Is 24p dying?

[Glenn Chan]

24p can have stuttery motion if you pan too fast (assuming the whole picture is static). AN example would be the sample 24p footage for the sample projects with Vegas 6. You can get that off the Sony Vegas website.

The ASC manual says that on pans, an object should take 7 seconds or long to cross the screen.

60p should have silky smooth motion. How it appears would depend on the display technology though. For example, CRT computer monitors at 60hz refresh rate and a high resolution can cause eye strain. So although the motion looks good, the overall image may not look that good.

I would expect 24p to kick around for a while. A lot of material will still be originated on 35mm film. As well, 24p lowers delivery requirements. 24p and 30p and 60i have (less than) half the requirements that a 60p broadcast would.

Anyways, you can shoot at whatever frame rate you want. I would suggest going with 30p because:
A- On a CRT TV, it has the interesting "film-like" motion like 24p. I did my own comparison between 60i, 30p, and 24p by converting 60i to other formats with Vegas 6. 24p and 30p are hard to tell apart, but definitely look different than 60i.
30p has less of that stuttery motion.
B- 30p is probably the easiest to handle in post (that, or 60i). With 24p you may have to dick around with adding/removing pulldown.
The progressive formats have an advantage because some filters/programs operate incorrectly on interlaced images.
C- Counterpoint: Some cameras lose functions in 24p mode... i.e. the DVX100. (not sure about 30p)

[John Hudson]

All this talk of Showscan and 60p.

I like this summarization:

"Video's frame rate being as close to reality as we can discern jibes with our ingrained perception of how video is traditionally used: to document real-life events. The TV news, reality TV shows, and our own home movies have a documentary quality to them that subconsciously suggests to the viewer that they are seeing actual events. Even sitcoms and soap operas are less like movies than they are like simulations of being in a studio audience watching a live performance. Video clues us in that we are watching reality, and by showing us everything, it invites us to passively absorb it. : OVERVIEW Movies are anything but reality. Ironically, by showing the audience less (40% of the temporal information of NTSC video), they trigger a part of our brains that works to fill in the missing information. In this way film creates a more participatory experience and at the same time informs its audience that what they are viewing is an authored, narrative work. This is backed up by our historical associations as well we have learned to associate film's flicker with storytelling and video's unflinching detail with reality."

Give me 24p or Give Me Death.

I wan't to run away as far as possible from anything that even remotely resembles Video (60p) in temporal quailty.

And if your panning so fast as your worried about stuttering or strobing then it won't matter anyway as who's even looking at it?

[Ash Greyson]

I think 24P is great for movies but not for everything as some suggest. 30P is problematic because it is hard to convert to film or to PAL. 60P may happen but not soon, it will take a couple generations. The reason I think it may happen is because kids not are so used to video games that run at 60P or even higher.

I dont think it matters right now as I bet we are 10 to 25 years away from anything like that... we still have only a small % of people watching HDTV...



ash =o)

[Matt Ockenfels]

Originally Posted by John Hudson

Ironically, by showing the audience less (40% of the temporal information of NTSC video), they trigger a part of our brains that works to fill in the missing information. In this way film creates a more participatory experience and at the same time informs its audience that what they are viewing is an authored, narrative work.

Hi John,

That's an interesting statement; can you lead me to the research backing it up? I'm not challenging you, just curious. (I know about completion principles in psychology, but have never seen data on this.)

Cheers,
-Matt

[John Hudson]

Of course

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/whismabu.html

Is there any samples of 60p online?

[Boyd Ostroff]

Originally Posted by John Hudson

Ironically, by showing the audience less (40% of the temporal information of NTSC video), they trigger a part of our brains that works to fill in the missing information.

Then maybe radio programs, or slide shows with still images would heighten this effect even more? I remember a radio station that played the old time serials every night; their slogan was "The pictures are always better in the theatre of the mind."

From the Magic Bullet link above "there are those who suggest that this association with narrative and the flickering image is so deeply ingrained in our collective unconscious that it in part explains our love for movies."

I don't think I quite buy this, but it's an interesting observation. On the other hand, I noticed something just recently while working on an opera in Buenos Aires. The set had a fake fire with lights inside. This was a very stylized set, so the fire wasn't even slightly realistic looking. While we were working on the light cues, over a period of 15 minutes crew members waiting backstage started to congregate around it. Pretty soon there were 7 or 8 people sitting around the "fire" and telling stories, just like it was real...

[Tommy James]

The reason why so few people are actually watching HDTV (only 3 percent of all households recieve an HDTV signal) is because of the sale of the HD ready television that does not include an ATSC HD digital tuner. Millions of Americans bought this ripoff and after spending thousands of dollars on a television refused to pay a dime more for an HDTV reciever so they end up watching crummy analog programing and they delude themselves into thinking they are getting a clear picture because the picture is free of snow and is a big screen picture. the HD ready television also perpetuates the myth that HDTV offers no gain in picture quality. The FCC is starting to crack down by outlawing the sale of HD ready televisions and by 2007 all televisions over 13 inches will include free digital tuners.

