frame rate is a benefit) and want everything to have that feel.
+Filmmaker IQ oh I can see where they get that now I am not a gamer. lol I actually shoot using a 5D mark III. But my lenses I prefer for video are my old Minolta lenses that were my Dad's for his MINOLTA SRT-201. I love the smooth organic non perfect feel I get out of these lenses. if I could afford real film I'd love to shoot that. But I do strive to get a film loom out of my work most of the time.
I will definitely be watching all of your videos.
I remember the first true HD film clip I saw was the chase scene from Batman Begins at a Best Buy. It was in true 1080P on a tv that was at least 120Hz. It looked so different from watching it on a regular DVD. It looked way to smooth and had no motion blur at all. It felt like it had been recorded with a broadcast tv camera for sports. It didn't feel like a movie at all.
+Schardt Cinematic Productions that's that motion interpolation add on. It's criminal...
+Filmmaker IQ I agree. it didn't even feel like a movie. I fear what 4K films will be made like for home tv viewing. the demo videos are nice and clear and to perfect.
The "Go make something great" at the end always makes me smile for some reason ^^
because youre awesome!
In sports 60 fps makes all the difference. 60 fps looks silky smooth and feels much more natural. Not sure about films, I never watched any film with more than 24 fps or the standard fps in movies
I feel like I'm going to an excellent film school when I watch your videos. Thanks!
Brilliant! Very clear and well presented explanation. I too love 24fps, and found The Hobbit's look "uncanny"; somewhat too realistic for a fantasy. I found myself so absorbed in the strange look that I wasn't enjoying the picture.
Great Video!
Personally, I hate the loss of detail everytime something moves on the screen.
I really can't understand why 24 fps is still the standard in cinemas.
Ah thanks, now i know why my editing software has 29,973 instead of 30 :)
Despite the fact I didn't catch everything you said i believe this is a professional work.Keep up!!!Amazing video!!!
Thanks for the video! I found in The Hobbit's 48 fps the acting seemed worse, despite it seeming great on regular 24 fps. Perhaps that's because the more real it becomes with a higher framerate, the more we notice it isn't real in actor's performances and stuff. An effect sorta like the uncanny valley.
Obviously I'm a late comer to this vid, but I definitely want to comment. This was very well done. And it got me thinking about the "24 fps" ceiling that seems to be what most audiences want. It's easy to attribute it to nurture, but I started thinking it may be more related to nature. You said that they figured out that was the threshold where the brain starts "seeing" it as real movement. Perhaps that's the key. It's at the threshold. So it's easier for someone to suspend disbelief. It comes down to the fact that the same people who prefer their narrative movies at 24fps, also like their "real" tv at much higher. People like to let themselves be fooled, but most really hate actually being fooled. A fiction narrative shown at say 60fps comes across as real to the mind. The brain can't keep up with the frames so it is almost forced to believe it is real life. But at 30 and below, the brain still "knows" it's fake.
Always wondered with 29.97 fps was all about! Great vid.
Not a big fan of 3D, I saw The Dark Knight Rises and the Hobit in the space of few days. I found Dark Knight as immersive experience as the Hobit. I'm happy to stick with 24fps with motion blur. But for sport and video games the higher the frame the better.
Husthr
Por
Damn bro, I have asked this question and searched for it and was subjected to the internet BS.... this is a GREAT explanation of the 23.976 fps and that good stuff....excellent job. Ask for a raise ;-)
I found out by personal experience that the less features you have on your TV settings or projector, the less jitter and most fluid your 24p movies will look. :)
i've been watching movies that were shot in 60fps, i actually really enjoy it
so informative.. loved it!
Can't believe I just discovered this channel, went through four videos already and subbed!
Keep up the great work.
