Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps • Hacker News Board

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#111

Post by corysama » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 7:46 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #70

dperfect wrote: post #22

The most interesting point made in the article (for me) is that the presence of noise/grain - which effectively reduces real detail in an individual image - can actually improve the perceived detail across time with high frame rates. At first, I thought this extra "detail" could be explained as an illusion (since noise/grain can mask a lack of resolution), but then I read the abstract quoted near the end of the artic…

I wonder how is that related to the dithering algorithms in music production -- that add noise when downsampling an audio track.

Very related.

http://loopit.dk/banding_in_games.pdf

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#112

Post by eridius » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 7:55 AM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #110

eridius wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I thought HFR dramatically improved the Hobbit films. The first 5 minutes of each movie felt very odd, as if everyone was moving in fast motion without actually moving any faster (sorry, that's the best way I can describe it), but after those first 5 minutes, the movie looked completely natural and amazing. Especially the 3D, it looked so good that I want every single 3D movie to b…

Well if you have a PC setup to play videos, there's a system that'll interpolate any video to a higher frame rate : http://www.svp-team.com/ I watched ST TNG using that and it certainly made it feel a bit more realistic.

Most modern TVs tend to have motion smoothing available as an option as well (that page says higher-end TVs but I've seen it on plenty of cheaper TVs as well, though I don't know when that was written). But it's nowhere near as good as HFR, especially in scenes with a lot of motion it tends to make things blurrier.

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#113

Post by CrLf » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 12:43 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #92

baby wrote: post #24

I personally love HFR and have went out of my ways to watch the three The Hobbits in HFR (I traveled to Paris, the only place in France where they have it in HFR). When people complain about 48fps being weird I just feel like they're just not used to it. It does look weird but after 20 minutes it looks amazing. I'm personally tired of not understanding anything in action movies that uses 24fps. It is kind of a luxury…

I'm not surprised by average viewers being taken aback by HFR. What surprises me is how many ostensibly serious film critics are flat out rejecting it. I just can't believe that's anything less than clearly being on the wrong side of history, like people who probably complained about audio in films, color films, or CGI.

Just because it's new, doesn't mean it's better. And complaining doesn't automatically place one in the wrong side of history.

See 3D films. It keeps reappearing and with it the usual stream of complaints and people dismissing those complaints. However, audiences end up rejecting it after a while, for their own fuzzy reasons that may or may not be related to the complainers' arguments. This is already happening to the current 3D technology, I wonder why...

HFR fits this perfectly. It's new, but it isn't clear if it will hold with audiences. It's the audiences that decide if it's better.

As for CGI... That's a bad example. CGI is generally a good thing, but too much of it isn't.

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#114

Post by Kurtz79 » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 3:31 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #24

I personally love HFR and have went out of my ways to watch the three The Hobbits in HFR (I traveled to Paris, the only place in France where they have it in HFR). When people complain about 48fps being weird I just feel like they're just not used to it. It does look weird but after 20 minutes it looks amazing. I'm personally tired of not understanding anything in action movies that uses 24fps. It is kind of a luxury…

When something it's clearly better than a previous technology, you "get used to it" pretty quickly.

Nobody complained when the first LCD monitors started replacing CRTs.

When then first "retina" displays appeared, the improvement over lower DPIs screens was clear, and nobody complained it was "too sharp".

It's clear that ithe HFR case the issue is not so clear cut: the fact that there are discussions about it (and articles like this one that try to place a scientific base to the fact that many do not like HFR movies), it shows that it's not just a matter of "getting used to it".

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#115

Post by scott_s » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 4:21 PM UTC

bhauer wrote: post #4

This article is detailed and scientific. However, anecdotally speaking, the concern I have with evaluating high-frame rate in film is that we have very little context—most of us have only ever seen Peter Jackson's Hobbit films in HFR. In other words, I have never seen how other directors' work would be affected by HFR. Speaking exclusively about the Hobbit series in HFR, I too observed an uncanny valley that traditio…

An article on framerate popped up on HN last year, about the same time, about last year's Hobbit movie. Something that article brought up was lighting: at a higher frame rate, more light hits our eyes. Directors (both full and of Photography) will need to adjust how they light movies - which probably means using less light. Same for things like makeup - they'll need to adjust to viewers being able to see more.

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#116

Post by gambiting » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 4:44 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #75

bhauer wrote: post #4

This article is detailed and scientific. However, anecdotally speaking, the concern I have with evaluating high-frame rate in film is that we have very little context—most of us have only ever seen Peter Jackson's Hobbit films in HFR. In other words, I have never seen how other directors' work would be affected by HFR. Speaking exclusively about the Hobbit series in HFR, I too observed an uncanny valley that traditio…

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I thought HFR dramatically improved the Hobbit films. The first 5 minutes of each movie felt very odd, as if everyone was moving in fast motion without actually moving any faster (sorry, that's the best way I can describe it), but after those first 5 minutes, the movie looked completely natural and amazing. Especially the 3D, it looked so good that I want every single 3D movie to b…

It depends on a person. For me, the weird effect you had for the first 5 minutes never subsided, and I disliked it all the way till the very end. I felt like it should be out of sync with sound, because everyone moved in such an unnatural way,but it never was, no matter how hard I looked.

