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Netflix’s Media Production Suite

netflixtechblog.com

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Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#131

Post by tuna74 »

dkh wrote: post #128
tuna74 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But you are right that Collateral did do something very new/unusual at the time, and that was shooting scenes in higher frame-rates than 24, and mixing multiple frame rates in a film. (This might not sound like much, but until this time, pretty much every film was 24fps for the previous eighty years and it had a very specific look that everyone's eyes/brains were conditioned for, unbeknownst to them.)" Why was certa…

Correct, theaters at the time could not really been project anything other than 24fps. So there were 2 parts to the shooting style, and one of them is what you describe, shooting at the higher frame rate used in order to have it play back slower when conformed to 24. But they did this in a pretty unusual way. During the action sequences, they would ramp up frame rate from 24 to 30 and back down. They would do adjust…

"We'd shoot a scene with multiple cameras side-by-side shooting at different frames rates, play it back to the class later, and ask which one looked "more like a movie" to them. Invariably, even if they couldn't explain why, everyone always picked the 24p version"

Isn't this the most expected result? How could it possibly be anything else?

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#132

Post by tuna74 »

dkh wrote: post #128
tuna74 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But you are right that Collateral did do something very new/unusual at the time, and that was shooting scenes in higher frame-rates than 24, and mixing multiple frame rates in a film. (This might not sound like much, but until this time, pretty much every film was 24fps for the previous eighty years and it had a very specific look that everyone's eyes/brains were conditioned for, unbeknownst to them.)" Why was certa…

Correct, theaters at the time could not really been project anything other than 24fps. So there were 2 parts to the shooting style, and one of them is what you describe, shooting at the higher frame rate used in order to have it play back slower when conformed to 24. But they did this in a pretty unusual way. During the action sequences, they would ramp up frame rate from 24 to 30 and back down. They would do adjust…

"Correct, theaters at the time could not really been project anything other than 24fps. So there were 2 parts to the shooting style, and one of them is what you describe, shooting at the higher frame rate used in order to have it play back slower when conformed to 24. But they did this in a pretty unusual way. During the action sequences, they would ramp up frame rate from 24 to 30 and back down. They would do adjust during the shot, so the action scenes had these subtle but constantly-occurring increases and decreases in speed that looked very interesting and had not been done before."

Wouldn't this just lead to judder? Maybe that was something that had not been seen before in a movie shown at cinemas.

I've heard that sometimes scenes like kung fu fights were filmed in a lower frame rate (maybe 20 fps) and then it got faster when it was projected in 24 fps. If you do it the other way around movement just get slower (which is what you want for slow motion).

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#133

Post by stackedinserter »

crazygringo wrote: post #21
fastball wrote: post #3

The tech is cool, but it seems like the main result of having such a pipeline is that Netflix has been able to produce an incredible amount of low-effort schlock that mostly lacks soul and artistic merit.

Are you serious? Have you watched Adolescence ? It's got more soul and artistic merit than practically anything else I've ever seen. And that was just last week. Maid ? The Queen's Gambit ? Baby Reindeer ? The Crown ? Ripley ? BoJack Horseman ? Sure they make a lot of schlock too, because they're a business and that's what most of their audience wants . But I don't see how you could possibly criticize them for that w…

So you're their target audience, enjoy.

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#134

Post by eccentricsquare »

cush wrote: post #115
dkh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people in within the industry or the tech side of it, Netflix’s engineering blog has always been fascinating and extremely useful because of the insane amount of stuff in this space they have solved or reworked. They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close. In a technical/workflow sense, working on a Netflix show is unlike working on any other. I have my issue…

> They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close I feel Disney is up there too they just don't blog about it

the disney studios (walt disney animation, walt disney pictures, pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, Blue Sky, 20th Century Fox) contributed a significant amount of research towards technologies used in film and television, much of it in academic conferences like SIGGRAPH

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#135

Post by _m_p »

dkh wrote: post #128
tuna74 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But you are right that Collateral did do something very new/unusual at the time, and that was shooting scenes in higher frame-rates than 24, and mixing multiple frame rates in a film. (This might not sound like much, but until this time, pretty much every film was 24fps for the previous eighty years and it had a very specific look that everyone's eyes/brains were conditioned for, unbeknownst to them.)" Why was certa…

Correct, theaters at the time could not really been project anything other than 24fps. So there were 2 parts to the shooting style, and one of them is what you describe, shooting at the higher frame rate used in order to have it play back slower when conformed to 24. But they did this in a pretty unusual way. During the action sequences, they would ramp up frame rate from 24 to 30 and back down. They would do adjust…

In the book _In the Blink of an Eye_ by Walter Murch (which is generally about film editing), there's a section that speculates that 24 frames per second somehow resonates with some innate constant of how human vision works, which is wild to think about!

