Is 24p on its way out ?
 

So I know 24p has a more filmic feel to it. I have used it often. Of course that filmic feel is based on the movie goers' prior experiences. I am wondering though, that with the proliferation of digital cinema and the advent of computer film techigues and digital projection, if the idea we have to shoot in 24p for "film out" purposes is even an issue any more. Moreover, with the digital generation now becomming the primary film consumers, is that consumer even impressed by 24p. In fact, that generation seems to be more impressed with razor sharp images, and clean motion imaging.

This comes up because I am now shooting the Canon 5D Mark II, which is only 30p, but that can shoot otherwise filmic images using the benefits of full frame 35mm technology. There is a clamor with those owners to try to get Canon to update the cameras through firmware to include 24p, and I wonder if that is still the future of film....

24P will probably stay around for a long time simply as an artistic choice. Once the vast majority of commercial cinemas worldwide convert to digital projection, the primary reason for 24P's existence in the first place, to save on film stock, will be gone. Then you will start to see a lot of experimentation in speeds, even within the same film depending on the scene.

If you only consider certain delivery mechanisms, that makes sense. However my exceedingly fuzzy crystal ball sees Web delivery of content looming large in the future. Within that context, the age old reason for 24p still exists, but this time it's going to save bandwidth.

I'd say 24p will be around for quite a while. But don't listen to me. I'm just an old pillock.

Some clear thinking for an old pillock :) It didn't occur to me in this context.

It's definitely a current consideration for most countries, but many like Japan and Scandinavia have far superior data infrastructure to private homes. They already have the capacity for cheap full HD on demand. The technology is there, it just needs to cheaper, and then that hurdle is gone too.

90% of my work is TV commercials.
I use 60i / 30p / 24p depending on the content and look I am trying to achieve.
I don't see 24p going away any time soon, just like I don't see 480i, AKA standard Def going away any time soon.

Thanks David C.

The whole available bandwidth for media issue is both interesting and complex, at least to me. In the US, cable TV companies are instituting monthly caps on file downloads to battle torrent users who they insist are consuming more than their fair share of bandwidth. I see this eventually being at odds with the trend toward web based VOD via Hulu, Netflix and others. It'll be interesting to watch it resolve but 24p is one way to mitigate potential issues here.

From the hosting side, 24p requires less space and bandwidth to serve. Again, there's a cost element to it. I cannot quantify it but it's there.

All things considered, I'm of a mind that all existing formats will keep on keepin' on for the foreseeable future because in some place, in some way, it just works for somebody creating content.

Just saw a few threads where some folks seem to be bashing achieving a film look with video. The film look isn't going anywhere soon. I have seen productions where it was really hard to tell the difference which it was, film or video. And really, did I care? Of course film has a high dynamic range, no argument there. But how much resolution do you need to tell an acceptable and engaging story? There is a huge difference between the look of 24fps film and stark reality video. It's the motion that separates the two in the first place. That is why people are trying to achieve the film look. Video motion is boring, and reality video ala daytime soap operas is a prime example. There are many other factors involved such as sculpted lighting, good cinematography and composition to really have the complete package. I hate the stark video look and I for one don't think it will ever be accepted by the general public. As high resolution cinema cameras evolve, it may well replace film. But it will be also closer to emulating film and of course much cheaper.

I will never use 24p
 

I'm relatively young and getting into video production and I simply have no interest in ever working in 24p, I can not even conceive of a situation that it would any way benifit me to have a frame rate that is 24.

24p has always been dead as far as digital is concerned, I'd say well over 90% of the people shooting in 24p on a digital format do it out of pure ignorance. 24p will only stay around as long as confused hobbiests keep buying DV cameras.

there is simply no situation where if your content is being displayed on a televison or a computer monitor that it would benifit from 24p. Nothing you can buy at best buy displays in 24p, nothing. Why would I use or even work in a format that cannot be properly displayed by 99.999% of the video viewing population.

Also 24p will never be used to conserve bandwidth, everything is 30 or 60fps that's not going to change. Data infastructure is only getting better and if they haven't had a need for 24p yet then they never will. if you need to conserve bandwidth you simply lower the resolution or increase compression. 24p only makes sense when you are dealing with large quanities of phsycial exposable film.

Interesting...

It was and is. Vimeo originally only supported 24p. Bandwidth conservation has always been a consideration in delivering content over the internet. From the first graphical pages posted on the Web to video on demand, producers have and do consider the connection speeds and the ones wanting to reach the widest audiences design with the low speed connections in mind. I don't see that changing any time soon.

How about for theatrical distribution of your film and the necessity of flimout.

Are you saying films like Slumdog Millionaire and gear like Red Cameras are bought by ignorant hobbiest. 24p is the the current reality of theatrical release, my post here is to determine if things are going to change.

