
James Cameron champions faster film projection rates (from 24 to 60 fps) - fourspace
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/03/james-cameron-champions-faster-film-projection-rates.html
======
Florin_Andrei
> The filmmaker said that when he begins shooting the "Avatar" sequel in about
> 18 months, he will be shooting at a higher frame rate, though he has yet to
> decide if that will be 48 fps or 60 fps. He said George Lucas was "gung-ho"
> to make the conversion, and also called Peter Jackson one of his allies.
> Jackson, he said, had at one point been heavily weighing shooting "The
> Hobbit" at 48 fps.

Awesome!

It's finally happening. The 24 fps speed is a relic from the stone age of
cinema, back when technology simply could not cope with higher frame rates. So
all they could do was shoot at 24.

Then something odd happened. Everyone was shooting at 24, including the grand
masters of the art. All the procedures, techniques, all the clever things they
devised, took that frame rate as a given. They were not simply shooting AT 24
fps, they were shooting FOR 24 fps.

Thus the "film look", which is the way a motion picture looks if it's shot at
24 fps using the standard cinema techniques. From a technical limitation, it
became a cultural given. Because Bunuel and Eisenstein and Bergman all shot at
24 fps, everyone simply assumed this is how cinema is supposed to look like.
Higher speed video ended up being seen as "cheaper looking, made for TV".

But it's exclusively a habit, a purely conventional thing, imposed by culture.

I remember thinking a while ago that, what it would take to break the mold is
a few big names in cinema to start purposefully shoot at higher frame rates,
and at the same time try and figure out new ways to express the same things at
the new speed. Some geniuses need to reinvent the art to break free from the
old stereotype.

Cameron filming at 48 or even (please, please, please) at 60 fps cannot do the
same things that Cecil DeMille did at 24. Or, rather, is free to not do the
same things, because the lower frame rate is limiting in many ways.

And now finally it happens. This is great. I hope 24 fps finds its true place
- in the history books. It's time to move on.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I'm not a cinematographer but having gone to USC I met and talked with some
(both aspiring and those who came back to give guest lectures). There was a
digital projection system back in the 80's which had 60fps video, the output
was much more 'real' in the sense of looking at the screen seemed more like
you were looking at real life, and it jarred folks. One of the directors who
was giving a lecture on the future of film felt it was the future but
acknowledged the following counterpoint.

24FPS celluloid, with its known gamut limitations and temporal resolution
creates an ambiance for the film. This is not unlike the way that canvas and
oils create a certain ambiance about an oil painting. Now is the future of
'art' digital printers that can reproduce what an artist might have painted in
oils, something they can paint using a Wacom tablet and Illustrator? No, not
really. The medium is part of the art, its part of the palette.

Do digital films at high FPS have a place? Of course they do (art is pretty
liberal in what it will accept as a medium :-) but will 24fps celluloid be
consigned to the history books? Answering that question is less obvious.

The change from hand cranked to mechanically operated shutters was a clear win
for cinematographers because it took some randomness out of what the audience
would see, talking pictures did the same. The change from celluloid to video
is however a medium change not a technique change.

I believe the comment at the particular talk I attended was "If Leonardo could
have taken a picture of Mona Lisa instead of painting her, would it be in the
Louvre today?" Can't easily answer that.

~~~
mhb
This sounds like an argument similar to the one lamenting the advent of
digital photography because the grain of the film no longer provided the same
effect in photos. But although the grain effect is available for digital
photos, it is seldom seen.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Your claim "But although the grain effect is available for digital photos, it
is seldom seen." is a fallacy. I'm sure if someone wanted a grain effect in
their photograph they would be more likely to actually use film rather than
use a digital simulation of what film would have looked like had they chosen
to do that. I don't see wide spread use of the 'water color' effect either but
people still make water color pictures. It is just that they start out with
water colors.

I was rebutting the claim that shooting film on celluloid would 'go away'
because there were higher frame rate technologies available. I don't believe
that conclusion is supported by either current or past experience the art
world. It was not a 'lament', it merely challenged the reasoning that 24 fps
celluloid movies would be replaced in their entirety by higher frame rate
ones.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> Your claim "But although the grain effect is available for digital photos,
> it is seldom seen." is a fallacy.

Yet it's factually true.

> I was rebutting the claim that shooting film on celluloid would 'go away'

Perhaps I did not choose the best words.

It will not disappear from the face of the Earth, of course. But it will be
relegated to "retro" or nostalgic movies, etc.

It depends on how quickly the new, less limited technologies are adopted by
the big names in cinema, and of course by how quickly the old generation,
accustomed to the old way a film "is supposed to look", will retrain their
taste or die off. :)

------
modeless
The problem is that 24 FPS is now part of the Hollywood "look". 24 FPS is
associated with high quality high budget productions in people's minds; 60 FPS
looks like a home movie or low-budget TV sitcom. It may take a while to change
people's perceptions.

