Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps • Hacker News Board

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#121

Post by mattebb » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 2:49 AM UTC

SeanLuke wrote: post #45

> The text-book reason filmmakers add makeup to actors and then light them brightly is that film is not as sensitive as the human eye, so these aids compensated for the film's deficiencies of being insensitive to low light and needing the extra contrast provided by makeup. These fakeries were added to "correct" film so it seemed more like we saw. But now that 48HFR and hi-definition video mimic our eyes better, it's…

There was no motion blur conversion, the 24fps version was made by taking every second frame.

The film was shot at 48fps with a 270 degree shutter angle, which is equivalent to a shutter speed of 1/72s. This was done to balance the look of the motion blur midway between the look that you'd get shooting 24 and 48 with a standard 180 degree shutter angle (1/48s and 1/96s respectively). So the motion blur should still be a bit sharper than a usual film, when watching the 24fps version, but not as extremely sharp as it would be at 1/96s since it would cause more stuttering and strobing.

I believe the author's point is not that the lighting was different, but that it 'appeared' different, which I agree with. The difference in the appearance I put down to getting twice as much visual information per second. Even though the spatial resolution is the same for each frame, you're getting twice as much. For example a small detail like a facial pore may not resolve between two 24fps frames, but you can see it in the 'in-between' extra frame. This could be especially an issue since the original plates were shot at 5k, resized down to 2k, potentially 'anti-aliasing' away details.

This is probably having a similar effect to when HD spatial resolution came in for television, everything looked more 'real' and productions had to adjust makeup and lighting techniques.

(disclaimer: I work in the visual effects industry)

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#122

Post by jerf » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 2:52 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #120

jerf wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quasi-pop psychology: The human brain is a remarkable machine. It is fantastic at extracting data from any stream of data it can find. It is aided in this by the neural ability to accommodate and model constant elements of the stream. In the simplest form, you can see this effect with the simple persistence of vision phenomena [1], but the effect can also be applied to fantastically complicated phenomena by our overp…

Hmm, no. You don't necessarily want endlessly increasing information content because that's more work for your brain to filter. As I pointed out below, 48 FPS has been well within our technical capabilities for a long time - far longer than the current polarized-3d technology, for example. Yet there isn't a body of 48 FPS films out there, in contrast to 3d, super-widescreen, movies with vibrating chairs, 'smell-o-vis…

Information theory is a tricky and subtle thing. A dance song at 300BPM may not actually contain any more "information" than one at 150BPM.

And the idea that the brain will get too tired processing that much data explains too much... you just explained why reality is too real for the brain to handle.

Also, I'm not claiming More Is Always Better, but in this case we've got a pretty decent bound being put in place by the bandwidth of the eyes and ears themselves, both impressive, but both quite a bit less than our brain convinces us that they are.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#123

Post by taylorbuley » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 2:53 AM UTC

One of the most interesting aspects of the HFR debate -- and basically the main reason for it -- is the brightness, which as Kottke notes seems to make makeup and internal lighting look fake.

I don't believe the film itself is any brighter. What happens is that with 48fps your eye works less hard compensating for motion blur and is freed up to perceive each frame more brightly.

From what I've read, the effect is limited only by how fast projectors can change an image, so I suspect we're only at the precipice of discovering the ups and downs of HFR.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#124

Post by mattebb » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 2:54 AM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #41

cwilson wrote: post #19

According to the article, the outdoor scenes were awesome in 48FPS. It was the indoor scenes that looked fake and weird, due to the fact that 48FPS made it very apparent there was lots of makeup being used, because they had unnatural light blasting on the actors (where as there was no extra light added to outdoor scenes, obviously). Shouldn't he have just toned down the extra lighting indoors, knowing 48FPS was going…

> due to the fact that 48FPS made it very apparent there was lots of makeup being used How does better temporal resolution (higher frame rate) enable better spacial resolution (see makeup detail)? In no or low motion, there can be no difference.

> How does better temporal resolution (higher frame rate) enable better spacial resolution (see makeup detail)? In no or low motion, there can be no difference.

Because you're not watching a single still frame - it's more like your brain is taking in an integral of visual information over time. You don't need much motion to be able to perceive a visual difference (even if it's just a 'feeling'). Eg. http://iwdrm.tumblr.com/

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#125

Post by jcrites » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 2:57 AM UTC

I thought that most scenes in The Hobbit 48 fps were fine, but a few scenes /seemed to be playing in fast forward/. Especially in the opening scenes, Bilbo was walking through his hobbit-hole at faster than natural speeds. I have a distinct memory of feeling like the speed of motion was out of sync with the sound.

This effect was only apparent in a few scenes in the film, but I'm pretty sure it was real, as I watched the film twice, once at each speed, and only noticed it in 48 fps. It almost seemed like the producers didn't film certain scenes at 48fps natively, and sped up their 24 fps film to double speed instead. Did anyone notice similar artifacts?