I assume you are arguing that adding pulldown to 24p strips the 24p film of the filmic quality many associate with 24p. I would disagree.

In early days, 15 fps was the norm....

I just noticed this message. Wow, that's a great change. I was having a rough time converting my 720p60 to 720p24. The jitter was driving me nuts.

Chris:

I think the poster who said that future movies will feature a multitude of frame rates was dead on.

I think future films may go to a faster cadence like 30P or faster, but the frame rates could vary depending on whats going on. We already see this in lots of shows. If you don't have the faster cadence, I don't see how shots in 60P for instance would work.

The Panasonic cameras with widely variable frame rates (2 to 40 FPS) have really opened the door to effects shots. You can easily spot the really slow frame rates on television shows and know it's a Panasonic camera.

We experimented with 18FPS in a 30P wrapper to give a 8mm film look, but it did not look good IMO.

Its very unlikely it will change for animation. You dont want to be animating at 30 or 40 or 50 frames per second in 2d or stop motion.
Even for cg training, its much more convenient to teach someone how to do a walk cycle off a 24 fps cycle.

I dont think FX artists would want to do frame by frame rotoscoping on a 60 fps film.

for true artists 24p is lame .... for the sheep it is a crutch.
24p's days are numbered.

Use the new tools. Be creative!

Yep, I can understand that.

However, I think the package cadence could increase, just the frame rate in that case would still be 24 FPS.

Hi George.

All of the great directors in cinema history, from Hitchcock to Bunuel to Kurosawa to Fellini to Kubrick to David Lynch and every other director to date ... are you saying that all of these people were not true artists?

Or that they were lame?

They all shot for the cinema in 24fps.

Or are you saying that they should have been shooting interlaced?

Bradley, you are incorrect in most of your assumptions.
Maybe it's because you are young and inexperienced in video production that you can not conceive a situation where 24p would be beneficial.
I'm not a confused hobbyist, but a professional with over 30 years experience, and I shoot 24p when I feel that it will be beneficial to the project, which is quite often.
And as far as the viewing population goes, you are incorrect there as well.
The majority of the monitors available now, computer or TV will display 24p information.
In fact, most of the monitors available at Best Buy now are 1080p ready.

If you want to make it in video production, you might want to study up a bit!

Good Luck!

I'll alert the media.


J.

24p (23.98p in practise) is pretty much regarded as the universal North American frame rates for international sales when shooting progressive frames. Not only does it work for film out and video in the NTSC countries but also the PAL countries where it's played a frame per second faster. The professional sales agents involved in the film & TV markets really couldn't care less about hobbyists.

To be fair, they didn't have the same range of options that we have today.

I see the point people make when they say "24p is dead"... It is a format conceived to save as much film stock/money as possible... and because of that our eyes have come to associate it with "the film look"... But that's what keeps it alive and makes it so desirable...
When feature filmmakers start moving to 60p (and they will someday)... 24p will be dead. But that probably won't happen for at least another generation in tech. Until then 24p is alive and well.

And when 60P does take over, the effects coders will make a fortune emulating 24 fps! Just like when Magic Bullet et al came out with their "add film grain and scratches" effects...

FTR, I'm a 60P fan.

Maybe we should jump the gun and start a 60p to 24p retro film look studio now. :)

I still struggle with "which end of this thing do I point at what I want to put on TV?"...

I can remember films in which you start with a beautiful landscape and as the camera pans it starts to blur.....Ah film.

I think part of the yearning for the film look is as much the DOF that was only available in film and the dynamic range of film, as much as it was the frame rate.... but frame rate undeniably was something you could associate with film.

When we have full 35mm sensors giving us 1080P is 60P... and the dynamic range of the sensors starts to rival that of film emulsions I think we may see the start of a change... as filmouts become less of a factor (not that one ever would be for me) and fully digital "films" start to appear and are shown on digital projectors, I suspect you will see a slow fading of the "good old 24 FPS" thinking.

My 2 cents.

Or the flip side of the coin:
When we have a camera phone giving us 120P at 1mbps in 1:0:0 colour space and streamed globally at no cost and comes with it's own catalog of copywritten music to embed we old fellows may begin to CRAVE the glory days of film...

It's interesting times we live in when we have one side of the equation looking for bigger, brighter, more beautiful and the other looking for smaller, faster, cheaper.

I just hope that the business models continue to support Chris' aforementioned vision...

Shaun... What color is the sky in your world? (grin) I still feel like I'm following Moses to the promised land, and I'm tired.

Film look and 24fps
 

A couple of interesting facts about 24fps and "the film look" - while being very careful not to claim anything as better or worse... :-)

According to D. Eric Franks, a sort of video tech guy, historian and pundit whom I have come to know of and respect, the choice of 24fps originally had more to do with sound than video. It was simply " the minimum speed that sound engineers determined that they needed to print optical sound tracks." (from his book, Videopia). Different era, different technology, different challenges, different solutions. I imagine if film had been developed at 39 fps or 61 1/2 fps, Hitchcock, et al would have used it just as masterfully, and without much thinking about it.

