24p is on the way out!

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Noiz2 said:
I don't think that is totally true. Hollywood has had a number of chances to change frame rates and actually has done some experimentation and has not made the switch. 70mm and iMax required all new cameras and projectors so there was no particular reason to stay with the status quo.

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You are 100% correct about the chance Hollywood had to make a change in frame rate with these two examples but AFAIK didn't.

What I was saying about 24p high end video cams was that their main target group was people who would buy them to emulate as much as they could in terms of a 35mm "film look".


Noiz2 said:
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I do think your partially correct though. "Surround" sound for you no budget epic is all the rage now even though is a rather stupid idea and actually hurts your sound track since your spending very limited time and money on something pointless rather than creating a good track. The surround fad is very driven by marketing departments as the new wizbang must have feature for the box cover.
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Excellent point

If it's not done well it takes away from the project not add!
 
I think the idea that 24p will mov3e away in the next 3 - 5 years (if ever) is up to the Hollywood machine.

24p came for the indie people purely for these reasons; emulating the filmic nature of 24fps.

Unless Hollywood starts pimping 60p feature films (ain't gonna happen) I don't see camera companies pushing this concept.
 
All I'm saying is there is something brewing on the horizon. To many it will be better.
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To begin, two points:

1. Progress is not a function of time. It's what I call the "Jetsons Fallacy;" assuming that just because something is possible to develop, and when there may even be objective benefits to developing it, means that it will be undoubtedly developed in the near future. There must be demand and resources to create it. Additonally, it must be demonstrativly (not just objectivly) superior to the existing standard which it intends to supplant.

It's why we don't have flying cars or see widespread use of wind power in the year two-thousand-frickin-eight, and it's why we are still using 100-year old engine designs in the cars we do have (even in my Prius!).

And it's also why some already existing technologies have a hard time gaining traction. Hell, it's why marketing departments exist, so as to convice consumers that they need to replace a fully working product with a more expensive, if better, one, when they can't see the need themselves (see: Blu-Ray adoption rates).

2. You're right in that this change you predict will be dependent on a plurality of people thinking that "it will be better." So logically, based on the responses you've seen, you must concede that a vast majority do not "think it will be better," at least not enough to justify the claim that this sea change will come anytime soon (say, in the next 10 years).

Let's just accept, for the sake of arugment, that 60p is better in all respects than 24p.

<SAKE_OF_ARGUMENT>

So, if Blu-Ray is an example, than perhaps this change will come, but only once it's so cheap as to not be a meaningful consumer choice, and if nothing is lost in the process. DVDs, for example, still play in Blu-Ray players. Could you imagine the adoption rate of Blu-Ray if they didn't?

On the other hand, if Betamax is an example, then other factors will dominate. Betamax had better picture quality, but shorter running times, and were more expensive to produce than VHS. And VHS was what scientists call "good enough."

So then, 24p is VHS.
Then... is 60p Blu-Ray, or Betamax?

Here's where you're claim falls apart. You're really trying to make two arguments. One, that this change is coming soon, even if filmmakers still use and prefer 24p, as this thread proves (the Betamax analogy). And two, that 24fps is clearly inferior, and once people see it and can afford it, they will prefer 60p (the Blu-Ray analogy).

You can't be right in both cases. And this assumes, for the sake of arugment, that 60p is objectively better.

</SAKE_OF_ARGUMENT>

That's why everyone is running in circles arguing with you, because you so frequently conflate these arguments that we all end up conflating them ourselves.

Oh, if you're going to argue that the selection of 24fps was a arbitrary choice, you have to understand that the reason we use 60 fields per second for TV is that power supplies in the US run at 60hz, and we split the frame rate to 30 in order to achieve 480i resolution, and to get as closer as we could to, you guessed it, 24fps, so that movies could be broadcast on TV with minimal fuss.

In Britain, they use 50hz, and thus, 25fps.

You're talking about a huge revolution in technology in less than a decade, when we only have 60p right now out of dumb luck, since bandwidth improved enough to allow full frames instead of fields.

It might happen, but not soon.

------------

Okay, now that that is out of the way, I'm now going to argue that 24fps (or 25fps, or thereabouts) *is* an artistic standard which has objective benefits over 60p.