I hate that we're stuck in 24 fps. When I see films in 3D, the stuttering of 24 fps becomes obvious in panning shots or when an object/character move across the screen quickly. Something about that third dimension that brings out the weakness of 24 fps. I don't think it's the fps that people have a problem with, it's the loss of motion blur that we get with 24 fps when shooting. It comes down to personal preference. Some people might prefer oil paintings and others might prefer the style of digital paintings. But, 24 fps in 3D is just not acceptable visually. 2D I think you can still get away with it, though. I personally, can't wait to see 60 fps. It's just so fluid and closer to reality. And for me at least, it's much easier on my eyes. If you've seen Showscan film, like Star Tours, it looks outstanding.
Blur and 3D don't go together well. It's hard to focus on something terribly blurry.
Also it's hard to create the 3d effect manually when the movie wasn't shot in 3d because you have to separate foreground from background and the edges are blurry. So yeah, that's probably why it looks so bad.
Hey thanks for explaining 29.97 fps! It plagued me for YEARS and I could never figure it out. Bravo, dude.
i find 24fps to be too jittery sometimes. if i go too long without watching a 24fps movie or 30fps TV, it takes me a while to get used to the flicker again.
SHUTTER ANGLE AND SHUTTER SPEED ALSO MATTER.
mandar relekar He's talking about movies.
Handsdown the best explanation ever.
24fps is perfect for film not just because of how it looks and because it's what we're used to, but because its slower framerate and slower shutter rate aids in making the illusion look more real. It might not be the reason why they decided on 24, but it was most certainly a beautiful accident.
People didn't like The Hobbit in 48fps because everything was too smooth. It was hard to make something seem as action-packed and hardcore in 48 because everything was too clear. It was harder to believe you were looking at characters in Middle Earth. Take it down half and 24 isn't so slow that it's jittery but isn't so fast that it captures the mistakes.
When your framerate starts reaching a framerate that is similar to what our naked eye perceives, the illusion of the world the filmmaker is trying to immerse you in begins to fade away.
This video is an example in-and-of itself. It was shot and edited in 24fps. The keyframe animations are also in 24. Motion blur is intentionally added to the keyframes to give the illusion that it's more real than it actually is. If the video was shot in 60fps, John would've looked like he was doing a low budget show for PBS and the chromakeying would've been even more obvious. And in order to not contradict that framerate, the keyframes of the titles and visuals would also need to be at 60fps and motion blur would likely not be needed. This would result in a much more cheesy and unrealistic look.
All I'm saying is 24fps has actually helped the world of film seem more than it actually is and though it may have started as just a technological and money-driven decision, it has quickly evolved into possibly one of the most important tools to bring a viewer into the filmmaker's world. And I don't think it's going away any time soon.
+Garrett Williamson But a higher frame rate makes the movie smoother which is great for immersion?
+Rectal Prolapse Indeed, but I say leave that for virtual reality stuff, video games, sports, etc. That said I really like mixing frame rates and shutter angles depending on the scene. For example I might plan to shoot a movie at 24fps and for select scenes I might shoot 48fps to give a more "real" feel or I might shoot 24fps with a 90 degree shutter angle (instead of 180 degree) to make each frame less blurry and stick out a little more, 90 degree shutter angle is becoming more popular for action scenes, 45 degree angle as well, its almost unsettling. Saving Private Ryan used 90 degree and 45 degree shutter angles for the action scenes and it came out great.
OK I don't really know anything about shutter angles and I wasn't trying to push my opinion off as fact, I was merely asking a question. I only enjoy watching films and occasionally playing games I have no idea how to make them btw.
+Garrett Williamson GARRETT WHAT THE FRIK YOU'RE EVERYWHERE
+nateo200 Wow I never knew that shutter angle was a thing. I really learned something today :) In many action movies I find that the action shots are blurry and just not very pleasant on the eyes. I thought a higher framerate would solve this but apparently shutter angles can help as well :)
I watched the hobbit when it first came out and thought it looked terrible at the time. I later found out it was running at the higher frame rate. For me from what I have seen 24fps is perfect for film. Though judging by people's comments the trend to higher fps is definitely here even if most supporting it do not actually understand it. Many people are unaware of how the human eye works and how we actually see still and moving images. For me the goal of a movie should make you feel as if you are there and using your brains natural ability to interpret blurred motion is still the best option. If people insist on high frame rates we have to introduce enough motion blur to still make it feel natural or you end up with the Hobbit. Though better still just stick with 24fps it works great so why change what's not broken.
