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Remember when we did this ugly interlacing thing, so that we could get a higher (50/60fps) framerate? When did we decide that 24/25/30fps was good enough? Now

Remember when we did this ugly interlacing thing, so that we could get a higher (50/60fps) framerate? When did we decide that 24/25/30fps was good enough? Now we have a Blu-Ray standard that cannot handle greater than 30fps, and media corporations that are unwilling to release content via any other medium. Put that together with ever-increasing resolutions, and the amount of pixels something moves across from one frame to the next becomes greater, and video looks more and more choppy. Franky, this is a much bigger problem than NTSC ever was. Even with content (The Hobbit, Billy Lynn's Halftime Walk) being created at higher framerates, users have no way to get the content outside of a specialized theater because the Blu-Ray standard cannot handle it, and because people seem to honestly believe that higher framerates look bad. I suppose we can only hope that creators take better advantage of digital mediums that do not have such moronic, and frankly harmful, arbitrary limitations.

DesiLurker 9y ago
Man that was horrible, hated the deinterlacing artifacts. at codec level it was nasty if you ever wanted debug issues with MBAFF. good thing hevc did away with that crap.
Houshalter 9y ago
High frame rates are beautiful. Gamers have known that for a long time and are obsessive about fps. The guy that did that amazing full motion video on a 1981 PC talks about doing experiments. And found that high frame rates were much more important than the image resolution. And had some nice examples of high res but choppy video next to high frame rate video with crap resolution. He somehow got 60 fps video on that ancient hardware and it looked acceptable.
- zimmund 9y ago
  > High frame rates are beautiful Yes, but it all depends on what you are seeing. Games look fantastic, VR probably looks great. For movies, I'd stick with 24 fps, as it keeps the "style" of film. Subtle things like the motion blur produced at that framerate and how we see/expect the movement in the screen are altered when the framerate changes. As with a lot of things, it depends on what you want to achieve!
  - thomastjeffery 9y ago
    > 24 fps ... keeps the "style" of film If what you wash my to achieve involved a lower framerates, go for it. The problem is that 24fps is considered the "standard", and film producers receive a ridiculous amount of backlash for creating any HFR content. There are 2 major films I know about (4 if you count the other two Hobbit films) that use higher framerates. Since I didn't go watch them in theaters, I have no way to see them in their original framerates. > Subtle things like the motion blur produced at that framerate... We expect 24fps quirks like motion blur because we have spent the entire history of film conditioning ourselves to prefer it. There are even expensive ways to render what appears to be motion blur so that we can simulate 24fps film in CG. To contrast with the entire history of film (until recently), many people, like me, have UHD panels to watch film. At such a high resolution, the amount of pixels that motion blurs over has increased significantly. To make a clearer picture, most major studios record at a higher framerate to minimise motion blur, even if they intend to show every other frame. That means that most motion looks very choppy, as it jumps hundreds of pixels each frame. These films would be beautiful at higher framerates, but practically no one is willing to fight the "industry standard".
mxfh 9y ago
How do these problems even compare? NTSC is incapable of reproducing any! movies native frame rate, resolution and color space faithfully. It's that our expectation of consumer media have changed. Broadcasters seem way less inflexible as the were back then, with television devices no longer costing multi-month salaries in most regions and whole standards like analog transmission and DVB-T 1 being already phased out and the current replacement rates being somewhere significantly under 10 years. Breaking legacy standards is no longer a no-go. BluRay is not the problem, the display devices which support only older HDMI standards are, then again their whole hardware capabilities rarely exceed them either. I doubt to see another consumer standard gaining any widespread adoption for physical distribution, when YouTube does already stuff like 8k@60fps and beyond. The expensive part now are the +4k display systems, not their media boxes (fire sticks, chromecast, set-top boxes, gaming consoles), which are cheap and can handle almost anything they have compatible hardware decoders for. There are UHD BluRay players for less than USD 200, it's up to the studios to release content https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  > There are UHD BluRay players for less than USD 200, it's up to the studios to release content. I wasn't aware until now that UHD Blu-Ray supports up to 60fps. At least they have that going for them.
bluedino 9y ago
>> When did we decide that 24/25/30fps was good enough? Everything looks weird at 48/60fps Remember LoTR?
- Houshalter 9y ago
  I think you mean the Hobbit, which was mentioned in parent comment. People didn't like it because they are so used to blurry low frame rate movies. If all movies were filmed like that, people would quickly get used to it. Soon they wouldn't be able to stand 24 fps. It's objectively worse. Similarly footage shot with digital cameras is often modified to look more like film. There's no objective reason for it most of the time, people are just used to the artifacts of film. Anything else "looks weird". Now stuff like lens flare, shaky cameras, etc, are added to shots made entirely in CG! I can get past that stuff because it doesn't make the quality that much worse, but low fps definitely does. What's the point of having super high resolution 4k display, if the scenes displayed on it are incredibly blurry from a low frame rate?
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  I never got to see The Hobbit in 48fps. That was only available in theaters. Blu-Ray standard constrained releases to 24fps, and the studios don't care enough to release a better version. > Everything looks weird at 48/60fps Everything looks jarringly different in 48/60fps. That does not make it bad. For several technical reasons, higher framerates look better. If you really want 24/30fps, you can always get it. Just like you can have grayscale on a color display. I use Smooth Video Project to interpolate frames when I can (anything without DRM), but that still leaves me with a blurry picture, and artifacts. Even so, it's a more comfortable experience, especially with camera panning.