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#136

Post by gamblor956 »

dkh wrote: post #127
gamblor956 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else This is objectively not true. Netflix has put almost no tech into the basic tooling of modern day TV/film (i.e., the cameras or audio equipment) or the software used to produce the content, or even the tech used to create the sets, makeup, CGI, or any of the other actual work that goes into producing the content. The only place where Netflix ha…

I should’ve been more specific—I was referring to the modern-day workflow for producing a scripted series, which is what the article was about. In that context, Netflix has the most technically sophisticated workflow and tooling to optimize production of that kind of content, from the perspective of creatives working on those sorts of shows. Certainly they have major blind spots in a lot of user-facing stuff that the…

Netflix's workflow for creatives isn't more sophisticated than their competitors; Netflix simply prefers to re-create the wheel in-house while their competitors are more likely to use off-the-shelf software solutions to the extent that they use software at all.

As others have pointed out on this thread: Netflix's solutions don't scale up or down for others. This means that the technical solution is sophisticated because their unnecessarily complicated internal business process requires it. Netflix could save billions a year if it streamlined their production side like the studios have. Case in point: almost every film Netflix has made in the past few years has gone way over budget, and it's not because of backend buy-outs. (The Electric State cost $320 million, meaning that the base budget before backend buyouts was around $225 million. It doesn't even look like an $50 million movie.)

Netflix can get away with inefficient business processes because it's making enough money right now to paper over those costs, but eventually they'll have to streamline their processes. (For an indirect example, look up the story of Carolco Pictures, the company behind T2, Rambo, and other major hits.)

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#137

Post by cush »

dkh wrote: post #123
cush wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close I feel Disney is up there too they just don't blog about it

All of the players in this echelon have contributed massively, and all of them have pretty wild workflows and impressive solutions to technical problems. If we were measuring technical achievement across the broader history of filmed entertainment, there’s a strong case to be made for Disney as the most influential. But when it comes to how content is produced and distributed today, Netflix has definitely invested th…

Yeah I really just don't see how you are getting these "Netflix is the most" figures, considering the scale of Disney and how they constantly push technical boundaries in production, vfx, animation, etc

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#138

Post by dkh »

tuna74 wrote: post #131
dkh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, theaters at the time could not really been project anything other than 24fps. So there were 2 parts to the shooting style, and one of them is what you describe, shooting at the higher frame rate used in order to have it play back slower when conformed to 24. But they did this in a pretty unusual way. During the action sequences, they would ramp up frame rate from 24 to 30 and back down. They would do adjust…

"We'd shoot a scene with multiple cameras side-by-side shooting at different frames rates, play it back to the class later, and ask which one looked "more like a movie" to them. Invariably, even if they couldn't explain why, everyone always picked the 24p version" Isn't this the most expected result? How could it possibly be anything else?

At the time, yes, absolutely, and that's why I did it. It was a lesson that everyone understood intuitively the moment the saw the comparison, even if 30 seconds prior to that they thought it was nonsense, or didn't really have thoughts one way or the other because they never given much thought to frame rates before.

But would this experiment yield the same results today? For people in certain demographics or below a certain age, I think almost certainly not.

I also think that a lot of the people who would've easily identified the 24p clip back in 2004ish when this class took place may no longer do so now. I never would've thought this before 2018ish, but I had experiences with people around and since that time that surprised me and turned me completely around on this view.

Though there is one other alternative that that I wouldn't have difficulty believing. I think it's possible that more people than I just predicted would identify the 24p clip as "cinematic", but that they may not view it as a desirable look, inherently more dramatic, having much impact on the viewer, etc.

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#139

Post by dkh »

_m_p wrote: post #135
dkh wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, theaters at the time could not really been project anything other than 24fps. So there were 2 parts to the shooting style, and one of them is what you describe, shooting at the higher frame rate used in order to have it play back slower when conformed to 24. But they did this in a pretty unusual way. During the action sequences, they would ramp up frame rate from 24 to 30 and back down. They would do adjust…

In the book _In the Blink of an Eye_ by Walter Murch (which is generally about film editing), there's a section that speculates that 24 frames per second somehow resonates with some innate constant of how human vision works, which is wild to think about!

I remember exactly when I learned that, and indeed I found it interesting and thought-provoking at the time. And it's still interesting now, but I personally think it's way less likely true than I did back then

Re: Netflix’s Media Production Suite

#140

Post by staticautomatic »

fidotron wrote: post #98
dkh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people in within the industry or the tech side of it, Netflix’s engineering blog has always been fascinating and extremely useful because of the insane amount of stuff in this space they have solved or reworked. They have put more into tech side of modern-day TV/film than anybody else, and it's not even close. In a technical/workflow sense, working on a Netflix show is unlike working on any other. I have my issue…

Netflix get away with it because they own the result at the end of the process. If you were to suggest these workflows to other studios they'd balk at the idea of having the raw stuff being uploaded to the cloud etc. If they tried selling this as a solution do we think people outside Netflix would buy and use it? One of the people I worked with that is now at Netflix on this stuff was so violently opposed to not owni…

What? Cloud media asset management systems are full of raw stuff.
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