~~~
seanalltogether
Sitcoms and soap operas look the way they do because of lighting. I won't
disagree that 24 fps has something to do with the 'film' look, but I think
camera lens, filters, and lighting affect the look of the movie more then the
framerate.

~~~
encoderer
I'm just a layperson when it comes to film but I want to respectfully disagree
with the assertion that it's all about lighting.

A friend recently picked-up an LED "3D" tv. Now, I always thought the 3D is a
BS gimmick, and I still do, though I will conceed that it does work far better
than I ever thought it would. Which is, not at all.

But the TV -- a samsung -- had a feature that reminds me a bit of up-
converting, however it's used on every input, even 1080P from the blu ray. I
googled it at the time but the gist is that it, on 2D mode, it computes deltas
between frames and inserts new ones to make the image seem more fluid.

IT LOOKED LIKE TRASH!

It made everything look soap-opera or like a documentary. It messed up the
depth of field. Sure, things were hyper-crisp but alarmingly so. It made it
look cheap. Now, there's a setting buried in the control panel to tweak or
disable that, but this is how it came from the factory, and i thought it was
un-watchable.

So it's not merely lighting.

One last thought which is I actually think the perception of higher quality
shots in films has a lot to do with stedicam which of course will be the same
at 60fps. But that's just a guess.

~~~
peng
This is a straw man. Interpolated tweening frames are not the same as actual
frames with new content.

It may look like trash, but--then again--so do upscaled images.

~~~
encoderer
A "straw man" ? I didn't know this was a debate. Besides, I think you missed
my point: That it's not just about lighting.

~~~
georgieporgie
But seanalltogether never said it was just about lighting. He mentioned,
"camera lens, filters, and lighting."

Your dissection of what is wrong with Samsung's interpolation had nothing
whatsoever to do with seanalltogether's comment.

~~~
encoderer
Does Saturday bring out the debaters? What is this? "Sitcoms and soap operas
look the way they do because of lighting."

Now come back at me with some word-by-word, point-by-point dissection, but i'm
done, this isn't worth it.

~~~
9999
"It messed up the depth of field."

Absolutely preposterous. Depth of field is a function of lens focal length,
aperture, and sensor size. There is no way that Samsung's TV could in any way
effect the depth of field of the original recording. If it could, then it
would be a magical motherfucking TV.

~~~
encoderer
You ought to watch the TV before wetting the bed over it. Go to a Best Buy and
have a look.

Because as much as you clearly know about film tech more than I do, you seem
to be lacking a slight amount of common sense: What's happening there is
processing of a digital signal. Specifically, the TV is creating frames for
you to create the illusion of smoother video. And what this effect does, is it
appears to flatten the shot.

What your slashdot-worthy post overlooks is that you're speaking from your
limited knowledge of film. However, in this TV, there's a feature that lets
you apply this setting to just half the screen, so you can see them both, side
by side, and tweak as you wish.

Just like in life, there's no amount of theoretical education than can make-up
for actually being there, for actually having hands-on.

So really, save the hyperbole.

------
mberning
There are some televisions that have the ability to interpolate a 24fps format
and produce an apparent higher frame rate. Watching sports on these
televisions is great, but I tried watching Iron Man on one and it made it look
like an after school special. I believe this is colloquially know as the 'soap
opera effect'.

Google for 'samsung soap opera effect'.

~~~
zephjc
My new TV does that - it came with the mode enabled, and when I watched an HD
movie off Netflix, it seemed very odd and low-budget - this soap opera effect
- until I realized what was going on with a second movie doing the same thing.
It's definitely jarring and everything looks, ironically, like it was shot
with cheap cameras.

~~~
MikeCapone
Have you tried getting used to it? Does the effect go away with time or is it
forever burned in your brain?

------
jwr
Notice he's leaning towards 48p as opposed to 60p, which is an already
standardized framerate that your modern TV likely supports.

I do not think that is an accident. After all, once we all buy our new 3D TVs,
something will have to happen for people to buy new TVs again in 3-4 years.

And before you mention bandwidth considerations, I do not have actual data,
but I suspect that when using H.264 High Profile, the difference in bandwidth
between 48fps and 60fps won't be that large. There is a limit to how much you
can change visually in a single second: human perception.

