As more and more content goes to streaming I’ve noticed that proper frame rates seem to be going out the window. I tried watching the SyFy show Eureka last night on Prime on my 4k Fire Stick and it was stuttering like crazy. So, knowing that the Fire devices do not output integer frame rates (it claims to, but it only supports 23.976,,29.97 and 59.97, not 24, 30 or 60) I switched over to my Shield to take a closer look at things. I was correct, the stream was encoded at 24fps, not the original 23.976 which led to a really weird look when played back at 24.

Who does the encoding for streaming? Are these transfers just provided by the studios? Some of the streaming services (like Tubi) tend to just have a set frame rate, like 30Hz, which causes all sorts of other problems as well.

Usually because the general audience doesn’t care and can’t tell the difference between 23.976 and 24fps. Engineers don’t spend time fine tuning stuff like that generally unless it is called out by customers en masse.

Yet another reason why I ditched every Amazon streaming device. Those products are the absolute worst.

I suspect the number one priority for streaming services are bottom line costs and maximum compatibility with various streaming devices. Nothing else likely matters, including video quality beyond the bare minimum.

How difficult is it for the encoder to take a look at the source and set it properly? You don’t even have to look to know that most US TV shows and film sources are usually 23.976. Reencoding a show to flat 24fps is just plain lazy. On top of that most streaming devices have problems with integer frame rates anyways which makes it even stranger that some streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ encode their original shows at a flat 24 rather than 23.976.

I think that US qualification is more important than you think. Internationally, I see a lot of video encoded at 24 frames exactly than the 23.976 you see with US stuff.

Why have manufacturers make packaging smaller but charge the same? The list could go on...

As stated before, consumers don't know or don't care.

Film isn't shot at 23.976, but 24fps. It's projected at 24fps, even for digital cinema. The SMPTE DCP standard has only straight integer framerates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Cinema_Package

23.976 is a janky hack that's used to be compatible with the NTSC/ATSC "legacy" 59.94 field-rate, which only exists due to adding backwards-compatible color to the original B&W straight integer 60 field-rate. This video explains it, although it starts with the flawed premise of a 29.97 "framerate."


Also, the difference between 24 and 23.976 is so minute as to be imperceptible to the human eye. This isn't like going from 24 to 25fps to get film to transfer to PAL. You aren't even going to notice a pitch shift in the sound with that tiny a shift.

24fps is going to become the standard as we get away from "legacy" support for the odd framerates color NTSC video imposed on the US. It's not surprising some services are going with a framerate that works worldwide instead of keeping with an odd framerate that only a few countries ever used. At Amazon should be ashamed if their Fire Stick doesn't support 24fps, since that was part of the ATSC standard from the beginning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_standards#Video

Edit: Just to further emphasize how imperceptible a change between 24fps an 23.976 is, a two-hour movie at 24fps is 120 minutes, 7,200 seconds, or 172,800 frames long. Playing that back at 23.976 fps instead would get you 7,207 seconds, so the movie would only be 7 seconds longer.

But that’s not the point I was making- which was not [re]encoding video for streaming at the original framerate, and not encoding it to begin with at frame rates the majority of streaming hardware supports.

What do you mean by "original framerate," and how do you know which one is original? Theatrical films are 24fps, and have always been altered for TV to 23.976 for legacy NTSC reasons. A show that premieres on streaming like The Mandalorian may actually have an "original" framerate of 24fps, since it was always intended for streaming, not traditional broadcast.

You're looking at your glitchy FireTV stick and blaming the studios and streaming services for not accommodating its way out-of-date lack of support for integer framerates, instead of blaming Amazon for releasing such a crap product. You want every streaming service to conform to a weird "standard" developed to squeeze color into an NTSC signal, instead of providing a framerate the entire world can recognize and play, as long as the hardware they're using isn't crap.

It’s fairly clear that even if Eureka’s original framerate was 24fps all they did was just take the home release (which was 23.976) and just reencode it to 24 for Prime. As I said, even when played back on my Shield at a flat 24Hz it stutters. The issue is not maintaining one framerate across the board from the same source.

Yes, clearly most people don’t care and are going to play it back at 60Hz (or multiples of that) with 3:2 pulldown and motion processing on.

Because the engineers aren't film buffs and are just doing a job for a paycheck.

You actually didn't mention that it also stutters on the Shield. You mentioned it stutters on the FireTV stick, then checked it on the Shield for "more details," but didn't mention any stuttering on that device.

Eureka may be a 23.976fps master that has been poorly converted to 24fps, but that's just one show. You also criticized streaming-only shows on Disney+ and the like for being 24fps, when that framerate may be the original and proper framerate for those shows. And the framerates 23.976, 29.97 and 59.97 are no more "proper" than 24, 30, and 60, and are arguably less "proper," since they were bastardizations introduced solely to fit backwards compatible color into the NTSC standard.

Also, a decent conversion from 24 to 23.976, and vice-versa, is going to be literally imperceptible. Again, motion pictures have been converted from 24fps to 23.976 for decades to work with 59.94hz TVs.

Finally, if you're seeing the stuttering on two different devices, are you sure the issue isn't with your TV? Maybe Eureka was seamlessly converted to 24fps, the two devices stream 24fps fine, but your TV is messing up the conversion to its display framerate.

I agree with Jay G. in that this sounds like a different issue than framerate conversion. Between 24 and 23.976 fps, it's only a difference of one frame in 41 seconds (either held, or dropped, depending on which direction you're converting). That shouldn't cause stuttering.

Most Blu-Rays are 23.976, it's only a few odd ones that are 24fps according to my Oppo player. My stuff can't tell me the frame rate of streaming that exact, I've noticed some film-based material looks a bit stuttery but who knows what causes that. The bigger problem of course is video-based material encoded at a lower frame rate so it looks more like film than video; incidentally the linked YouTube video is 50fps which is the European standard though my eyes can't tell the difference between that and 60fps. Sure as hell can tell when it's reduced to 30fps though.

Yes, in the behind-the-scenes video, he does mention he's shooting 50hz.

Also, conversion of 60/50i material to 30/25p is a much bigger problem, since footage actually shot at 60i has 60 unique slices of time for each field shot, and much smoother video than a 30p video. This is the best video explanation I've found, but if you're impatient you can jump to 10:38 to show a demonstration of how 60i actually gives 60 images a second:

That moment at 10:40 is great- it clearly shows the differences between the two frame rates. So many streaming services still encode the higher frame rate material at the lower frame rate and it looks awful when you know how it's supposed to look. (Note that this entire video was encoded at 60fps, but obviously the parts shot in the lower frame rate still look as they were intended.)