As far as film being shown at 24fps - actually, that rate "produces noticeable flicker" (again, quoting DEF) and the fix is to have the shutter of the projector open 2 or 3 times on each frame, effectively taking the "frame rate" to 48 or 72.

High frame rates do produce good temporal resolution just as 4K pixels produce good spatial resolution. That said, many, many things make for a visually pleasing "look" and a good story is still essential to making a "film" entertaining. No? Take it where you will...

Indeed, the silent frame rates for 16mm & regular 8mm was 16fps, while for Super 8 it is 18fps. The projectors for these formats have 3 blade shutters to increase the flicker rate.

Another factor from the fx angle is rendering time.
Frame by frame rendering, say for a Pixar movie, can get pretty long even with all their fancy hardware and render farms. More frames per second, more rendering. And they have to render multiple times for testing a sequence.
They would go bonkers with a 48 or higher frame rate.

Nah. They'd just add nodes to the render farm and buy faster processors from Intel.

Martin

24p is not going away for one simple reason: People don't like how films look in other formats.

To put it another way: If you ever go down to buy an HDTV, you may want to take a look at 120hertz TVs. Most of them are designed to reduce judder in 24p films; but what ends up happening is that you end up with "Pirates of the Carribean" on Blu-Ray looking like it was shot with the same equipment as "Guiding Light."

So long as people associate 24p with high art, 30p with median art, and 60i with low art and "reality/news" programming, 24p won't go away.

It's great to be reassured that the majority of my work over the past 10 years is regarded as "low art". Perhaps I'll throw out my HDTV and buy 16mm and 35mm projectors for my my home theatre instead.

**lol

They would be doing that already if they could.

As long as films need manual fx enhancements on a frame by frame basis, higher frame rates wont be practical.

Computers make some tasks easier but they still end up being tedious in other ways.

I just shot 30 spots for NBC all in 24p edited on a 29.97 timeline as per their requirements. Why not shoot 30p? That was my question. The answer, we like the look of 24p. At first I was second guessing the powers that be thinking that they were just jumping on board with the hype of 24p.

But now that I have been working with it I kind of like the look of 24p. I will probably use it more often.

Dead? I do not think so. For hobbyist? Maybe, if you call what NBC has going on a hobby.

It's simple, the 24P 3:2 pulldown looks better when it is squashed/compressed to the tiny bandwidth available because there are 33% less frames to compress than 30P.

IMHO i hate the look of 60 and 30fps whether it's progressive or interlaced, doesn't matter.

24fps will always be the pinnacle (and the standard) framerate for movies in the theater. 24p is ingrained in the human mind. when people see a movie in 24fps they instantly "know" it is a real movie and not a commercial or tv show, even though they might not know exactly why. it is part of the look that defines the whole cinema experience. 24p is here to stay.

24P gains traction
 

I've been shooting 24P since the HV20 came out, and it's fantastic.

I've been in a position to watch a few film-newbies grow up in the past years, and it's been interesting to watch them 'discover' 24P.. first, noticing what felt cinematic, and then incorporating that. Hearing someone put into words and discover what really makes film look and film like film certainly confirms to me that 24P is sticking around as more people adopt it as more cameras with the 24P function come out.

It is a choice now, and one that many people are willing making after using and sampling the alternatives.

> 24p is ingrained in the human mind

This reminds me of the guy in another thread who claimed "We dream in 24P"

Ahhhh ..... I don't think so. To either comment.

24p is the gold standard. Every other frame rate has had its chance in the marketplace over the past 100 years, yet here we are, still using and talking about 24 fps. Doesn't that itself say something?

With that said, Chris is onto something when he says the 5D Mk II seems filmic enough. I think in this particular case, the incredibly shallow depth of field and gorgeous images are making the addition of 25% more frames somewhat of a wash. I think the 5D's 30p falls within a fuzzy range of what most people would consider "filmic."

And these days, that range may be getting fuzzier and fuzzier. It's becoming easier and easier to shoot at different, odd frame rates, and internet video seems to be eroding peoples' ideas of what frame rate looks "right."

Personally, I shoot with the 5D as well, and I wouldn't hesitate to shoot a feature on it at 30p. On the off-off chance that someone bought the film and wanted a theatrical release, they could have the fun challenge of retiming it to 24p. :)

However in the end, I don't think 24 fps is going anywhere anytime soon. It's not the only (or even the most important) component of the "film look," but it is something of a Goldilocks framerate. Besides, even if the association with Hollywood is only subconscious to the viewer, it's still probably a positive one. ;)

My two pence we are 25p here,i hate it on my HV30 , if you want video to have a good film look be prepared to spend big or use celluloid.