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#126

Post by mattebb » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 2:59 AM UTC

mbrubeck wrote: post #7

anigbrowl wrote: post #2

A cogent argument, well explained and articulated. However, I don't agree with the conclusion - that what audiences want is ever more realism. Realism diminishes things; the 'film look' adds a dream like quality which is highly desirable for narrative work.

Certainly audiences might come to reject some new techniques and accept others. But what current generations think of as "film look" will eventually be a historical curiousity, just as past generations' "film look" is a curiousity today. Future generations will have their own "film look" that will probably be more realistic and high-fidelity in at least some ways. Though there are a few exceptions, generally people t…

I'd like to get to the point where frame rate is a creative choice and not a technical limitation. Perhaps some kinds of films/scenes/shots are better suited to different frame rates, for the impression and feeling they impart on the viewer. It was great to see Ang Lee start doing this a bit (but with aspect ratio) in Life of Pi, using it as another tool in the tool box, not an absolute right or wrong way to do things.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#127

Post by keeperofdakeys » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 3:00 AM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #105

Why 48 FPS? Just because it's double the typical 24 FPS? Still it seems pretty arbitrarily chosen. They should just go with 60 FPS, which is what every screen has.

While 60 makes sense in the US, Europe wants 50 (because they use PAL, with 25 fps). In this case, since film has always been done in 24 fps, 48 was chosen for compatibility with that (and cinema projectors).

Frame rate conversion has always been strange though, to make 24fps content 30fps they perform something called 'telecining'. This mixes up different rows of frames to get the new frames. For PAL, they actually just speed up the video (and audio) to 25fps; so shows actually go for less time.

For modern TVs, the screen usually has a rather high refresh rate (60+ Hz). So it can show older framerates (24, 25, 30) quite well by timing frames across multiple refreshes of the screen. These newer framerates can cause trouble, but to compensate you even have some 120 Hz TVs showing up. A lot of modern TVs even have some form of motion compensation, to add new frames into the video. The techniques used for this try to make an approximation of between frames, and usually look 'too smooth', due to the motion blur not being correct.

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#128

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 3:05 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #34

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have said the same thing about higher resolution video, or color video, or talkies. But they've all been accepted, even though they increased the level of "realism". As the article says in its opening line: > New media technologies often cause an allergic reaction when they first appear. We may find them painful before we find them indispensable. At this point, such reactions to new technologies are to be e…

This is what I'm disagreeing with. Colorwas a big plus, and you'll find little opposition to more resolution among filmmakers - when we can afford it, we'll take as much resolution as is available, likewise color depth. We've been able to shoot 48 fps for years; there aren't any major technical obstacles to doing so on film, even on relatively cheap cameras; for example, an Arri Super 16mm camera available for under…

[deleted]

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#129

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 3:05 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #122

anigbrowl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, no. You don't necessarily want endlessly increasing information content because that's more work for your brain to filter. As I pointed out below, 48 FPS has been well within our technical capabilities for a long time - far longer than the current polarized-3d technology, for example. Yet there isn't a body of 48 FPS films out there, in contrast to 3d, super-widescreen, movies with vibrating chairs, 'smell-o-vis…

Information theory is a tricky and subtle thing. A dance song at 300BPM may not actually contain any more "information" than one at 150BPM. And the idea that the brain will get too tired processing that much data explains too much... you just explained why reality is too real for the brain to handle. Also, I'm not claiming More Is Always Better, but in this case we've got a pretty decent bound being put in place by t…

It may not, but then again it may. when I work on a fast tune I certainly don't feel that I can safely reduce the number of musical events therein and have it work well.

Reality is of course not too real for the brain to handle, but when we are being entertained we do not necessarily wish work at it in the same way as we do when processing reality - we accept a somewhat limited sensorium in exchange for enhanced semantic complexity. Consider that in things like sports or stage performances (two areas where high-framerate video has proved especially popular) the audience is dealing with a narrowly-tailored field of interest.

You're ignoring the elephant in the room: 48 FPS and a variety of other frame rates been affordably available for a long time on both acquisition and playback hardware, both analog and digital. What hasn't it caught on?

Re: Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

#130

Post by archagon » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 3:16 AM UTC

aufreak3 wrote: post #82

I did this as well - watched both 48fps and 24fps, both in 3d and the former in imax. I didnt talk to Knoll, of course, but some notes follow - 1. The imax hfr 3d was on the whole awesome and I got a glimpse of where cinetech is heading. I was surprised by how good it was 'cos I expected it to be visually a lot more "soap opera"ish, iykwim. Peter Jackson has done some really good compromises so the film would look go…

This is really interesting, thank you. I haven't seen a lot of discussion about how traditional filmmaking techniques might need to be changed to work with HFR.