Let me use an analogy. When local news outlets upgraded to HD, news anchors complained about how people could see their pores and other little flaws. Thus, makeup departments had to work overtime to compensate. In the area of local news, I imagine many in that industry believe that the "return on investment," the amount of effort required to achieve a identical practical effect, was far too high to justify.

Here's another. The TV series Star Trek was recently remastered in HD, and some fans are arguing that the same should be done for Star Trek: The Next Generation. The problem is, that show, while shot on film, was edited/finished on video, and while that's it's own technical hurtle, the point is that while the original Star Trek had it's goofy looking props, TNG's props and other gizmos look even more like jello molds in real life. You'd be surprised, but the lower resolution of video and TV allowed our minds to fill in the details that weren't there, but more importantly, to miss the details that are there.

The return on investment for HD is certainly worth it for a lot of TV shows and narrative features these days, but not, say, your mother's YouTube cooking podcast. This is an example of the "gloss" that film and video puts on reality, sorta like the ole vaseline filter once used to make actresses look more youthful.

Sports and Reality shows look better at higher frame rates because we want them to look not just real, but 100% as it is, exactly.

But wait, we want narrative films to look real, too, right? Yes, we do, but have you ever been on a film set? Those of us who've directed films know that it's all smoke and mirrors. Part of that toolset is lighting, makeup and set design. But some of it is technical, too. Film has a grain which hides those undesirable details just as well as video's comparatively lower resolution does.

Frame rate does this, too. Going back to "sake of argument" territory, let's say that 24fps is the absolute minimum for the human eye to register realistic motion. Well, if we've met the bar, what use is there to go any higher, especially since the things that we film aren't real, but merely realistic?

Motion blur helps film/video register motion more like the human eye does (at high frame rates or shutter speeds, the pictures don't actually "move," do they?). Even video games, which commonly run at frame rates as high as 70fps, are starting to add artificial motion blur to make games more realistic!

Of course, realistic motion blur can be achieved with high frame rates, but the return on investment is so incredibly low, what's the point?

So there. ;-)
 
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Hmm... I fully understand the arguments saying that 24fps is an artistic choice. I shoot 24p and love the way it looks. I hate 50i and 60i...
On the other hand I'm aware the main reason we all like it so much is because we got used to it. We've watched thousands of movies, some of which we love and all of them were 24fps (or 25fps here in Europe - btw I think we are lucky - the films are shorter here so we can watch more during our lifetime; this is what makes us better moviemakers, hehehe ;). Just kidding. Love American cinema.
No doubt it will be hard to convince people they like 60fps movies.
However... Now that I'm thinking it over I come to the conclusion that having the media that offers higher progressive framerate (like 48fps or 60fps progressive, f.ex.) might have its advantages. Of course the costs gets higher (storage / film stock). But can still achieve 24p look (doubling the frames or adding the 3:2 pulldown). At the same time we can shoot at a higher framerate as well. The framerate serves the artistic purposes just like B&W and color photography. People might want to mix both in a single movie like they do now with B&W/color for different moods. An artistic choice... This way people might gradually get used to the ultra-smooth movements of higher framerates and, one day, our klids might realize they prefer the 'new look'.
I wonder what you think. I'm not convinced, either ;) Just thinking out loudly...
 
For me this whole discussion -- and now with Robot and you too trez -- means that I can stay with 24 fps and shoot 35 mm for the rest of my career in filmmaking, because I'm not concerned with "the future of technology" and "the future of tastes." LOL For some of us in our 50s and 60s this is a mildly interesting thread, but it did fill in a lot of cracks in my knowledge of the digital media in general. Now I can safely say farewell to the whole digital phenomenon -- when it comes to professional; as an audience I'll look at anything, 60 fps, 120 fps or even 2000 fps -- why not, I like watching sports too.

Here's one final question on my part, and I know it's possible no one will answer it (not out of spite I hope, but perhaps that it's too OT), but here it is (wishful thinking):

Is it possible for me to reduce my 29.97 fps feature film file on FCP 5.04 non-intel G5 to 24p for better quality (and more natural looking) DVD production? I'll give you an Oscar if you can tell me Cinema Tools can do this and how? Will CT know which extra frames to drop? Thanks a million.
 