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#117

Post by Retra » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

darkmighty wrote: post #107

Retra wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a broader picture -- that this effect arises because we use discrete, independent words to describe inter-dependent phenomena. The concepts of momentum and position are not good 'factorizations' of reality, so trying to talk about it in those terms leads to structural problems when you increase precision. It's the same kind of problem you get when you try to talk about objective/subject morality, or whet…

I don't position or momentum are bad descriptions of a system. Also, it's not "factorizing" the system into the two parts, since they are related by a transformation (i.e. they are interchangeable, doesn't happen in factorization). It's important to have a good knowledge on the subject before you try to interpret meaning of it and specially when you try to extrapolate the situation. I'm saying this also because the i…

Position and momentum are bad description of a quantum system precisely because they are not independent. This is not really a statement about physics, but about language. It just happens to apply to physics because the purpose of physics is to develop useful language. And we make a better description in this case by saying things like 'position-momentum', using an actual equation, or by using a different concept like energy or wave-vector. All of which are better than position and momentum alone.

The extrapolation here really has little to do with quantum physics. I am also using QM as an analogy for linguistics. The theme is about how language captures information and how information-processing systems select output based upon linguistic structure. It's a very young and poorly understood subject, so I don't think it's very likely to get good theoretical work in a forum like this. These are primitive times, after all.

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#118

Post by baby » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 5:59 PM UTC

MLR wrote: post #91

baby wrote: post #24

I personally love HFR and have went out of my ways to watch the three The Hobbits in HFR (I traveled to Paris, the only place in France where they have it in HFR). When people complain about 48fps being weird I just feel like they're just not used to it. It does look weird but after 20 minutes it looks amazing. I'm personally tired of not understanding anything in action movies that uses 24fps. It is kind of a luxury…

People need to take a step back and remember that film is art, it's not always meant to be the best possible depiction of reality. 48 fps can be better, but 24 fps can too, it's another tool for a director to use. The issue is when people start trying to proscribe 48 fps, or 24 fps, as inherently superior, it's all situational.

We can still watch old Chaplin movie and love it. Because it's good. But if new movies were going to be released in 16fps then nobody would watch that (if it's just one movie people might go because of the novelty). Especially for action movies, there is no excuse not to reach 48, and better 60 fps, since we now have the technology to do this.

Peter Jackson and James Cameron are precursors and they will have the knowledge and the technique before everyone else when everyone will start making 60fps movies.

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#119

Post by kuschku » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 6:46 PM UTC

Kurtz79 wrote: post #114

baby wrote: post #24

I personally love HFR and have went out of my ways to watch the three The Hobbits in HFR (I traveled to Paris, the only place in France where they have it in HFR). When people complain about 48fps being weird I just feel like they're just not used to it. It does look weird but after 20 minutes it looks amazing. I'm personally tired of not understanding anything in action movies that uses 24fps. It is kind of a luxury…

When something it's clearly better than a previous technology, you "get used to it" pretty quickly. Nobody complained when the first LCD monitors started replacing CRTs. When then first "retina" displays appeared, the improvement over lower DPIs screens was clear, and nobody complained it was "too sharp". It's clear that ithe HFR case the issue is not so clear cut: the fact that there are discussions about it (and ar…

Actually, if you look back via the web archive, at the time when Retina appeared, a lot of people complained about it.

Doesn’t really bring any advantage, takes too much processing power, people can’t see that sharp anyway, "too sharp images hurt my eyes", etc.

It was exactly the same as with 3D or CGI, even though it is definitely useful.

Re: Why movies look weird at 48fps, and games are better at 60fps

#120

Post by MAGZine » Thu, Dec 25, 2014, 7:06 PM UTC

eridius wrote: post #75

bhauer wrote: post #4

This article is detailed and scientific. However, anecdotally speaking, the concern I have with evaluating high-frame rate in film is that we have very little context—most of us have only ever seen Peter Jackson's Hobbit films in HFR. In other words, I have never seen how other directors' work would be affected by HFR. Speaking exclusively about the Hobbit series in HFR, I too observed an uncanny valley that traditio…

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I thought HFR dramatically improved the Hobbit films. The first 5 minutes of each movie felt very odd, as if everyone was moving in fast motion without actually moving any faster (sorry, that's the best way I can describe it), but after those first 5 minutes, the movie looked completely natural and amazing. Especially the 3D, it looked so good that I want every single 3D movie to b…

BUilding on this, I saw the Hobbit the first time in 48, and the second time in 24fps.

The panning around at the beginning of the movie was HORRIBLE in 24fps. Visually displeasing. The HFR effect disappeared for me after a few minutes and I could enjoy the film for what it was.