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

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

#211

Post by acjacobson » Thu, Jan 10, 2013, 10:08 PM UTC

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…

While I am not positive, my assumption is that 48fps was chosen as it is exactly twice the normal frame rate, allowing them to easily toss away half the frames per second to create the 24fps versions of the film.

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

#212

Post by mattebb » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 3:27 AM UTC

mattebb wrote: post #121

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 b…

Edit, messed up frame rate calc, it's not 1/72s, it's 1/64s: 48/(270/360)=64

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

#213

Post by akosner » Fri, Jan 11, 2013, 2:16 PM UTC

There is a larger point here about technology in general. The things that are supposed to make us happier are not, in fact, making us happier. To the technologist, more pixels and faster frame rates are an undisputed good. As Kevin Wines from THX tells me, “When film was the only medium for cinema, using lower frame rates was based on economics. With film, directors and producers would have had to use more film, making it cost prohibitive to use high frame rates, but now that we use digital data, there’s no fiscal reason not to use high frame rates.” No reason, of course, other than that the impact on viewers may be different than what the technologists were expecting. To people in the user-centered practices, every product, and every feature of every product, is a proposition, a question we ask users. Like the ophthalmologist giving an eye exam, “better now, or now?”

http://onforb.es/VPE5u2