I'm new to FCP, but as far as I know Cinema Tools can't do this. You need to use Compressor and tweak the frame controls tab parameters, I guess.
 
filmman said:
Is it possible for me to reduce my 29.97 fps feature film file on FCP 5.04 non-intel G5 to 24p for better quality (and more natural looking) DVD production? I'll give you an Oscar if you can tell me Cinema Tools can do this and how? Will CT know which extra frames to drop? Thanks a million.
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Yes and no. If you shot at 29.97 then the only way is to use "film look" plugins because the 24 frame "look" is in the capture frame rate. If you shot in 24p (23.98) but edited in 29.97 (as I think has been said a bunch of times many/ most "24p" modes on camcorders do a 3:2 pull down in camera and record at 29.97 (so capture 23.98 record at 29.97)) then you can reverse telecine the footage to extract the 24p timeline. BUT if you shot at 24p AND your going to DVD you don't need to do anything because you will have to go back to 29.97 on authoring. You got your "look" on capture.

I'm guessing you shot at 29.97 so in that case look at some of the film emulating packages like silver bullet they do a pretty good job of creating the look.

Now spell my name right on the Oscar ;~)
 
trez said:
I'm new to FCP, but as far as I know Cinema Tools can't do this. You need to use Compressor and tweak the frame controls tab parameters, I guess.
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That would only change the frame rate, you could probably fool Cinema tools into doing that also but it won't give you the artifacts that come with shooting in 24p. That's why you need to process the footage with an effect.
 
Noiz2 said:
Yes and no. If you shot at 29.97 then the only way is to use "film look" plugins because the 24 frame "look" is in the capture frame rate. If you shot in 24p (23.98) but edited in 29.97 (as I think has been said a bunch of times many/ most "24p" modes on camcorders do a 3:2 pull down in camera and record at 29.97 (so capture 23.98 record at 29.97)) then you can reverse telecine the footage to extract the 24p timeline. BUT if you shot at 24p AND your going to DVD you don't need to do anything because you will have to go back to 29.97 on authoring. You got your "look" on capture.

I'm guessing you shot at 29.97 so in that case look at some of the film emulating packages like silver bullet they do a pretty good job of creating the look.

Now spell my name right on the Oscar ;~)
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Oscar, I assumed the footage was shot at 29.97 natively ;) If it was shot at 24p and put on 60i timebase by adding pulldown then the original timeline can be extracted and the resulting stream, played on a 24p-compliant gear could give better quality. If you shot it 24p with DVX100 it is important to be aware of the relation between pulldown scheme and quality.
DVX100 has two 24p modes:
- 24p standard which applies classic 3:2 pulldown. In this case the quality will suffer because the DV codec bitrate is not used optimally (while encoding it treats pairs of two consecutive fields as representing one image, which is not true for every 24p frame being embedded in 60i stream). Also, you need to decode before extracting the original 24p stream
- 24pA which uses 3:2:2:3 pulldown. Way better. The 24p timebase can be obtained without need for decoding and is as simple as dropping one frame out of consecutive 5 and combining the remaining fields into frames. Cinema Tools is clever enough to ask you whether you actually want to drop these frames or simply rewrite frame pointers in your file, which is faster but your file is bigger (the unnecessary frames stay in the file). Do it on the copy of the file!

And the winner is... ;)

I use PAL camera and don't have such problems, but I think FCP should automatically remove the pulldown when putting the file on a 24p timebase? Or... I'm not the winner ;)
 
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Noiz2 said:
That would only change the frame rate, you could probably fool Cinema tools into doing that also but it won't give you the artifacts that come with shooting in 24p. That's why you need to process the footage with an effect.
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Absolutely right. In particular the retiming won't give you the kind of blur resulting from 1/48 shutter speed which is essential for 24p experience...
 
This ones for you Robot.


http://www.hulu.com/watch/34464/saturday-night-live-digital-short-space-olympics


I'm a bit bogged down at the moment so I hope I can finish my reply to you shortly.

You have some good points and your "Jetsons Fallacy" is hilarious!

It and your argument in themselves are rife with Fallacy of Accident, Converse Fallacy of Accident, Irrelevant Conclusion - popular sentiment, fear, and conventional propriety.

Etc, etc, etc...

But you seriously have touched on some good points.


My arguments are not an appeal to probability or base rate fallacy.


They are indeed based on observation and have supporting evidence. I most certainly welcome you to reformulate you argument and shore it up a bit if you like before I respond.
 
