Phase out fractional frame rates!

ahalpert said:
Are you saying that 24.00 is more common in some areas?
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I know there are a few production houses based in PAL countries that author BD's in 24fps for local distribution but it is not that common. FWIW - I checked my BD collection (about 2,800 tracks across a mix of Movies, TV Episodes, Music Video Tracks).
- 23.976 = 75.2%
- 24 = 2%
- 25 = 7.1%
- 29.97 = 15.5%
- 30 = Nothing
- 50 = 1 Title
- 59.94 = 2 Titles
- 60 = Nothing
 
Over $70bn is generated annually broadcasting using DF timecode. It's estimated that over $50bn in equipment would have to be replaced in order to switch entirely to 30fps instead of 29.97.
 
stoneinapond said:
Before Galileo, ME considered itself to be the center of the universe. That didn't work out too well. :2vrolijk_08:
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remember who you're talking about here. the US still uses imperial measurement. even the UK itself has officially gone metric. we won't be held hostage by common sense
 
Apologies for the digression but if there is a crazy, US-only standard to get rid of it's writing the date month / day / year. It even poisons the well globally by making about a third of all dates (written as numbers) ambiguous.
 
jmone said:
Join us PAL users! We are 85% of the world. FYI - the ATSC supports PAL frame rates.... but the spec "bans" the use of PAL frame rates in 60hz countries and bans NTSC frame rates in 50Hz countries.
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The majority of media travels from DF countries to NDF countries.

Disney, one of the companies spearheading the initiative to eliminate fractional frame rates, has a vast media empire. It has the highest revenue stream of all media companies, partially attained through many television networks such as ABC, ESPN and the Disney Channel. Its media segment generated revenue of 28.39 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, an increase from the 16.21 billion U.S. dollars of revenue generated in this segment in 2009.

So, it looks like Disney could end up paying the most for the switch to NDF. It wouldn't make sense for Disney to champion NDF unless it resulted in long-term cost savings.
 
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Seeing the day number written before the month drives me insane!
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Everywhere else writes the date either Big / Medium / Small or Small / Medium / Big. Only the US is Medium / Small / Big. And like I say, the worst aspect is that you can't tell which system is being used. A useful compromise would be to mark this in some way. Maybe if the date is being written following the US standard there could be a small underpants-on-head icon to indicate this.
 
It's straightforward in the USA and no one born here would write the day first, so it's always:

9/5/21 or 9-5-21 or 9.5.21 and 100% of educated Americans will understand it's September 5th, 2021.

With that said, if other countries use multiple methods interchangeably then I can see it becoming confusing (but I don't know why they would do that).

Over here you'll always see the month written first when using numbers.
 
Now how about that AM and PM...hopefully no one here prefers the 24-hour clock. :bath:
 
ahalpert said:
remember who you're talking about here. the US still uses imperial measurement. even the UK itself has officially gone metric. we won't be held hostage by common sense
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It’s weirder than that. They went metric with weight and volume but kept distance as feet and inches and also went metric with money but with a different exchange rate against the Euro. Talk about confusing. At least they got rid of farthings, shillings, florins, crowns, and guineas. You think you had it hard?
 
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NorBro said:
Now how about that AM and PM...hopefully no one here prefers the 24-hour clock. :bath:
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The US military uses the 24 hour clock. Less chance of confusion by saying 9 hundred hours (9:00am) and 21 hundred hours (9:00pm) than using the 12 hour clock.
 
Most US hospitals do too (and some other professions, sciences) to eliminate any ambiguity with critical time details.
 
I'm sorry norbro but metric destroys imperial, unless we're talking about lighting frame sizes in feet.

Or a metric clock

clock.jpg

You should get some skin in the game and try thinking metric for a week.
 
I once worked for a international company where the office in Germany would wish me a happy birthday on 7/9 instead of my actual birthday of 9/7. I just ran with it and considered myself one of the lucky 1/3 of the population that gets a special European birthday.

On another note forget AM and PM why don't we have metric time? If metric is so perfect we should measure time and dates with a metric system. Clearly not everything should be metric. We could kind of switch our days to 100 hours made up each of 100 minutes and each minute 100 seconds. Date is much more complex since we kind of are at the mercy of the planet for seasons and number of days. No really good way to change that. We have 365 days no matter what and its just weird to mess with that to force some kind o metric system. Time however would be so much easier. I would actually prefer to have 100 hours in a day. Easier to divide it up and do conversions.

To add to that however technically we should have 13 months. It was superstition why we do not but 13 months of 28 days each is a more perfect way to measure time and lines up with the lunar cycles. Its ridiculous that we split up the 13th month to add a few random days just to appease a fear of the number 13.
 
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Why is PAL still 25 and 50? I mean shouldn't they also shift to 24 and 48? If we want to be fair then its equally annoying to have to convert 24p to 25p.

I say the entire planet switches to 24 and 48. Get rid of 23.976, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 and 60.

That really simplifies everything. Movies and 24p produced TV no longer has any conversion at all no matter the market. Cinema, US TV, Europe TV, whatever.

24 and 25 are close enough and 48 and 50 are close enough to have zero impact on Europe and the rest of the world. In the US 48 will be good enough for real life material like sports. We could even move to 96 as a way to enhance sports as a much better format than 60p. 96, 48 and 24 are all perfectly divisible and so much easier to support across the globe (or disk for you flat earthers)
 
I'd settle for any global standard made on clean multiples (though I'd still suggest 25/50/100 makes more cents). The other proposal is that as screen refresh rates move higher the issue is lessened as you can get clean multiples at say 300hz for both 60 and 50 countries (but not 24 though it is close at 288 or 312 in 300 and at that refresh rate it may not be noticeable by most). Others proposed 240hz for clean 24/60 multiples but that still leaves out the 85% in PAL land.

On metric time, we already are hybrid using decimal time for sub 1 sec divisions (eg ms - instead of fractional).
 
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