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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

#181

Post by Keyframe »

MattDL wrote: post #116
Keyframe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

R&D on Showscan showed 72-76 fps was the threshold.

From personal experience that is far too low, I'd like to see the source for this.

I've read it in Cinefex long time ago, might be there is something online too. Douglas Trumbull did some sort of a controller experiment in front of a crowd with 70mm projection.

Which shot images have you seen played faster than 72 fps? I've seen one test played back at 120 fps, but it was in a camera r&d lab in germany. 72 fps is really more than enough. Consider that 3D projection actually projects 3 frames per each eye, so 3D@72fps would actually mean projector is churning out 432 frames each second. Or you're talking about games, which is another thing entirely since input is a part of experience too. In that case, I agree.

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

#182

Post by Hari_Seldon »

jeremyswank wrote: post #158
mcphilip wrote: post #52

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…

"Don’t allow yourself to fall in love with the camera. Keep it in its place and keep your eye open for those little moments you didn’t plan for. It’s my definition of what it is to be a movie director: A man who presides over accidents." -Orson Welles

Great quote, haven't heard this before, thanks.

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

#183

Post by jmmcd »

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…

> more work for your brain to filter

No matter how much resolution and FPS they put into movie screens, your brain still won't have to process more than it does when looking at the real world.

The analogy with BPMs makes no sense. Beats are perceived individually -- they're individually semantic. Exceptions like Moby's 1000 mentioned below aren't exceptions -- just because there are 1000 kick drums per minute doesn't mean the perceived BPM is 1000.

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

#184

Post by shocks »

I don't get it, have none of you played video games?

I saw The Hobbit in 3D (HFS) on an IMAX screen and I didn't notice anything amazingly different. Perhaps because I am used to playing computer games at 60FPS or more??

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

#185

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

jerf wrote: post #112
pud wrote: 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…

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…

> You will someday stop noticing 48fps.

It took me about half an hour to stop noticing the oddness of it.

> You will someday specifically notice 24 fps and say, wow, how did I ever watch that.

I watched The Hobbit in 24fps a week later and even little initial things like Bilbo sitting on his porch and waving his hands at Gandalf were noticeably flickery and inferior. But after half an hour or so I got used to it ;)

In 24fps, it was noticeable how much of the screen was completely dark or so close to it in indoor and night scenes that it yielded nothing of interest. And the opposite in 48fps: Everything, everywhere had well-lit detail, even when it moved. It was occasionally too much.

I totally agree with the article that the film people haven't yet worked out how to best light indoor 48fps scenes. Too much clarity at 48fps, and not enough at at 24fps. I also totally agree with the article's basic conclusion - this doesn't mean that 48fps is worse, and it isn't. We just don't know how best to make it yet ... or how to see it.

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

#186

Post by danbee »

beedogs wrote: post #134
pud wrote: 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.

16 bit is good enough for human ears.

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

#187

Post by colomon »

pud wrote: 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…

I think that's the wrong way of looking at what happened, at least with CDs. When CDs first came out, the music industry had decades of experience mastering for LPs and cassettes, and no experience at all mastering for CDs. It took some time to figure out how to best use the format, and in the meantime thousands (millions?) of crappy-sounding CDs were released.

A record player naturally adds a certain amount of reverb to the music when it is playing -- that's the warmth. Recordings were engineered to take advantage of that. Then the same recordings were dumped to CD without compensating for the missing reverb. The CD would more accurately produce the sound on the master tapes, but those sounds were never intended to be heard that way. Frequently the digital recording levels were all messed up too.

From the article, it sounds like the exact same sort of thing is happening with 48fps. Right now the movie world is still learning how to use it. I kind of wish they'd practiced on films I don't want to see, but that's life.

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

#188

Post by josephlord »

PaperclipTaken wrote: post #63

"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…

The rate that the eyes/brain cannot detect changes will depend on many things including size of objects and speed (and possibly smoothness) of motion.

Using polarised 3D both eyes should still get 48fps they just receive different(ly polarised) light. TVs using active shutter glasses do reduce the frame rate by half but will usually be reducing it from 96Hz or more

By the way - in the cinema at 24fps each frame is usually flashed twice which encourages the psycho-visual system to fill in the blanks and smooth out the motion so it appears sharper and less blurred than it would on a LCD/Plasma TV screen that usually holds the image for the duration of the frame. Some high end models can do black frame insertion if they are using the right type of LED backlighting and are set to the right mode.

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

#189

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

chc wrote: post #37
pud wrote: 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…

> 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. This sounds more like "hipsters like flaws." CDs absolutely ROFLstomped both vinyl and cassette very quickly once they became affo…

> People had the option of buying vinyl, CD or cassette in the mid-'90s, and they generally preferred CDs.

While agree with you, you haven't proved that this is due to a CD's objectively better sound quality. CDs are also more convenient than either tapes or vinyl: vinyl is bulky and much easier than a CD to damage. Tapes are smaller but also easy to damage. Both wear out with use faster than digital media.

Case in point: MP3 also took off massively despite objectively worse sound quality due to lossy compression. Because they were more convenient than CDs, and this convenience was boosted each time hard drive sizes and internet speeds increased.

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

#190

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

r0s wrote: post #135
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…

> 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…

But oddly, if you have listened to enough techno, you may find that there is often more informational content in a 120bpm track than a 220bpm track. If a 4-bar bar is shorter, you can put fewer notes, fewer sounds, fewer subtleties of any kind in it.With the 220bpm gabba, there's no room for much besides the machine-gun beats.
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