5 ms·
As a movie nerd I was interested by the bit about the broadcast being in 120hz. This is... unusual for most visual content. Where video games strictly benefit
by apozem 8y ago
As a movie nerd I was interested by the bit about the broadcast being in 120hz. This is... unusual for most visual content.
Where video games strictly benefit from a higher framerate, adding more frames does weird things to movies and television. As you may know, most movies are shot at 24 frames per second, which is low considering humans can see far more fps than that.
This lower FPS means movies are actually impressionist paintings of reality. The framerate blurs what is being filmed so it looks less like a set and more like what we've been trained to think of as a movie.
Movies that experiment with high framerate like Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (120 fps) find it makes selling the fiction harder. Viewers can see the cracks in everything a lot easier. This is one reason people disliked Peter Jackson's 48 FPS version of The Hobbit. Instead of seeing a group of dwarves, high frame rates made them look like a bunch of guys in funny costumes.
All this is to say it's interesting they are making high frame rate a part of their video future when its future within movies and TV is undecided.
- jackvalentine 8y agoLuckily, 120/5 = 24 so movie content can be broadcast at 120hz without any weird effects.
- stormbrew 8y agoTo be fair TV has always had a bit more of a 'real' look anyways, ever since it moved to largely being filmed on video instead of film. It's also always been a higher frame rate (30 frames/60 fields in that weird way where the fields still had motion from each other) and both crts and lcds have some more persistence of image than film projectors. So I'm not sure that when we're talking about broadcast television it's that surprising to have them pushing for higher frame rates. And it's entirely possible that like other things pushing modern broadcast TV advancements, the enhanced 'reality' and better motion fidelity is advantageous to television because of the one thing people still care a lot about watching live: Sports.
- solatic 8y agoNot all broadcast television is fictional. Allowing the spec to support 120Hz allows 120Hz programming for news and sports, which do benefit from the additional framerate. Fictional works can still be broadcast at their original framerate.
- cjensen 8y agoHigh framerate is very helpful for sports... and the 2020 Summer Olympics is in Tokyo.
- mmaunder 8y agoExactly right. 24fps has that cinematic feel we love. I spent some time when living in Europe tweaking Samsung TVs to make them stop adding an extra frame which made movies look like a cheap soap opera. Weird how we are trained to dislike what is a better picture quality.
- Lewton 8y agoI imagine similar arguments were made when movies went from b/w to color
- hsivonen 8y agoPersonally, I'm very disappointed that the higher frame rate of The Hobbit has been interpreted as bad. For 3D, in my opinion, it was a much better experience than using a lower frame rate for 3D. In my opinion, using a lower frame rate for 3D has been a bug ever since.
- tjpnz 8y ago>Instead of seeing a group of dwarves, high frame rates made them look like a bunch of guys in funny costumes. It wasn't for lack of trying either - they went to ridiculous lengths with film grain and motion blur.
- thomastjeffery 8y agoI'm so tired of the majority of content being produced at 24/30fps. It's obvious that consumers want higher framerates. Just look at any high end panel from the last few years: they all do frame interpretation. Something is not bad by virtue of being uncommon.