Buying an HD ready television without an HDTV digital tuner is like buying a color television with only a black and white tuner. In other words its a ripoff. The public gets ripped off because most people do not know what HDTV is. Most people think that picture quality is determined only by screen size.

[John Hudson]

Originally Posted by Boyd Ostroff

The set had a fake fire with lights inside. This was a very stylized set, so the fire wasn't even slightly realistic looking. While we were working on the light cues, over a period of 15 minutes crew members waiting backstage started to congregate around it. Pretty soon there were 7 or 8 people sitting around the "fire" and telling stories, just like it was real...

LOL

Great story Boyd. (Even more bizarre off-topic; going on Pirates of the Carribean: Damn, if there isn't something extra cool about those 'fires' on that ride and the fake burning timber...)

HDTV

I won't even consider buyin into this cosumerism until I can get at least a 35" for a under $500.00 (Gonna be awhile)

[Simon Wyndham]

Tommy, you seem to have made the mistake that many others make by thinking that digital = high def. It doesn't. The FCC will want people to receive digital, not high def. Thats the reason they would insist on integrated digital receivers.

[Charles Papert]

and continuing off-topic further about "Pirates of the Caribbean" and fake fire-light: the gaffer of that film (and the currently filming next TWO sequels!) worked for me on the feature I shot last year, and he showed me the rig he used for a firelight gag on "Pirates". It was a bunch of standard-issue rope light mounted on a 2x3 frame, tightly snaked to cover the whole surface. Plugged into a flicker box, it created a warm, directional and pleasing look just like firelight. Clever!

[Tommy James]

For all practical purposes the switch to digital will ultimately be the switch to high definition. Digital is the highway that makes possible the transmission of high definition signals and high definition television was the reason why the FCC is mandating the switch from analog to digital television. It is true that the FCC is only mandating that televisions come equipped with digital tuners and not necesarily high definition. However no television manufacturer is going to put a standard definition digital tuner in a high definition television. All HDTVs are going to come equipped with HDTV digital tuners otherwise implied warranties of fitness for a particular purpose will be violated and no manufacturer would dare assemble a television with such incompatible equipment. Standard defintion televisions will come factory equipped with standard definition digital tuners or hdtv recievers that are downconverted.
Which brings up another interesting point. In the United States standard definition digital recievers are simply not available as a set top box. There is no market for them. In the United States all digital tuners are high definition capable.

It is true that the FCC does not require the broadcasters to broadcast in HDTV but then again the FCC does not require the broadcasters to broadcast in color.


The United States is going to give free digital tuners to every household in order to make the switch to digital television and so that the analog spectrum can be sold. Hopefully these digital tuners will be HDTV capable.

HDTV can be cheaper than standard definition television. Many people after learning that they can recieve free HDTV signals over the air end up firing the cable company and saving a lot of money.

[Michael D. Scott]

In many ways 24p is still economically more sound than another frame rate.

A 120 minute movie at 30P is 216,000 frames. The same movie shot at 24P is only 172,800 frames. That's 43,200 frames that you don't have to find storage for. Factor in that when editing a good rule of thumb is to expect to be working with at least three times the amount of footage that will be in the final cut -- so a 120 minute movie may have 360 minutes stored. Estimating about 1MB per frame, that's 129GB of storage you don't have to come up with.

And then what if it's a visual effects film? 43,200 frames played at 24P is half an hour! It's not unusual for a frame of visual effects film to take three or four processor hours to render depending on complexity, but we can round it down to one just because it's still significant.

It's rare for every frame of a film to be a visual effects render, but it's becoming common for a 2 hour film to have about half an hour of VFX. So you're still talking about 10,800 fewer frames, shooting 24 instead of 30. That's 10,800 fewer processor hours, shaving days off the deadline and hundreds of thousands of dollars off the budget. And for footage that takes an artist's frame-by-frame touch, estimating that it takes 10 minutes per frame, you're shaving an hour off each second of footage he has to do. An artist can turn out 5 seconds of 24P for every 4 of 30P. That adds up fast.

I don't think 24P is dying. If making features, I doubt I'd ever bother to shoot on anything else, in fact.

[Simon Wyndham]

All very good points.

[Tommy James]

Computer technology is increasing a thousand fold every 20 years. By the year 2025 it will be no more difficult to store 24,000 frames than it is to store24 frames. However since there is a limit to the framerate I suspect in the future computational resources will be dedicated to 3 dimensional holographic images. To display a three dimensional high definition image will require 1000 times more information for each frame or one billion pixels.

[Kevin Red]

I don't think 24p is as complicated as some are making it sound. 24p looks like smooth motion because when captured with 24 frames a second, motion will have more motion blur per frame. When this is played back to the eye, the eye burns it in for a fraction of a second, so the effect is seeing the object AND the blur. With 30fps or 60i your eye has to MAKE the motion blur, because you are mostly only seeing the object, not the motion blur.

To sum it up 24p offers object+motionblur, creating fluid movement.
30p/60i offers just the object, little motion blur. forcing the eye to create motion blur. This makes motion smooth, but not as fluid.

24p doesn't have anything to do with missing information that the brain "participates" in by creating new information. If anything the brain has to participate in 60i by creating motion blur.

just my 2 cents.