~~~
alexqgb
Assuming the bitrates are the same, 48fps will require 80% of the bandwidth
needed to handle 60.

To the best of my knowledge, H.264 only supports two GOP structures (short = 6
frames / long = 15 frames), both of which operate independently from the
playback speed.

In other words, a short GOP setting produces 8 blocks per second running at
48, and 10 per second running at 60. Assuming a constant bitrate (I know, I
know), the throughput of the entire system needs to increase by an additional
20% to handle 60. And that's where things fall apart.

Consider the iTunes store, where I believe HD rentals top out at 720p. Or most
HD broadcasters, who skew away from the 19.39 Mbps ceiling on the ATSC MPEG-2
spec in favor of programs encoded at 13.something Mbps (the legal floor)
thereby allowing an SD channel encoded at ~6Mbps to be delivered in parallel.
Does this exercise in bandwidth maximization impact the quality of the HD
component? You bet. Do the networks care? If an additional SD means they can
dramatically increase the number of ads served, then no, absolutely not.

So regardless of how great the acquisition setup, and how awesome the playback
system, there's always the network in between them to consider. And with
providers moving toward bandwidth caps, I see picture quality going down, not
up. So, streaming 1080p60 H.264 encoded at (say) 7-9 Mbps? Choice, yes, but
total fantasy for the time being.

Of course, Cameron is talking about making theaters competitive, so maybe
that's his point. Given that BluRay has effectively failed as a universal home
standard, and that instant-availability is hugely favored over order-and-wait
programs, image quality of filmed entertainment at home is now tied to network
limits.

The real question, then, is "are there enough cinephiles who actually care?"

~~~
jjcm
_"Assuming the bitrates are the same, 48fps will require 80% of the bandwidth
needed to handle 60."_

Not exactly - while your 80% approximation is true for uncompressed footage,
h.264 encoded video and essentially every modern day video compression schema
will inherit data from the frame(s) before it. The higher the framerate, the
less (generally speaking) the images will change between frames - leading to a
reduction in data per frame.

Here's an example:

File 1: <http://files.jjcm.org/60fps.mp4> \- 127KB

File 2: <http://files.jjcm.org/48fps.mp4> \- 119KB

As seen here, the 48fps video 94% of the size of the 60 fps video. Granted,
this is a singular example, but at least it supports the concepts that I
described above.

~~~
alexqgb
Wow, you're absolutely right about the (minor) file size differences. That's
really interesting. H.264 FTW.

I have to admit, I couldn't see any difference in the quality of the motion
between the two clips, but thanks for posting them.

------
VMG
This is more exciting for me than 3d. I remember thinking this when I first
noticed that counterstrike didn't feel right at <60fps while watching action
films with 24fps

~~~
relix
That is because a game's frame is rendered at one absolute time point, while a
movie's frame is like a photograph taken with a shutter speed of 1/24th: it
includes the motion data of that whole time interval, it contains motion blur,
and it's smooth from one frame to the next.

That's why a game at 24fps looks bad, but an (action) movie at 24fps looks
good.

~~~
mryall
That doesn't seem like it could be true. The film is rolling through the
camera, and if the shutter were open continuously, the entire film would be a
vertical blur of light. The shutter would open and close once per frame, so
the film can be advanced. The actual shutter speed of a camera shooting 24 fps
would be much faster than 1/24 s.

~~~
nathos
Correct. There's a simple formula for that:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_speed#Cinematographic_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutter_speed#Cinematographic_shutter_formula)

~~~
mryall
Oh, cool. The linked article about the rotary shutter also has a great
animation showing how the camera works:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_disc_shutter>

------
totalforge
Douglas Trumbull's 'Showscan' fprmat shot and projected 70mm film at 60 fps.
The huge cost kept it from succeeding, though the visual impact was supposed
to be amazing.

Cameron's proposal will introduce similar perceptual problems to HD video -
fake stuff will look more fake, every tiny detail of a performer's face will
be apparent, and scenes that play a certain way at 24fps might fall flat at
60. One study showed that physical comedy was funnier in low res/low frame
rate, and the same action looked painful to the audience in greater definition
and detail.

I'll watch a good story in any format, thanks.

~~~
leejoramo
Wasn't Showscan also projected with more lumens? A quick search didn't reveal
this, but I am sure I remember that Showscan was much brighter.

