Is there one all-around format?

[Doug Jensen]

Well said, Alister.

[Charles Young]

A little thread drift but I guess as a continuation of the actual thread title, Alister's observation of media editors could be applied to most everything. Quality of most everything produced these days is more akin to products from neophytes. I am just glad that most everything I need or want I can get the raw materials to make myself.

I would lol but its all to true.

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

50/60p is a non starter despite it's obvious motion benefits as many codecs don't support it at 1080, in particular Mpeg2.

Alister ~

If you want a good MPEG-2 I frame 1920 x 1080 HD .AVI codec that supports 50p and has the ability to support bitrates ranging from 50~300-mbit check out Matrox's VFW codec pack. This is but one of the codec settings in the pack and it works very well as an intermediate 50p editing codec. This codec set was originally only available as part Matrox's Axio hardware but is now available as a download.

Apart from anything else it supports 'no recompress rendering' which in Sony Vegas can render an hour of basic cuts and dissolves timeline in about 4~6 minutes. Very fast.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Jack Zhang]

Only caveat is that is non-standard MPEG-2. Alister was more talking about a spec that natively supports the framerate. XAVC happens to be one of them.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

1080p60 would solve the telecine problem. (720p24 footage converted to 60p is telecined properly in all NLEs) But it's a pipe dream to expect 1080p60 to be a standard. 4K60p will be the next standard.

Even that may be a stop gap, and only applicable to the 60Hz world. The hope is to end up at 4K120p as a real global standard - and it really will be 120p - not 119.something with complicated timecode.

The move to HD fixed some of the global issues around frame SIZES, but unfortunately not around frame rates. Having 24,25, and 30 may be fair enough - but the others are a hang over from 1953 and earliest NTSC monochrome TVs.

So the hope is to take advantage of the rare time of a standard change to fix some of the other global discrepancies. I believe the intention is for 4K120p to be the highest member of the family, not the only one, so it's not shutting out lower framerates.

Before anyone says "datarate!", then for transmission it's not too much of an issue - because of the much shorter time intervals between frames (and therefore differences). You still only need an I frame every 1/2 second, so as the difference frames are far smaller in terms of data, a doubling of frame rate doesn't mean a very big increase in total datarate.

Doesn't go into much more detail, but http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2013/06...-of-television underlines some of the thinking.

[Kevin Spahr]

IMO, 4K = 3D

The average consumer is even less interested in 4K than they were in 3D which was D.O.A.
Remember how many times (years, here in the US) the HD switch over was delayed? No one really wanted to switch. Another thing I find interesting is the large number of commercials that are still in 3x4 format - commercials for major companies too.

[Jack Zhang]

Reese's seems to be the only company doing HD 4x3 commercials. You now have the screen real estate, why not use it?

in 5-7 years, 4K will be the next broadcast standard, but whether it uses 50p/60p or 120p framerate, no one knows. If they are to be using 120p, the current F5s and F55s are already outdated.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

in 5-7 years, 4K will be the next broadcast standard, but whether it uses 50p/60p or 120p framerate, no one knows. If they are to be using 120p, the current F5s and F55s are already outdated.

If 120p came about, it wouldn't be 120p and nothing else. It would mean 120p was in the spec - and decoders would be expected to be aware of it and be able to cope with it - but wouldn't mean everything had to be such. The decoders could also handle 4K at 60p, 24p etc - and HD as well.

Bit like a Blu-Ray player. You can put a Blu-Ray disc in and it will happily play it - but will also play DVDs and CDs as well.

One thought against the whole idea of a global standard which came to me was the interaction with lighting sources. 100p should still be OK in the 50Hz world, likewise 120p in the 60Hz world - but if 120p was the only standard, what about flicker in 50Hz countries?

[Robin Probyn]

why these high frame rates at all..120 fps as standard why!! Hobbit at 48 Fps was a total and expensive disaster .. Joe Public hated the look.. apart from sports,its crap.. don't fix it if its not broken ..

[David Heath]

I'm assuming it's primarily for such as sport they are thinking of. I believe the view is that as the resolution and screen size goes up, the "flicker" on motion due to frame rate becomes more noticeable - hence a need for higher frame rates.

And bear in mind what I said before - just because 120fps or whatever is built into a standard doesn't mean everything has to be such. Just as at the moment transmissions are 1080i/25, that still allows 1080p/25. So it's possible to use the former for most TV, the latter for drama etc if wanted.

What's being talked about is the highest of a family of standards - not a sole definitive standard.

And I believe the main purpose of HFR and the Hobbit was for the 3D. I haven't seen it, but the main problems I found with the last 3D film I saw at the cinema were the annoyance of wearing the glasses, (it's far worse if you have to wear ordinary glasses as well!) and how much worse the motion flicker was with 3D. If I went to see another film in 3D, then HFR would be a positive plus for me.

[Derek Heeps]

Another significant factor between 30/60Hz and 25/50 is whether you are in a PAL or NTSC native country , or where the material is to be distributed .