I agree with the motion blur - the push against it is a little bit puzzling for me. What complicates the matter further is, as you said, people don't understand the failings of the human visual system and that very little of our visual field is actually clear and sharp - most of our peripheral vision is really pretty weak. When we watch a movie (depending on the screen size), we are getting overloaded with visual information - and the larger the screen the more overload the experience. This would explain why people do get headaches from HFR films and why Douglas Trumbell got heightened bio responses from his experiments with HFR.
NTSC = Never the same color :D
music fan yup ;)
PAL + Picture At Last.
Secam - System Essentially Contrary to the American Method
The French SECAM and SECAM II was not a system to brag about. It used a 900 line scan which indeed improved picture quality. However, a 900 line system requires a much larger bandwidth and significantly reduces the range an image can be broadcast compared to the 525 line NTSC system.
This might work OK in France but not in the U.S. where signals must travel further than in France. What baffles me is why the Russians, with their vast
territory, adopted the SECAM system for their TV instead of PAL which is much more economical.
rayford21 - The 900-line system was black-and-white only. SECAM was used with the same underlying 625-line system PAL got used with. In divided Berlin, people in one half of the city would tune into the other half's broadcasts in black-and-white and their own in colour, given that both PAL and SECAM TVs can decode the black-and-white parts of each other's signal, but only their own colour standard. The west used PAL and the east used SECAM.
After playing a lot of video games, 24 FPS will look blurry to me but I eventually get used to it after 5 to 10 minutes. One problem about going higher than 24 FPS is that a lot of older movies would then be jarring to watch and that would probably be more jarring than black and white vs color movies. Of course some TVs have the ability to artificially add more frames but that looks weird if the movie wasn't shot like that.
SECAM was a pain in the ass in Europe for video games, as it would always reduce the number of frames per second in early 3D games or even completely remove the option to have fighting games at 60/50 frames. Hopefully now with HDMI standards, everything is finally standardized, but man with that video could you see that it was hard to convert video content in the XXth century! As always John, thank you for another great video ;)
Completely blown away by all this information and now I have answers to a lot of questions about video frame rates, although I have to admit some of it went over my head.
VR can push the limits of frame rate
Latency, too. That's the real killer for VR. Too much latency in a regular game just feels sluggish. Too much latency in VR causes motion sickness.
Good VR needs both a high frame rate AND low latency, which is really tough for the engine developers to pull off. Rule of thumb is you get 10ms to do everything needed for a frame.
The information is slow and constantly new, which is great! makes me forget that in the beginning it felt like I was being talked to like a 5-year-old.
Why this video is shoot at 24 fps? It is really so hard to film at 60 fps?
What's the deal with 60 fps? Really?
+Glitchy Soup because this channel is about filmmaking - that's why we shoot in 24p. If you want 60p, go play a video game. REAL filmmakers shoot 24 ;)
+Filmmaker IQ Excuse me, but my comment meant "Why would you go with 60 fps, 24fps is sufficient..", but thanks for the reply!
tardistardis8 I didn't mean thiat comment as a response to you but to Glitchy Soup ;)
+Filmmaker IQ I do apologise. Sorry
I really love this video and i watched it over 15 times
Thank you John
I actually really liked the Hobbit in 48fps, I watched the 1st and 2nd in 24fps and the last one in 48fps.
It was very crisp and smooth. I loved it.
PeeHooo Bad movie. Great frame rate. Wish all future movies would switch to 48fps.
Perfect video! I love it. Not only Japan but also South Korea uses NTSC system.
I mainly work with 10FPS cause most of the games I play and enjoy are highly unoptimised. XD
What you actually said is that your system is not optimised for gaming...
Some animation doesn't look bad a 4FPS. Security cameras often use a low framerate.