~~~
joezydeco
If you're ramping up the shutter speed on the projector, you gotta compensate
with more light coming through.

------
alabut
Film geeks in here will eat up the story of MaxVision48 - it's an equally
inexpensive upgrade to existing film capture and projection that results in a
much higher picture quality, way higher than even the Red camera.

Check out this infographic on Roger Ebert's blog comparing the different
formats:

[http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/assets_c/2011/01/resolution%...](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/assets_c/2011/01/resolution%20chart-30908.html)

The full blog post is well worth a read, especially given the story of a
single passionate entrepreneur trying to change Hollywood and his story of
trying to get Christopher Nolan to champion the format:

[http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/more_than_ever_the_f...](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/01/more_than_ever_the_future_of_f.html)

~~~
erikpukinskis
That chart is seriously misleading. They wanted to represent the 2x increase
in framerate, so they showed that as a 4x increase in resolution, which
doesn't make any sense.

And they seem to suggest that RED made the entire chart, which they didn't.
RED made the accurate part of the chart, but MaxiVision48 added their own
nonsense.

The impression I get about this company is that they tried to sell a product
to a bunch of people who didn't want or need it. The reason RED is so
successful is that they actually made a camera directors wanted to use.
Directors want to be able to do long takes, they want to see instant footage,
they want to be able to go directly into the editing room after shooting, and
they want a cheap medium. MaxiVision doesn't offer any of those advantages. In
fact, if it ends up being harder to process, it's actually worse on all those
points.

MaxiVision48 seems a little like BluRay. It's the next generation of a dead
technology. Film will always be useful for certain films, but the benefits of
digital go way beyond high resolution.

Anyway, interesting story, thanks for the link. Gives me some food for thought
about my own business.

~~~
alexqgb
"BluRay. It's the next generation of a dead technology."

Slightly off topic, but you just nailed it, sir. Upvoted accordingly.

------
warrenwilkinson
I wish that the sample footage he shot at 24,48 and 60 fps was available
somewhere I could download it =(.

------
tomerico
A video comparing 24 fps to 60 fps (In video games, where the difference is
higher)

<http://mckack.tumblr.com/post/3535190601/60fps-vs-24fps>

~~~
brianpan
I really must be "blind". I can see the difference side-by-side (especially
the moving ball) but the difference is so slight. Even 15fps looked fine to
me. If you showed them to me back-to-back, I don't think I could tell the
difference. Which is frustrating to me, because I know the difference but I
wish I could _see_ the difference. I feel like my eyes are failing me.

This is watching the downloaded avi.

------
swah
Hm, I was still stuck into the "above 30 FPS the eye cannot notice the
difference" mindset. What's going on?

~~~
Fargren
That was never correct. The eye is not a camera, it doesn't work at frames per
second.

<http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm>

Humans can notice stuff that hapens in 1/200th of a second.

~~~
VMG
Excellent link, thanks.

His other pages are worth a look too, you can find them in the upper-left
corner under FAQ.

It is nice to see that I'm not the only hacker with an interest in video
technology.

------
jrockway
I'm a big fan of 60fps video. It takes a bit of getting used to because it
looks so different, but after you watch 60fps content for a while, 30fps
content looks like a slideshow -- almost unwatchable.

(And there's plenty of content that's 60fps, just not a lot of American
content that's 60fps.)

~~~
bartman
Could you give some examples?

~~~
jrockway
Visit your favorite torrent site that has Japanese TV shows and search for
60fps. (Sometimes the video is encoded as 30fps and is interlaced, in which
case you need to turn on bob deinterlacing to get 60fps. But this seems to be
rather rare these days.)

~~~
superdude
All the Japanese animation that I seen has been animated at a much lower frame
rate than American animation.

------
andos
Why not adaptive framerate? Project the film at 60fps but gradually switch
(this is the tricky part) between low and high framerate as the scene demands?

------
nhebb
I assume that higher fps = higher digital payload = higher bandwidth load for
ISP's, considering services like Netflix Since this will place a bigger burden
on ISP's, they will use it as added ammunition when lobbying Washington re Net
Neutrality, and the whole thing will become a political clusterf*ck. Ain't
life in the US grand? But other than that, it sounds like a good idea.

~~~
totalforge
ISP's don't enter into it. The goal is to have exclusive tech in movie
theaters only.

~~~
alexqgb
Indeed. It's all about doing what your ISP can't.

------
javanix
People are used to 24fps for movies now, however.

