The death of the 24 frame.

reem12

reem12

Veteran
I was at my local best buy today when I came across an hd tv running a dramatic film at 120 hertz. The motion and look of the film was like looking at a comedy/ reality tv show, except only worse. If this is the future of film then I'll probably be opting out, as I couldn't bare my labor of love shot in 24 frame with all the dramatic lighting to be made to look like a cheesy reality tv show, taking away the very mood that I strived so hard to achieve.

But on another note, what's realy sad is, the common lay person loves the look and have become completely desensetized to what makes a dramatic film a dramatic film. What we consider motion picture art with the 24 frame motion picture cadence, others will say it no longer measures up and like all other things we've loved in the past this to will evolve because a new generation will demand it.

So filmakers beware when making that next dramatic film, that in the future you may pop in your polished dvd in over a friends house, only to find that instead watching your 24 frame masterpeace, you'll get the look of you favorite sitcom.

Depressing to say the least.
 
This 120hz motion is pure marketing BS. They just invented it to try and sell more TV's, some fancy term the salesman throws out to dazzle the lay person. It isn't even really meant to be used on film based stuff. If you watch these TV's try and convert it to 120hz it breaks up and gets all funky. It's only meant for 60fps stuff like sports. Even there, it's benefit is dubious. Last year the buzzword was 1080p, this year they gotta push something new so it's 120hz. Kind of like the food industry, every year there's a new "magic ingredient", 2006 was Chipotle, 2007 was Ciabatta!
 
24p alive and well. if people liked higher framerates better then movies would have gone to higher framerates years ago. tv has been 60i for a long long time. this is bs and will pass....
 
People have become used to the look of 24 frames a second. That is all. It isn't "better" than 30 frames a second, 60 frames a second, or 120 frames a second in any way.

It is all in your head. 24p looks like the movies you grew up on, and you associate that look with the "higher quality" of feature films, as opposed to that of television. It's all about the familiarity.

It's like our society's current obsession with being freakishly thin. People used to find full-bodied people the most attractive. It's all cultural. "Better" is an arbitrary term.


Now I don't know what this 120hz thing is. I've never seen it, and if they're making stuff shot at 24p display differently, then obviously they're not using in correctly. But it is just plain dumb to say that 24 frames a second looks "better" than higher frame-rates.

It looks different, and that is all.
 
I just did some research into 120hz, and it was actually designed to eliminate the need for 3:2 pull-down.

24, 30, and 60 all divide evenly into 120Hz. If setup correctly, 24p material should actually display closer to that of an actual film playing in the cinema than that of current TVs, because there should not be any stutter resulting from 3:2 pull-down.

Each frame should display for exactly 5/120 of a second, or 1/24, just like in the cinema.


It doesn't sound like the store had the TV setup correctly, or they weren't playing a 24p DVD. Like always, most televisions seem to have different features. To have the most accurate motion on 24p source material, the television needs to have 5:5 pull-down. It doesn't sound like a lot of the current ones do, but at least it is possible on an 120hz tv, rather than being stuck with 3:2 pull-down on 60hz televisions.
 
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agcohn said:
If setup correctly, 24p material should actually display closer to that of an actual film playing in the cinema than that of current TVs, because there should not be any stutter resulting from 3:2 pull-down.
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I've seen the display showing Pirates III and it does NOT look like film. It does not, however, look all that bad. It basically looks like the movie was shot on really good quality video at 1080i. I'm not sure how it works, but it gives the appearance of adding frames somehow.
 
Beeblebrox said:
I've seen the display showing Pirates III and it does NOT look like film. It does not, however, look all that bad. It basically looks like the movie was shot on really good quality video at 1080i. I'm not sure how it works, but it gives the appearance of adding frames somehow.
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Different televisions have different features / methods of what they call Film Motion or Smooth Motion or whatever. The closest way of doing it would be 5:5 pull-down, but it doesn't sound like most of the current TVs can do that.

Theoretically, 120Hz is just plain "better" for 24p than 60Hz, because 24p source material should be able to play with a perfectly smooth motion cadence. 24 divides evenly into 120, so each frame of a 24p DVD should be able to play for 5 frames on the 120Hz television, each frame being 1/120 of a second. That means no stutter.

But that's all theoretical until the TV technology evolves to the point where it can handle that. All I know is railing against 120Hz TV sets is stupid. Just wait until they can do 5:5 pull-down before you buy one.
 
Beeblebrox said:
I agree with that. If it becomes the norm, then it becomes the norm. As a filmmaker, I use the medium that's available to me. I'm more-or-less format agnostic.
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Like anything else, the current TV technology is not perfect. 120Hz is not the problem, and due to the fact that 24/30/60 all divide evenly into 120, it will eventually become a boon.

