
Ang Lee Is Embracing a Faster Film Format. Can Theaters Keep Up? - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/movies/ang-lee-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-new-york-film-festival.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0
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rootbear
I think they are making a big mistake tying high frame rate to 3D. The only
way to see the Hobbit films in HFR was the 3D versions. But HFR all by itself
gives an almost 3D realism to film, something I noticed when I saw Douglas
Trumbull' Showscan demo at 60fps in the 1980s. I have friends who would enjoy
the HFR clarity but who don't have stereo vision and won't pay extra for
uncomfortable glasses that do nothing for them, just to see a film in HFR. It
looks like some theaters will have Lee's film in 2D HFR, due to technical
limitations, so maybe that will give them some audience feedback on whether
HFR can stand alone. I'm also suspicious of the gain in quality going from
60fps to 120fps. I saw a demo of HFR at Siggraph a few years back and the
change from 24fps to 48fps was very clear. Going to 60fps was less of an
improvement, but for fast action scenes it was noticeable. I'm not sure that
120fps will be worth the extra expense, but I'm interested in seeing it.

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moogleii
A 120fps master will be useful for 3d at home where the technology relies on
rapid alternation between left and right eyes, so the effective fps per eye
will be 60.

Although, now that I think about it, it might be useful for theaters, too,
since they're using two polarized source frames per projected frame. It
depends if they're counting the combined, projected frame as one frame or as
two source frames to reach their 120 fps claim. Actually, out of curiosity, I
read up on how Real 3D does it, and they use alternating, polarized frames out
of one projector, which would be 60fps per eye.

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vernie
Isn't the home 3D TV market pretty much dead at this point?

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seanp2k2
Yes, Samsung is not making any 3D TVs for their 2016 models (which are out
now) [http://www.cnet.com/news/3d-tv-is-now-more-dead-than-
ever/](http://www.cnet.com/news/3d-tv-is-now-more-dead-than-ever/)

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was_boring
> The film is considered a risk partly because the hyper-reality lent by the
> cinematography technology [viewing at 3d, 4k and 120fps] could be unsettling
> to viewers. “Test subjects that have seen some footage have commented that
> 40 minutes after seeing battle footage, they’re still shaking,” Ben Gervais,
> a production systems supervisor on the film, told Variety in April.

This sounds like pure marketing drivel. Just take a look at video games and
the disparity of consoles being (largely) locked around 30 fps and PC that can
reach 100+ fps. While a higher framerate can give the appearance of smoother
gameplay -- which is disputed beyond a certain threshold -- it never makes it
"unsettling" or more realistic.

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TylerE
Video game framerate and movie framerate are not at all comparable. Movies
have true natural motion blur.

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erichocean
> _Movies have true natural motion blur._

In addition, researchers have performed tests and there's something about
films being as slow (motion blurry) as they are that contributes to them
seeming like fiction. 24fps is the slowest you can run a film with lip
sync—any slower and your brain has trouble associating the sound with the
imagery.

18fps is the slowest you can run a silent film and still distinguish
continuous motion.

30fps and you start to lose the "dreamlike" effect, and at 60 fields per
second (television), it's lost completely.

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agumonkey
Last point made me cringe so hard a few years ago when all TVs were to have
their (100|200)Hz mode so every movie now looks like straight out of Pixar.
Hyper smooth, hyper real and hyper fake all at the same time.

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voltagex_
That's interpolated though - I wonder what it'd look like if you had an actual
200fps source (and the ability to play it)

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agumonkey
True, I forgot that. I think I've seen one 48fps (maybe first Peter Jackson
effort to push this) film and the results wasn't different from interpolated
100Hz TVs, the "movie" looked like a professional documentary. Crisp and dead.

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gambiting
I saw the first Hobbit in 48fps and that was the first time I ever wanted to
walk out of the cinema - was literally unpleasant to watch, my brain was
telling me that everything is playing too fast and that audio _should_ be
desyncing from video, but it never did. Maybe I would get used to it if all
films were made in 48fps, but I certainly can't recommend it after that one
experience.

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agumonkey
Some people say we reject non 24 fps out of ingrained habits, I don't
subscribe to this point of view. Nobody ever complained that a movie failed
its purpose because it was filmed at 24fps.

Tangent: so many movie are lacking in terms of set, direction, pacing,
scenario.. why do people believe tech is the variable to improve...

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sowbug
120 is the least common multiple of 24 and 30 (NTSC rounded to nearest
integer). Perhaps this is a method to capture enough source material to
generate all popular framerates.

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tgpc
TV in Europe is 50hz

Things get sped up, slowed down or played back with jitter. It's not great.
Older devices (DVD/BD players) used to change framerate automatically. Newer
devices (streaming) seem to default to 60hz with an obscure Settings menu to
manually change it. Nearly everyone ends up watching the content in the wrong
frame rate :-(

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MichaelGG
So do LCD monitors have a setting for 50Hz refresh? Or how does that work?
I've only seen 59/60Hz (and sometimes higher).

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Accacin
TVs, not monitors.

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MichaelGG
They seem sort of interchangeable? If I stream a EU show is it gonna suck on
my laptop?

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bitwize
So cold and lifeless! Film should be 24fps, flickery screen, celluloid only.
It helps if the celluloid is of such poor quality that it's grainy as all get-
out and the light melts it and it snaps halfway through the picture. Now
that's REAL cinema.

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wazoox
In fact, plain HD at 120 fps looks way better IMO than 4K at 30 fps. Motion
blur in ultra high resolution is _not_ compelling...

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kristianp
After the hobbit's special effects were shown up at 48fps, reviewers blamed
the high framerate for the unreal effect. Few screens were assigned to the HFR
versions of the sequels. Hopefully this movie will make higher framerate
movies more popular.

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spc476
What I read about the 48fps Hobbit movie was that the indoor scenes looked
very fake, but the outdoor scenes of New Zealand looked _fantastic._

The same article made some comments about mixing fps in a movie, one approach
like the Wizard of Oz (real world B&W, magical world in color). Another
approach might be one aspect of the move (like a character) appearing at 48fps
while the rest is in 24fps. Lots of room for experimentation in the next few
decades.

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WorldMaker
It's funny that British television for a long time (up until the HD era in
fact) did this on historic, technical accident: indoor/in-studio cameras they
used filmed at a much higher fps than outdoor/on-location cameras for cost and
technical reasons. I remember noticing it the most in shows like Keeping Up
Appearances and Fawlty Towers. Fawlty Towers especially tended to use outdoor
shots for more of its slapstick, playing into the lower framerate for comedic
effect.

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helthanatos
I wish everyone would start 120 FPS/4K(downscaled to 4K). That would be great.

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dimman
If they could just focus on producing good movies than focusing on technical
details.

Just take the Dumb & Dumber movies for instance. IMO, one of the reasons the
new movie isn't as good as the old is due to the image quality. I don't need
dull colors in FullHD quality, it kind of ruins the feel of the movie...

