It's not good when, instead of talking about the content of the footage, they talk about how the footage looks.

Do you have a hi-def TV? You should still notice a difference with a SD TV too. But if you can't notice the difference between video (like a soap opera, or a game show or the news) and film then you just don't know what you're looking at.

Another explanation/discussion of the frame-rate thing here:

I am still using an old 24" SDTV. I know HDTV ups the resolution, but I didn't know it changed the framerate that much. I occasionally watch HD programs on my computer monitor (which is 24" 1080p that I use mostly for PC gaming) and still don't notice any framerate difference between HD and SD programs.

I guess I am not hardcore enough. Some cinephiles critically analyze each and every frame for ghosting and artifacts and such. Personally I couldn't care less. Which is why I guess I am still on a 24" SDTV since having the best picture possible doesn't matter to me a whole lot.

To me comic books are my main hobby, video games second, and movies a distant third.

^To me, the difference between the look of film and video was always obvious, even as a kid. Like most of the sitcoms on on TV when I was a kid were shot on video. Huge difference between the look of that and film.

Remember on old British shows when they'd do interiors on tape and exteriors on film? It was painfully obvious. Monty Python even did a skit about it.

Well the physical look is obvious. Its always obvious that a TV show is on a stage with cheap props whereas movies aren't always obviously on a stage. But the differences between the framerates of the two is certainly not obvious to me at least.

This is me too.

I guess I was a retarded kid then.

Watch this and now picture Gandalf and Frodo in a scene like this. That's what it'll look like in 48fps.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gL5oX2Of9Ls" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Fortunately from what I've been reading most theaters will not have the equipment to show the film at 48fps.

When something moves fast in real life, there is a blur.

When something moves fast in a traditional movie, there is a blur.

When something moves fast in one of those 120mhz shitfest tvs, there is no blur. To me, THATS why it looks artificial. I hope this isn't the future of cinema.

I watched it and didn't notice any framerate difference. Framerate is just how fast it animates, right? I didn't notice any difference in how fast things move in that clip versus a cinematic movie. So I guess I am either blind or retarded. I just had my eyes checked three months ago, so it probably isn't the former.

...yea, I don't know what to tell you if you can't see the difference between that scene and a cinematic scene. Maybe your eyes really are bad Yes, the framerate refreshes faster...which means the picture is more life-like. For movies, this is a bad thing (in most people's opinions). It looks like you're watching a stage play instead of a movie.

Devin of BadassDigest does a decent job of explaining it:

"The 48fps footage I saw looked terrible. It looked completely non-cinematic. The sets looked like sets. I've been on sets of movies on the scale of The Hobbit, and sets don't even look like sets when you're on them live... but these looked like sets.
The other comparison I kept coming to, as I was watching the footage, was that it all looked like behind the scenes video. The magical illusion of cinema is stripped away completely."

The scaled-down 24fps trailer I saw looked just fine to me. As long as those look normal, I'm not worried about it. I've no interest in 3D so hopefully there are some 24fps projections available when the time comes.

Don't they need some fancy schmancy playback monitor to get it to look cool? What system did they use? The way I initially heard was that they needed to install special equipment in theaters to get it to playback properly.

?????

Well I have worn glasses since I was 8 years old. Those old thick ass lenses that look like they are made from coke bottles... that was me.

I don't understand why these guys don't just explain it to you.

I mean I guess I can see the difference between a soap opera and a movie, but I don't understand what I'm seeing and why they look different do I'd be interested in a good explanation too. I wouldn't necessarily say that the soap opera looks bad either. It just looks different.

This isn't true. When something moves in real life, there is no blur, although your eyes may perceive a blur due to the limitations of human vision.

Film has a relatively slow framerate, basically as slow as it is possible to get without disrupting the illusion of motion for most people. The additional blur this low framerate creates was an unintended artifact, not a desired effect, but over a century of using this framerate for films have cause people to associate the framerate and its attendant blur with a "cinematic" experience.

That clip is only presented in 30fps, which isn't drastically that much faster than 24fps, so it's not surprising you didn't see much of a difference. The differences between films and that clip have more to do with the choices of lighting, framing, sets, and sound than with framerate.

However, a faster framerate isn't about faster motion, but smoother motion. A particular action that's shot at 48fps takes the same amount of time as if it was shot at 24fps (assuming both are played back at their native speeds), but the action on the 48fps should look smoother.

Going back to the original question:
It's not so much bad vs good as what's expected. Films have almost always been shot in 24fps, and video has almost always been shot in 50hz or 60hz (originally 50/60 interlaced fields, but now with progressive video, 50/60 frames). So we associate the smoother motion of a higher framerate with video, and the blurrier, flickering motion of the lower framerate with film.