From what I've read, 120Hz is not actually what these guys seem to be complaining about. Many of the TV sets actually seem to be have other smoothing / judder filters that are actually changing how the films are supposed to look. Some of them sound like Sony's Cineframe 24 technology on their video cameras, where it isn't really 24p like the DVX100, but a cheat.

The technology will improve.
 
I live in PAL land and one would think there is not much difference between 25 and 24 - but you can see it clearly.

24 seems to be some sort of sweet spot where magic happens.
It has nothing to do with display technology, you can try that on any display, player and medium with an material.

Take your favourite movie and speed it up just a tad and it instantly looks like a "making of" - shot with a cheap video camera.

The DOF, light, color and everything else we think is important for film look is still there but the magic is gone.

Having it hertzed up to 120 (or 100 in PAL land) seems to make the same result as speeding it up.


I´m hunting that effect since years but never found out what makes it happen.

I can only guess that the human body also runns on some specific frequency (at least our nerves work with electricity and therefore have to have some sort of frequency) and if you "sync" it with the movie (in our case 24p or - 2x24=48 as in the cinema) it works pretty good.


Frank
 
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agcohn said:
Many of the TV sets actually seem to be have other smoothing / judder filters that are actually changing how the films are supposed to look.
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It's definitely some kind of frame blending/smoothing. It makes the movie look like it was shot on really, really nice looking high-rez video. The video look is because of the apparently higher frame rate.

It's not that bad, although from a strictly film-is-24fps aesthetic, it's a little off-putting.

But as the TV does this with whatever source input, it doesn't seem like it should change the way filmmakers approach their work. And if it does, then filmmakers will just have to adapt I guess.
 
No! We don´t have to get used to any Sh..t (exuse my french) the Marketing Machine throws at us.

We are the customers and by buying or refuse to buy things we tell the industry what they can sell.

I work with HD since 4 years now, with different cameras and displays.
Most of them is crap.

The only good picture HD picture I ever saw was a live feed of a Sony HDCam to a CRT HD Class1 Studio Display. Period.

Everything else is more ore less compressed from Tapes/P27SxS and BluRay(vomit!) displayed on flat screen TFT/Plasma would have get a bigh laug and rejected by TV engineer 10 years ago.

But most poeple not only get used to that ugly quality (as they got used to MP3) the say they love that "new look"

Frank
 
120Hz is good. Its meant to address the issues of slow refresh rate of 60Hz systems and 24p will look great on a 120Hz screen (even better than 60Hz).

Ive seen exactly what your talking about though, its not because the monitors are 120Hz, its because they have motion interpolations that you can turn on in the menus. They make your footage look like 120fps.

I was at Fry's looking at hdtv's. Superman was playing on one, a sales man walked up to me and said " This is a 120Hz HDTV, Watch this feature" He flipped on a smooth motion setting in the menus and it made superman look like jerry Seinfeld! "I don't like it" I said. He replied, "Yeah...some people don't like it."

Nothing to be afraid of, you can turn it off.
 
hunter richards said:
120Hz is good. Its meant to address the issues of slow refresh rate of 60Hz systems and 24p will look great on a 120Hz screen (even better than 60Hz).

Ive seen exactly what your talking about though, its not because the monitors are 120Hz, its because they have motion interpolations that you can turn on in the menus. They make your footage look like 120fps.

I was at Fry's looking at hdtv's. Superman was playing on one, a sales man walked up to me and said " This is a 120Hz HDTV, Watch this feature" He flipped on a smooth motion setting in the menus and it made superman look like jerry Seinfeld! "I don't like it" I said. He replied, "Yeah...some people don't like it."

Nothing to be afraid of, you can turn it off.
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That's great news. I was at sears the other day and saw this new "glossy" looking video'ish stuff. Of course the salesman did tell me it was due to the 120Hz refresh, but sounds like he wasn't as informed at he put off. To me whatever was going on robbed the "film" magic we're all used too, however there was a different magic that happened. It was more like you were there on the set with actors and you could almost reach out and touch them. This will definately be beneficial to behind the scenes, or discovery channel type stuff, but I didn't like it as far as the actual movies were concerned. The special effects scenes were astonishing, but once any people were in the frame that's when things got weird. Anyhow as far as the average consumer some will love it, and will interpret this as better quality, and some will not...we will see.
 
agcohn said:
It is all in your head. 24p looks like the movies you grew up on, and you associate that look with the "higher quality" of feature films, as opposed to that of television. It's all about the familiarity.
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I think that's a big factor, but I'm not sure it's that simple. The different frame rates have different looks and "feels." Even someone who has never seen a film or TV show might still find one frame rate more dramatically compelling than another. We think it's because of familiarity because that seems logical. But we could be wrong, or there could be much more to it.
Maybe some researchers could find a technologically isolated group to do a frame rate study on...
:)
 
Hmmm. Smooth motion is a good thing.
Judder is not. Strobbing is not. Blur is not.

Movies are supposed to emulate reality,
which happens to be perfectly smooth!
 
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