Not sure why you dont have many subscribers or views but you make really great informative videos about film making ..keep it up bro ..thank you
I'll always believe cinema (not TV, sports, or video games) should be 24fps or around there, not because it's culturally engrained but because any lower and you'll start to see the individual images, any higher and it starts to become too real. That frame rate walks the fine line of being kind of hazy and dreamlike, not quite real but cinematic. Higher frame rates just don't feel right, they feel too close to reality. I'm all for TV (especially sports and documentaries) having higher frame rates though, because they're meant to be as close to real as possible, and video games benefit from that too, but cinema in my opinion should always have that dream-like feel.
well put sir
simply expained tnks mate
I dream in 3000+ fps so higher is always better...just how my brain works tho...i've always seen the dropped frames in old movies and it bothers me (people will fight me on that but its my brain...not theirs).
clearly you don't like action films. either that or you don't like seeing what is happening because you love blurry images so much.
24FPS does the opposite of immerse me in a film, and I am not the only one.
You can sit there in your ivory tower thinking 24 FPS is more "cinematic", but that viewpoint is at the least not the only valid one here, if not entirely obsolete, which I think it is.
Movies are supposed to leave an impression on you, once it gets onto the "Wow was that real or..." it's done its job. For that reason it's not a bad thing to go to higher framerates. Objectively speaking more and more movies will get shot at higher framerates, and once that's the standard there'll be very few people wanting to watch it at the old 24FPS, that's a fact. For that same reason people don't watch 4:3 movies anymore either, we don't like black bars on our 16:9 monitors.
About the frame rate in cinema, I heard another story. The use of sound forced to have a fixed frame rate, but the number of fps wasn't so thought.
At that time, speed was measured in feet per minute, not in fps like now. When the producers tried to set the speed, they asked how fast the movies were playing, which was like 80 to 100 feet per minute, so they said, "Well, let's leave it at 90 feet per minute". And that number is the equvalent of 24 fps.
Yes I've heard that too but the relationship of frames and feet would have been quite familiar to a film editor at the time
Am I the only one who thinks that 24 fps is just a stutter and annoyance inducer?
I interpolate all of my movies and tv shows to 60 fps on my PC and I cant stand watching 24 fps movies anymore.
I don't think that 24 fps gives a cinematic feel what really gives the cinematic feel are the screenplay the story the great use of CGI and the professional camera work!
I never watch soap operas so in my brain the "soap opera effect" doesn't exist.
Filmmaker IQ is in my opinion one of the best informative (and fun) sites dealing with the art and science of film. This particular episode interested me because it is a subject I research. It is a complex and technically difficult subject to explain in a short video or a comment. I only would like to point out that "persistence of vision" is not really the reason why we perceive motion in film. It is more a myth that has been perpetuated since the early days of the moving image that considered the eye to be sluggish to a fault.
Certain frequencies of projection create the illusion because of a feedback with the alpha waves (similar to audio feedback) which oscillate in a frequency range of 7.5-12.5 Hz . That is why 24, 48, 60 etc intensify the illusion by creating the equivalent of a mild seizure. Douglas Trumbull understood this perfectly well and Showscan was the proof. It is interesting to note that the alpha waves are related to dream states and film by interference with them inserts itself in that most private of human states.
We know that in the human visual system, motion is processed separately from form and color (Livingstone and Hubel) As an interesting note there is a condition called akinetopsia characterized by the inability to see objects in motion and in gross cases motion (like a fluid liquid) is perceived as frozen, matrix style. On the other extreme is visual imperception which results in patients not being able to see still objects but have no difficulty seeing them in motion. They like to watch TV because apparently the temporal and spatial parameters of TV projection are sufficient to engage the motion processing module of the brain (Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 45, No. 1)
Keep up the great work, I use your videos in my film classes and my students love them.
