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One thing I've never understood is why people keep playing back old film at too high a frame rate. It seems that the film cameras of the day recorded at a lower
by kstenerud 7y ago
One thing I've never understood is why people keep playing back old film at too high a frame rate. It seems that the film cameras of the day recorded at a lower-than-expected framerate, and the playback machines played at a higher frame rate, resulting in the telltale weird effect of everyone moving too fast. If they'd recorded audio along with it, everyone would be talking like chipmunks.
- anigbrowl 7y agoCorrect. Hand-cranked cameras are obviously extra-problematic (though fun to work with), but the first automatically cranked cameras worked at 18fps. Most broadcast systems work at ~30, 25, or 24 fps (and there's a system for doing 24fps playback on 30fps TV). Retiming video used to be ridiculously tedious/labor-intensive, and it's only in the last 5 years or so that it's become sufficiently easy to pull it off and have it look good.
- Animats 7y agoWell, before everybody had frame interpolation, early 16FPS film tended to be copied to new film run at 24FPS. There were horrible hacks like "3-2 pulldown", to convert 24FPS film to 30 FPS TV. (30 FPS TV is 60 interlaced half-frames, so one 24FPS frame was shown for 3 half frames, then the next for 2 half-frames. This was done mechanically in the projector. Then that got copied to VHS...
- ghaff 7y agoMost of the footage we're talking about is before synchronized sound, so speech doesn't really come into the equation. But, as others have noted, adjusting film speed today in digital may just be a matter of hitting a few keys. However, with physical film stock, it's a lot harder. Something you might do for the restoration of a famous film, but not something you're going to do routinely.