DesiLurker 9y ago

Man that was horrible, hated the deinterlacing artifacts. at codec level it was nasty if you ever wanted debug issues with MBAFF. good thing hevc did away with that crap.

Houshalter 9y ago

High frame rates are beautiful. Gamers have known that for a long time and are obsessive about fps. The guy that did that amazing full motion video on a 1981 PC talks about doing experiments. And found that high frame rates were much more important than the image resolution. And had some nice examples of high res but choppy video next to high frame rate video with crap resolution. He somehow got 60 fps video on that ancient hardware and it looked acceptable.

zimmund 9y ago
> High frame rates are beautiful Yes, but it all depends on what you are seeing. Games look fantastic, VR probably looks great. For movies, I'd stick with 24 fps, as it keeps the "style" of film. Subtle things like the motion blur produced at that framerate and how we see/expect the movement in the screen are altered when the framerate changes. As with a lot of things, it depends on what you want to achieve!
- thomastjeffery 9y ago
  > 24 fps ... keeps the "style" of film If what you wash my to achieve involved a lower framerates, go for it. The problem is that 24fps is considered the "standard", and film producers receive a ridiculous amount of backlash for creating any HFR content. There are 2 major films I know about (4 if you count the other two Hobbit films) that use higher framerates. Since I didn't go watch them in theaters, I have no way to see them in their original framerates. > Subtle things like the motion blur produced at that framerate... We expect 24fps quirks like motion blur because we have spent the entire history of film conditioning ourselves to prefer it. There are even expensive ways to render what appears to be motion blur so that we can simulate 24fps film in CG. To contrast with the entire history of film (until recently), many people, like me, have UHD panels to watch film. At such a high resolution, the amount of pixels that motion blurs over has increased significantly. To make a clearer picture, most major studios record at a higher framerate to minimise motion blur, even if they intend to show every other frame. That means that most motion looks very choppy, as it jumps hundreds of pixels each frame. These films would be beautiful at higher framerates, but practically no one is willing to fight the "industry standard".

mxfh 9y ago

How do these problems even compare? NTSC is incapable of reproducing any! movies native frame rate, resolution and color space faithfully. It's that our expectation of consumer media have changed. Broadcasters seem way less inflexible as the were back then, with television devices no longer costing multi-month salaries in most regions and whole standards like analog transmission and DVB-T 1 being already phased out and the current replacement rates being somewhere significantly under 10 years. Breaking legacy standards is no longer a no-go. BluRay is not the problem, the display devices which support only older HDMI standards are, then again their whole hardware capabilities rarely exceed them either. I doubt to see another consumer standard gaining any widespread adoption for physical distribution, when YouTube does already stuff like 8k@60fps and beyond. The expensive part now are the +4k display systems, not their media boxes (fire sticks, chromecast, set-top boxes, gaming consoles), which are cheap and can handle almost anything they have compatible hardware decoders for. There are UHD BluRay players for less than USD 200, it's up to the studios to release content https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray

thomastjeffery 9y ago
> There are UHD BluRay players for less than USD 200, it's up to the studios to release content. I wasn't aware until now that UHD Blu-Ray supports up to 60fps. At least they have that going for them.

bluedino 9y ago

>> When did we decide that 24/25/30fps was good enough? Everything looks weird at 48/60fps Remember LoTR?

Houshalter 9y ago
I think you mean the Hobbit, which was mentioned in parent comment. People didn't like it because they are so used to blurry low frame rate movies. If all movies were filmed like that, people would quickly get used to it. Soon they wouldn't be able to stand 24 fps. It's objectively worse. Similarly footage shot with digital cameras is often modified to look more like film. There's no objective reason for it most of the time, people are just used to the artifacts of film. Anything else "looks weird". Now stuff like lens flare, shaky cameras, etc, are added to shots made entirely in CG! I can get past that stuff because it doesn't make the quality that much worse, but low fps definitely does. What's the point of having super high resolution 4k display, if the scenes displayed on it are incredibly blurry from a low frame rate?
thomastjeffery 9y ago
I never got to see The Hobbit in 48fps. That was only available in theaters. Blu-Ray standard constrained releases to 24fps, and the studios don't care enough to release a better version. > Everything looks weird at 48/60fps Everything looks jarringly different in 48/60fps. That does not make it bad. For several technical reasons, higher framerates look better. If you really want 24/30fps, you can always get it. Just like you can have grayscale on a color display. I use Smooth Video Project to interpolate frames when I can (anything without DRM), but that still leaves me with a blurry picture, and artifacts. Even so, it's a more comfortable experience, especially with camera panning.