In my opinion, higher framerates just end up making everything look like a
sitcom.

~~~
JoelSutherland
We're at a local maxima. It will look better after it looks worse.

~~~
javanix
Well I certainly have never been one to complain about current film standards.

I suppose I am just wary of change simply for the sake of change. I would like
to be able to see the same 24fps and 60fps scene side by side and evaluate the
advantages myself.

------
RVK
Recent movies filmed on digital video have the problem that the exposure time
is much less than the frame gap. So action scenes look like flick-books.
Gladiator had this issue, as well as most of Michael Mann's recent output. A
higher framerate will make action really flow.

------
deskamess
What would be the impact on movie theaters? I am looking at this from the
perspective of the simple 2D (non 3D) projection system.

I assume if they have a modern digital 2D playback system this may not be a
problem. However, what if they have just good ol' projectors that require film
reels?

Questions on my mind:

\- Can we roll film at a higher speed on the projector? Can we double the reel
intake rate it if we go with 48 fps? Is it tougher to do fractional speed
increases (like 60 which is 2.5 x 24)

\- Are there any refresh issues - I assume no since the light is always turned
on.

\- How about sound? [The assumption here is sound is on the same reel - but I
could be wrong]

If there are any projectionists in the HN house, I would appreciate you
filling us in...

~~~
jonhohle
I'm not a projectionist, but:

\- sound is either on the same reel or on a DTS disc synced to the reel. \- I
was surprised that a rather small theater in my metro area (no stadium
seating, out in the boonies) has digital projectors in all of its screening
auditoriums.

For modern movies, I would imagine that in 10 years or less there will be no
more acetate prints and all distribution will be digital. For digital prints
framerate is solely limited by the response rate of the projector and the
throughput available in the playback system.

------
ck2
I'd guess our brain fills in data when the frame rate is only a few per
second. When it's much higher we have to directly absorb what we see without
mental filtering. This is why 24fps is more "cinematic".

~~~
gaius
Well, you see at barely 1 megapixel, in the sense that that's how many
photoreceptors there are in your eyes. But you don't notice this because by
the time it reaches your level of actual perception, lots of scenes from every
small movement of your eyes have been stitched together. Your brain has a
_ton_ of hardware for doing interpolation. 24fps seems to mesh well with that
hardware. But we're not machines... Higher numbers in the lab don't
necessarily translate into better human experience.

Another case in point: people still shoot and love photos on Tri-X, a grainy
B&W film, even tho' you can buy cameras that do a dozen or more full-colour
megapixels off the shelf...

------
DanielBMarkham
My idea of great film tech? 8K, 60fps, and true 3-D (not the hokey 2-level
thing)

It'd be awesome, but it's a long, long way away.

As Jim says, this is low-hanging fruit. Easily done with most everything
that's on the shelf today.

~~~
jonhohle
It may be low hanging fruit, but imagine rotoscope work on a 24fps feature vs
a 60fps feature. The work has just increased 2.5x for the same shot.

For fully rendered content, there is likely no additional man hour time, but
for any frame by frame work involving humans, post processing could take a lot
longer.

~~~
VMG
Is this kind of thing really done frame-by-frame though? I think with smart
interpolation techniques you shouldn't have to do single frames anymore.

~~~
jonhohle
Rotoscoping[0] is by definition frame by frame. Keyframed animation would
largely remain unchanged, though rendering would take 2.5x as long.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping>

~~~
Geee
I'm pretty sure large budget animations are already rendered with higher frame
rate for proper motion blur. You can't add proper motion blur with post-
effects, like in video games.

------
protomyth
going to 48 would be fine, but I really want digital theaters at minimum of 4K
and keeping the brightness on the bulb turned up to where it is supposed to be
(not lower to same money)

~~~
protomyth
Apparently we have someone who believes that 2k projectors are good enough or
has never experienced cheap theater operators who turn down the brightness on
the projector bulbs to make them last longer / save money.

48 fps might be a fine thing, but there are other factors to enjoyment that
should be looked at.

------
nikuda
He seems to think higher frame rate will make his movies suck less.

------
CamperBob
It's about damn time. I've never understood the rush to increase resolution
and 'dimensions' when simple camera pans fundamentally do not work, and never
have.

~~~
Groxx
And the increased dimensions merely make it _more obvious_. I generally prefer
to watch things on my laptop / slightly larger screen, things look better than
at the theater where a moderate-speed pan means things are jumping foot or so
at a time.

