Why was 24fps the chosen speed?

FiddlerMD

FiddlerMD

Well-known member
While i know the benefits / look of 24, i always wondered where that standard came from.. in the beginning, when cinema first started and was hand=cranked i imagine there was no frame rate since it couldnt be controlled.. so once motors appeared, who decided to make the 'standard' 24 and why?
was it a limitation of the stock / shutter speed? was it considered a minimum for smooth motion?
any history?
 
I have heard numerous stories as to why 24 fps became a standard, but the ones that define it in terms of optical persistence seem the most plausible to me.
 
The Lumiere's were trying to make 16 fps stick, Edison filmly believed that anything under 45 fps wouldn't fool people and the projectionists in the early says of film were often told to crank double speed to fit more showings into a single day. Thank God for the 24 FPS standard which unified EVERYONE IN THE WORLD! ;)
 
Karl151k said:
Thank God for the 24 FPS standard which unified EVERYONE IN THE WORLD!
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Except Europe and many other parts of the world that arn't North America or another NTSC region. :thumbsup:


- Mikko ... 25p all the way.
 
I heard once, that 12fps is the fastest frame rate that we can see in individual pictures, and it is often the frame rate of hand drawn animation. I would guess that is because we see each frame in 12fps at least twice in our vision. So 24fps is probably the slowest frame rate precievable as smooth motion. I would guess that's the average frame rate of our eyes.
 
24 fps started when sound was introduced into movies. It is the speed you need to synch. sound to the picture. During the silent movie era, 18 fps was the standard. Film are projected in 24 fps all over the world. Mikko is referring to standard video capture, which is 30 fps interlaced for NTSC, 25 fps interlaced for PAL/SECAM. But that's video and another story...
 
AuditoryVisuals said:
I heard once, that 12fps is the fastest frame rate that we can see in individual pictures, and it is often the frame rate of hand drawn animation. I would guess that is because we see each frame in 12fps at least twice in our vision. So 24fps is probably the slowest frame rate precievable as smooth motion. I would guess that's the average frame rate of our eyes.
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Shooting animation like that is called shooting "doubles". It's a time saving way of doing clay animation or (sometimes) cel animation.
 
Cynic821 said:
"24 frames per second was chosen because it was the slowest (and thus cheapest) speed which allowed for sufficient sound quality"

according to wikipedias history of film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film
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Well chalk that up to Wikipedia being completely false. 24 frames per second was the standard long before sound came into the picture (pun intended).

I believe that it's because 24 frames is the slowest possible frame rate where persistence of vision still 'tricks' our brain into perceiving motion.

As for 12 frames per second in animation- Karl has it right, though I've always heard/ said shooting on 'twos'-where each frame is shown twice giving you 24 frames. That isn't always true- from a hand drawn/ 2d point of view you generally want to shoot on 'ones' with any sort of fast motion. But ones is twice the cost and twice the work all the way down the production line.

An interesting tid bit is that in early animation Disney animators prefered to work on twos and ridiculed the Warner Bros. animators for robbing their animation of life by shooting on ones.
 
TC said:
Well chalk that up to Wikipedia being completely false. 24 frames per second was the standard long before sound came into the picture (pun intended).

....
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Not quite. most silent pictures were 15fps.

24fps did stabilize the audio from "wow and flutter" type effects.
 
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