The Noble Robot said:
1. Progress is not a function of time. It's what I call the "Jetsons Fallacy;" assuming that just because something is possible to develop, and when there may even be objective benefits to developing it, means that it will be undoubtedly developed in the near future. There must be demand and resources to create it. Additonally, it must be demonstrativly (not just objectivly) superior to the existing standard which it intends to supplant.

It's why we don't have flying cars or see widespread use of wind power in the year two-thousand-frickin-eight, and it's why we are still using 100-year old engine designs in the cars we do have (even in my Prius!).

And it's also why some already existing technologies have a hard time gaining traction. Hell, it's why marketing departments exist, so as to convice consumers that they need to replace a fully working product with a more expensive, if better, one, when they can't see the need themselves (see: Blu-Ray adoption rates).
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Since we are dealing with two things let’s break it down:

Scientific Progress – is the roughly our advancement in the understanding of the physical world and our ability to manipulate matter with this new knowledge. This can be roughly though of as technology. It is by definition going from one point to another of greater value and ability.

You argued that progress is not a function of time. That’s completely nonsensical as we can neither stop time nor reverse time. Time for us for now only moves forward.

Therefore any and all progress must occur at a future time. We have a starting point (baseline) it changes (delta) and if it gets better we call it progress.

Objectively things that are better are progress.

I do agree that narrative filmmaking is an art and science and that an artist might choose to shoot at a given combination of frame rate, film latitude, exposure, shutter speed, ect to achieve a certain look.

This argument however doesn’t mean because something is and for a very long time has been that it will always be.


I have already said that just because we can do something it doesn’t mean we will.

In the case of 24p I am saying we will. Artist are interested and the technology will be there and a better combination will be found than our current strobeing and juddering 24p.

24p has limitation and there are those who want to overcome them by shooting and playing back at a higher frame rate.



You arguments examples are inaccurate as well. The reasons we don’t have flying cars and why we are still using 100-year old engine designs in the cars we do have (even in your Prius!) is because gas prices have been so artificially low and we have subsidized the highway system so heavily. It is not an open or free market. It is very much controlled by the heavy hand of government. And, oddly enough, that is why we have been stuck on 24p celluloid heretofore. Hollywood had a controlled monopoly on distribution so they called the shots. The market was not free to do its thing.

Now that gas prices are rising we will see many of the advances we would have had already.

2010 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid Prototype: Next-Gen Test Drive

Here we are actually going back to older technology and perfecting it.

Timeline: Life & Death of the Electric Car



Same with 24p exhibition.



We can already shoot in multiple frame rates and play back in multiple frame rates at home. One the theaters have this capability to do so the major players will have that freedom as well.

This is were we will see large productions opt for greater than 24p capture and playback.



That's about the crux of it.

I am content to let my arguments rest how they are.

If you can come up with a compelling reason why you don't think the likes of James Cameron will shoot in his desired 48p or others here won't please by all means argue that point.

I am simply arguing they will and that they will come up with a superior SUBJECTIVE look than our current 24p.
 
This argument is rediculous. You are still assumming that at some point in the near future everyone will just want to pack up everything and move on to something new. While that could very well happen, you obviously cannot be as sure as you make yourself out to be. No one can tell the future for certain.

You may have a few little pieces of evidence, such as James Cameron's thoughts, but he is only one man, not the entire industry. And while this "evidence" may point to higher frame rates, you are still only guessing the path that the industry will take.

I dont have a problem with you saying that things COULD change, but to say they WILL change for certain, is rather foolish to me.
 
Thanks Noiz for responding to my awarding the Special Oscar for technical merit, and you too trez :-) Sorry, Este if this is still OT.

My movie Butterflies in the Wind was shot in 35mm. It was my first time working in FCP, so I asked the telecine operator if my movie was going to stay in 24 fps and he said yes.

My movie was telecined to DVCAM and I captured it in my G5 and FCP Studio as "easy set up". I didn't know anything about what that meant. I was new to user groups too, and I was told, "your movie is now 29.97". I was quite upset but didn't know what else I could do.

After two years of editing (while learning FCP), I wondered if I could go back to 24 fps and end up with a 24p DVD just because I was told that I could pump more quality into a 24p file than a 29.97 file.

Now I'm told by you, Noiz, that it would end up as 29.97 in DVD after authoring anyway? Is that so?

Can I Reverse Telecine in Cinema Tools and end up with a 23.98 timeline? So I can then export as 24p?
 
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