At the end of the day digital is superior as it has none of the weird limitations that the analogue systems have. I really do with movies were shot at 120fps so we could watch them on high refresh rate panels :)
PIXELFLUX Well digital is superior only in the last 5 years or so - still there's plenty that would argue film's superiority (Tarantino, Nolan etc). It would be fair to say they are neck and neck at this point both with their own pluses and minuses
Filmmaker IQ The dynamic range of current sensors (especially something like medium format Sony sensors used in Pentax 645z) blow film completely into the dust. The extra information also means we can grade however we want and even simulate film to a point you would not be able to tell the difference (especially looking at today's photographic film presets). Shooting straight into digital also means we are not losing any resolution or detail whatsoever through film scanning, which is necessary for editing and VFX when you shoot film. Digital also means we can shoot and reshoot and reshoot and reshoot again and again and again...Film is expensive and waste costs. With digital there is no waste and space is relatively cheap (and can be reused!). We can shoot 25000fps slowmo with digital (Phantom Flex, etc) if we want to. Try running film and a shutter at 25k fps...
Resolutions (8K+) and framerates, audio - no problem.
I honestly don't see the fuss about film, digital has gotten so good in the recent years that it just does not make sense to shoot film even (or probably ESPECIALLY) for high-end work.
"Recent years" is the key operative phrase here.
It takes a lot of time for technology to settle and disseminate.
Filmmaker IQ and also people are stubborn when it comes to new things. Change is what people hate :)
PIXELFLUX It's not just that - it's that change costs a lot of money as well ;)
Fantastic segment, lots of information and education of how we got where we are and where we are headed. Thanks for putting it together.
I will always prefer and use 24fps as to me, that is what film should be. Anything above completely loses it's effect. Films in 48fps look awful to me, as you said, like a documentary or soap-opera!
These are amazing videos, I am a complete film nerd and love learning everything I can about the history of film! Thank you!
24p is fine until the camera pans
SimmerJonny oh hey I just saw your poll for your single mom LP! Never thought I'd see you here. I hate watching film in 46fps or higher. I love it when it's on RUclips but not tv, it just looks super weird so I prefer lower fps on tv and high fps on video games and RUclips
You're a genius. This series are gem and I am so pleased they're free to watch. Thanks a million.
The Hobbit was an up-and-down experience in 48fps. Some rather irritating "soap opera effect" in scenes with lots of motion.
The nice thing about digital presentation technology today is that it's possible for filmmakers to use the frame rate that best suits their vision, and it won't really be an issue during presentation.
NTSC = Never The Same Color?
+Ruiqi Mao North American Television Standards Committee, but yeah, Never The Same Color
Some of that content was a heck of a mouthful. John did a fantastic job with it.
24 frame rate is disgusting. The blur is gross. I'm so sick of hearing it described as "cinematic". This is proof that Edison never had a good or original idea in his life.
Edison had nothing to do with 24 frames per second.
His power system limited the hrtz. Telsa's would have allowed higher frame rates earlier. So the standard would have been higher from the start and you would be trying to tell me that 30fps is better looking instead of 24.
I think you need to put down that Tesla Kool-Aid.
The power system didn't limit hertz - projection is a mechanical process, you can set any speed you want...
Never. I stand by 24fps just being held on to by classic film geeks while pioneers would rather create new standards.
I'm always screen capping movies/tv shows and it's kind of shocking how much stuff is blurred. It's amazing how your brain can extrapolate trajectory and velocity with such a low sample rate. It's also interesting how subjective favorite fps can be. I was developing an First Person Shooter on a mid-laptop which capped about 45fps. The only thing that made it feel smoother was balancing the motion blur. Some people are convinced 144fps is the best/future but even as games become more photo-realistic, the second there's motion, it's straight uncanny valley.
Ezrad Lionel you make very good and nuanced points. Perhaps to motion blur is not a hindrance to predicting motion but an aid.
The Hobbit is shit because it's shit not because of frame rate. I prefer higher frame rate.
