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Pain of the New: The Hobbit at 48 fps

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

#131
A bit of nonsense. I was just in San Diego visiting family and my Dad, brother and I went to an IMAX theater and saw the 48fps 3d version.

SPECTACULAR

A long time ago I did some entertainment dev for Nintendo and Disney. Both companies provided me with high end SGI Reality Engines that were good for 64 fps. Not being able to detect new frames really adds a lot to the experience.

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

#132
post #36

>Knoll asked me, "You probably only noticed the odd lighting in the interior scenes, not in the outdoors scenes, right?" And once he asked it this way, I realize he was right. The scenes in the HFR version that seemed odd were all inside. The landscape scenes were stunning in a good way. "That's because they didn't have to light the outside; the real lighting is all that was needed, so nothing seemed amiss." I would…

[deleted]

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

#133

"48fps is just above the threshold that the human eye/brain can detect changes" No, it's not. The actual threshold is unknown, but it's generally assumed to be around 100fps. Like the threshold for color, it's a complex question. You don't see stuttering in a movie (usually) because each frame has an exposure time that is almost the full duration of how long the frame will appear on screen. The result is that anythin…

>It's also worth noting that in 3D, each eye only gets a new frame at half of the rate (because each eye only sees half of the frames), so each eye is getting refreshed at the rate of a regular movie.

With active shutter 3d yes, but with polarized 3d no. I think most movie theaters are polarized 3d.

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

#134
post #16

Humans like flaws. When CDs first came out, people argued that they sounded "cold," even though they're near-perfect recreations of the music that was recorded. People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes. This is also the same reason why people like Instagram filters. Normal iPhone pics are too good. Let's fuzz em up a bit. Also, look at v1 of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular sites - they…

Records don't hiss. And 16 bit audio really isn't "near-perfect" recreation.

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

#135
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…

> most people just don't want beats coming at them that fast.

I'm sure people used to say this about Rock & Roll, or Jazz. The revolution in speed is probably just a decade away, judging by past acceptance.

I want increasing information content ad nausium, because it's simply a pale shadow of real experience. When we actually achieve comparable bandwidth with real life, we'll talk. The day the holodeck is seamlessly integrated in our lives is the day we can discuss limits, but by then it may not matter.

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

#136
I also felt that the shots, now full of visual information, moved too quickly between scenes. I wanted to spend some time staring at the shot, taking it all in (especially in an early shot of a marketplace), had no chance to.

I felt like someone was making me sprint through a museum.

I'm in favor of HFR, but agree, we really need visionary directors to bring out the full potential.

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Starting with The New World, Malick has instituted “rules” in his filmmaking, including using only natural light, no cranes, no big rigs, and handheld cameras only [1]. You might want to checkout New World if natural lighting interests you. Malick is known as the "director's director" and has done a lot of very interesting work. He loves trying to capture "unrepeatable moments", like how he used a clip of an in-cost…

Do you have a source for the story about the corn cob pipe? I'd love to see that scene, but can't seem to find any mention of it online.

As I recall it was discussed in the DVD extras on The New World. I remember that scene in the movie, but it's been years since I've watched it.

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

#138

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…

I don't think there's an "imax 3d hfr" version of the film -- IMAX just happens to be one of the venues that's showing the 3D HFR version. They also show a different IMAX 3D version, but that's at 24fps.

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CDs sounded cold because converters were bad and engineers didn't have much experience mastering for it, not because they sounded too perfect. Early CDs still sound bad, and I would take the respective vinyl over the CD any day still. Modern CDs sound amazing, if we leave the loudness wars aside for a moment. I suppose there are two reasons why people use Instagram filters. Firstly, because most phone cameras aren't…

This. I still have an old Sade CD from the early 80's and the sound on that CD is very flat.

I suppose that's why all those "Remasters" came out in the late 90s. (http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Sade/dp/B00005AWMF)

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

#140
post #16

Humans like flaws. When CDs first came out, people argued that they sounded "cold," even though they're near-perfect recreations of the music that was recorded. People like the hiss and compression of records and tapes. This is also the same reason why people like Instagram filters. Normal iPhone pics are too good. Let's fuzz em up a bit. Also, look at v1 of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other popular sites - they…

Records don't hiss. And 16 bit audio really isn't "near-perfect" recreation.

No, but they usually playback tape hiss.
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