Originally, framerate wasn't the issue with shooting on video. The problems with video related to resolution/detail, the ability to shoot in varying levels of light (especially extreme levels of light), and color reproduction when that came along. These were all inferior to film, and video struggled for decades to catch up to film in these areas.

In fact, the higher framerate of video was something that some pioneers in film aspired to. Special Effect wizard Douglas Trumbull experimented with framerates in the late 1970s, finding that people actually became more emotionally engaged the higher the framerate, eventually peaking at 72fps. He invented a filming/projection format called Showscan that used 70mm film at a 60fps framerate (presumably for TV compatibility). It didn't catch on, and neither did a later attempt at 48fps film called Maxivision, due to the fact that higher framerates used more films, and the economic and physical problems that caused:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showscan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxivision


Meanwhile TV adopted the use of film, especially for dramas, shot at 24fps, although occasionally at 30fps. Only cheaper shows, sitcoms in the 70s and 80s, and shows shot live or very quickly (soap operas) used video. So video was associated with cheap and forgettable, while film was associated with more classy fare. Video=bad and film=good, and the framerates and the look they gave were tied to their associated formats and associated judgements of quality.

As digital video has improved in almost all other areas (resolution/detail, lighting, color, etc.) they've also attempted to replicate framerate. This made it easier for films shot on video to transfer to film for screenings before digital projection came along, but it also made the digital video look closer to film, which was a look people were aspiring to.


It also doesn't help that TV manufacturers have given faster framerates a bad name. LCD manufacturers combated the ghosting of earlier models by boosting the refresh rate, going to 120hz and 240hz. With this faster refresh rate they can actually show higher framerates too, but nothing is shot at those speeds. So instead, they invented a process that takes, say, a 24fps source, and puts additional frames in between each actual frame, interpolating (i.e. guessing) what those frames would look like. The process may also attempt to remove the motion blur associated with the lower framerate. This means it takes a film source and makes it look closer to video. Also, since it's basically guessing (albeit very good guesses), it can cause artifacts like unnatural looking motion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation

You mention watching movies mainly at home. It's possible if you have a newer HDTV, it may have came with some of these "enhancements" on by default. This may be why you don't see a difference.


For PCs, higher framerate is typically desired with FPS or possibly 3rd person games moving around in a 3D environment. You're typically sitting extremely close to the screen, much closer than when watching TV or a movie in a cinema. You're also interacting directly with the images on the screen. Thus, slower framerates with their choppier motion are much more noticeable and distracting, while faster framerates create smoother motion, which also increases detail, making it easier and more enjoyable to play the game. The choppier motion is also partly why many people don't like to sit too close in a movie theater, as it has a bigger effect the closer you are to the screen.


So, to sum up, 48fps isn't, in itself, inherently bad. It's the associations the different framerates have had with various formats in the past, and viewer expectations, that has made it distasteful to many in regards to what they want in a "cinematic" experience.

You know what I meant We perceive a blur, so why would the removal of said blur seem anything but foreign to the human eye?

Here's a generalization of what most people were saying as they were walking out of Warner's presentation:

"The Dark Knight Rises looks awesome, but what the fuck happened to The Hobbit?"

My brain is mush as I'm operating off four hours of sleep due to Paramount's late night screening of The Dictator last night, but yes, it looked like I was watching a BBC production in 3D.

They've been holding most of their presentations this year at The Colosseum and if anything like the past few years, 4K projectors are always the norm. The studios bring in their own equipment as the setup changes from presentation-to-presentation. For example, there will be a laser projection demonstration occurring tomorrow morning.

That's where I am as well. I understand there has to be a landmark movie to introduce a new technique and technology every now and then, but not in the middle of an existing series - everyone just wants the Hobbit movies to look and feel like the previous LOTR films. It'll be a miracle if that happens. Same with the SW prequels... save the early tech experiments for the right project.

But, LOTR doesn't have much to lose as these truly are the last films.

A faster framerate can't remove blur caused by your perception. If an object moves past you and you see a blur, seeing a video playback of that object and motion on the same scale as the original isn't going to remove the blur, not matter how fast the framerate.

In short, a faster framerate is closer to reality, since reality has an infinite framerate. The motion blur associated with slower framerates is an originally unintended artifact that we've gotten so used to that we expect it from films, but it's not reflective of reality at all.

It's the press, they're going to go with what the story is. And by all accounts, there's no problems with the acting or special effects, but the framerate has caused a minor controversy. It's what was most noteworthy of the footage.

Of all the problems I had with the Star Wars prequels, the tech they were shot with were the least of my objections. I wish the shooting tech was the most troublesome aspect of those films.

minor? I'd say it's major. Everyone is complaining about it according to people who were there.

It's all relative. I meant "minor" in the sense that it's not likely to make the evening news on the national networks, or probably even on "Extra". It's major news within the cinephile community maybe.

Note that I don't mean to belittle the issue: it's definitely of interest to me.