Framerate in Movies

[Snyper]

Well... 24 fps's are becoming too annoying (i can even see fps's in teather sometimes, and it's annoying).
But you are right. Equipment would be too expensive, and movie industry would need a new equipment also...
I hopw, that eventualy, movies will have more than 24 fps's, 'cos it's more appealing to watch (like PC's monitors)...

 

[London Geezer]

Well... 24 fps's are becoming too annoying (i can even see fps's in teather sometimes, and it's annoying).
But you are right. Equipment would be too expensive, and movie industry would need a new equipment also...
I hopw, that eventualy, movies will have more than 24 fps's, 'cos it's more appealing to watch (like PC's monitors)...

Like someone said, even in LOTR, when they pan over those beautiful large landscapes, it's VERY evident. Seeing those large landscapes flyovers in 60fps would be gorgeous. As it is, it's an eye-sore.

Any confirmation on Imax being at 60fps? Cause if it really is, i'm so gonna go see Matrix Revolutions on Imax...

 

[pcchen]

If the source is 24 fps, it'll still be 24 fps in an IMAX theater, I presume.

About IMAX frame rates, there are different numbers... IMAX.com gives 24 fps in one place (96 fps for IMAX 3D). HowStuffWorks gives 48 fps.

 

[Entropy]

For theaters to standardize on anything less than the equivalent of 70mm film would be stupid IMHO. And the proposed formats aren't anywhere close to that in most respects.

DLP equipt theaters are already doing this (lower than even 35mm). And some movies are also shot at lower resolutions than film (e.g. Attack of the Clones)...

Although, in the name of fairness, even at lower resoulutions, the digital process has some significant inherent advantages. The process of flipping celluloid frames from one to the next in rapid succession isn't perfect....
Overall, the experience should be better even if the resolution of a particular frame is much lower. There are other parameters that are important as well.

Still, I really hope that we won't find ourselves saddled with the first solution that comes along that can just barely compete with what we have had for what is now approximately a human lifetime. If we consider the improvements we are likely to see in the digital domain for the upcoming decades, I contend that it would make sense to set our sights on what is required to reach our limits of perception. We're not likely to reach such a goal in a long time though, way beyond the timeframe where a pure digital recording/distribution/projection chain is economically compelling.

Thus it would make sense to have standards that allow for quality improvements over time.

In some sense film has offered this since old cameras and projectors have been able to take advantage of all advances made in film emulsion technology made over the decades.

To give you an idea of what I think the industry should aim for, I'd like to see a format which is (better than) 10000x4000 pixels at 100 Hz. If you're interested in why, you'll have to work out angles of view et cetera. (Yes, I know the datarates would be staggering by todays standards.)

I'll say... It takes a pretty beefy setup to just to a digital shoot with a Thomson Viper rig considering the 1080p 4:4:4 10-bit log RGB streams off of it already hit around 3Gbps...

Indeed. I did say "aim for".
(I do believe that it should be possible to introduce reasonable compression technologies right at the capture device.)

 

[Snyper]

Like someone said, even in LOTR, when they pan over those beautiful large landscapes, it's VERY evident.

Most annoying was in first part, when they've showed king's statue.
I was really mad!

 

[UPO]

I wonder what would be bandwitch requirement for going from 30fps->60fps in DVD/DivX? My first thought was double data rate but mpeg takes advantage of similarity between frames and when source is captured at 60Hz two frames differ less (because everything is 2X "slower"
) I'm not sure if that is correct....

 

[Simon F]

Just glanced through their pdf: They really don't seem to understand motion blur but anyway...

They confirm that standard cinema cameras have a shutter that is only open for ~1/50th of a second, which clearly is insufficient to capture at 24fps without temporal aliasing.

Their system, OTOH, which displays at 48fps, uses a camera with a ~1/100th of a second shutter speed. This is also inadequate but is better - it's analogous to the way that a point sampled ~1000x~700 image would look better than a 640x480 one because the former has twice as many pixels. You can still get aliasing however.

I don't wan't to quibble again about the 1/50th of a second being a (common) limit rather than an absolute. The only point I wanted to make really in our discussion was that motion blur is a far less important factor than the filmmakers working within the limitations imposed by the 24 fps frame-rate.

To support that contention, I'll quote Martin Scorsese from the same pdf you refer to.

"As it is, filmmakers know that any pictorial
element that moves across the frame too briskly will
fragment into blurred, jagged, “strobingâ€￾ pieces. So we
have rules (frequently ignored) about how quickly any
given lens can be panned, or how quickly an object can be
allowed to travel from one side of the frame to the other
in order to prevent these motion distortions. We are
forced to “panâ€￾ moving objects (which keeps them stationary
in the frame) in order to prevent this strobing, or
accept these distortions and hope that sound effects will
carry the viewer’s suspension of disbelief past these
visual anomalies.

But I would argue that these artifacts are mainly because there is insufficient temporal antialiasing, i.e. motion blur, in the filming because the shutter is only open for ~1/2 the frame time.

I don't know if it can be said clearer.
Note complete lack of referral to motion blur fixing the problem.

With all due respect to the man but has he studied signal theory? Does he know Nyquist's theory? What he is describing is how to avoid an artefact caused mainly (AFAICS) by a physical limitation of the camera, i.e., the insufficient temporal filtering that it is doing resulting in the aliasing.

 

[Simon F]

They confirm that standard cinema cameras have a shutter that is only open for ~1/50th of a second, which clearly is insufficient to capture at 24fps without temporal aliasing.

Actually this isn't 100% correct... Availability of light (natural, artificial (strobes in particular since they freeze motion)), camera aperature, focal length, and film emulsion (speed (including wavelength sensitivity), grain type), and processing can all effect sharpness/clarity of the resultant image even within a fixed shutter speed.

But we are not talking about the sharpness/clarity - we are talking about the insufficient filtering in the temporal domain.

Also pretty much most film cameras can crank quite a lot faster than 24fps (typically from 24-200). You can usually see this in action scenes where everything is slow motion (e.g. a flying helecopter with slow turning rotors).

But at some point, the shutter has to close while the film is advanced to the next frame. It would appear that cameras dedicate 50% of the frame period to this motion and thus we will get aliasing with fast moving objects.

Of course, the playback (i.e. reconstruction) may also be a problem.

 

[London Geezer]

Well i went back to see LOTR:ROTK last night, and it's amazing how my eyes can now pick up all the mistakes and weird effects... Really, during large pans it was like a fast slideshow.... Thats how my brain now sees it...
Horrible...

You geeny guy have had a bad effect on me, now i'll never be able to enjoy movies for the rest of my life, or until they run at ~60fps.

 

[StefanS]

Well i went back to see LOTR:ROTK last night, and it's amazing how my eyes can now pick up all the mistakes and weird effects... Really, during large pans it was like a fast slideshow.... Thats how my brain now sees it...
Horrible...

You geeny guy have had a bad effect on me, now i'll never be able to enjoy movies for the rest of my life, or until they run at ~60fps.

I just love the running scene at the beginning of The Two Tower: The fast, agile and dexterous Legolas tripping over a rock and almost falling on his face Eleves demystified