Excellent educational video. This answered many questions in a way that is very easy to follow. You have great timing in your narration and just enough visual aids to keep it flowing. One of the best explanatory videos I have seen in years. ~ Victor at CHAP
If nobody knew the hobbit was in 48FPS nobody would complain. Higher framerate is always better, and lower framerate has been shown to have a negative effect on people.
What are you even talking about? Of course people would notice... 48 fps instantly makes the film look like somebody recorded it with their DV camera at home, it looks so amateurish and bad. Higher framerate is always better? No that's YOUR opinion, and I highly disagree. I think it looks awful. And "lower framerate has been shown to have a negative effect on people" is just untrue.
D4rw1N No. You are an idiot. Thomas Edison said that 46 frames per second was the minimum need by the visual cortex: "Anything less will strain the eye." Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate#Background I think you have fallen victim to the placebo effect.
glitchsmasher Wow, way to insult me out of nowhere. I didn't attack you personally at any point in my comment, and out of nowhere you call me an idiot. Grow up.
Now for the argument, you can link me all the wikipedia articles you like, it's still not going to change the fact that I and literally NOBODY I know feel that watching movies at the cinema or on TV or where ever strains their eyes just because they're watching it in 25/30 fps. Do YOUR eyes get strained from watching a movie when it's on TV? Did it "strain your eye" to watch this RUclips clip?
D4rw1N I insulted you because of your ignorance. The clip actually didn't strain my eyes, I used SVP to interpolate it to 60fps to stop it from straining my eyes.
How was I being ignorant? You were speaking as if all human beings that watch clips and movies in 25/30 fps get their eyes strained, which is just false. You're the first person I've EVER encountered that actually interpolates RUclips clips to prevent your eyes straining. And if it's true that you literally can't watch even a single RUclips clip in 25 fps, then I'm genuinely sorry for you. But don't act like that's the case for everyone, because it isn't.
Excellent history of frame rate with exceptional production values. I believe you're right, your love for 24 fps cinema, or that cinema feel to to what you're watching, is part of the movie experience. It can be beautiful without being a perfect representation of reality. As Mark Christiansen, visual effects supervisor and creative director, said, "Movies are not reality. The reason we love them is that they present us with a heightened, idealized version of reality." I think that's why I like standard showings of movies as opposed to 3-D. It's just not the same experience.
Some of the people who saw the Hobbit in 48fps complained that it gave them headaches.
Holy frame rate Batman!
When I saw it, I loved it! The smoothness gives a very silky texture to the film to me.
I think I got headaches because I had read the book.
Its unlikely that the frame rate gave them headaches - I watch 24, 25, 50, 60, 100, 120 all day long on projected images, digital monitors and televisions and I'm yet to get a headache from high framerate or see anyone else mention or complain.
I have seen people claim that 4K makes them nauseous - but when put to the test it is psychological - I've played back 1080p footage with a Displayed In 4K watermark and that has made them claim they feel unwell - but when played without the watermark all is fine.
Karl Karlos Hell no. Old 24fps should be banned.
Really this is consider as frame rate reference we all come back and refresh our info... good job
High fps looks good in a videogame and looks bad in movies. The end.
Eeh. I disagree. I just saw Saving Private Ryan in 60fps (SVP) and the fast camera movements looked great, rather than stuttery
Karl Karlos Agreed. It looks like a soap opera.
"I have an opinion and it is law"
Nop. High FPS look great in TV and movies. I don't mind low FPS in them though as I, like many, am used to it.
I think the fast moving action is lowered at 12 FPS.
Excellent explanation!! After the end of the video I didn't hesitate to click the subscribe button! Many thanks!!
I've watched movies at 60FPS and if you ask me, it doesn't look good.
It looks as if it has been sped up.
How old are you?
I'd never really thought about frame rate, but this vid came up because I watched another of yours, and I'm so glad I watched it! Very well done - thanks!
movies should always be 24 fps, and games should always be 60+ fps
Awesome. I'm not just a subscriber, I'm a fan. Keep up the good work.
I wan't 60fps films.
I wa not 60fps films too.
Most educational video I've ever seen on youtube. Thanks