Then maybe radio programs, or slide shows with still images would heighten this effect even more? I remember a radio station that played the old time serials every night; their slogan was "The pictures are always better in the theatre of the mind."

From the Magic Bullet link above "there are those who suggest that this association with narrative and the flickering image is so deeply ingrained in our collective unconscious that it in part explains our love for movies."

I don't think I quite buy this, but it's an interesting observation. On the other hand, I noticed something just recently while working on an opera in Buenos Aires. The set had a fake fire with lights inside. This was a very stylized set, so the fire wasn't even slightly realistic looking. While we were working on the light cues, over a period of 15 minutes crew members waiting backstage started to congregate around it. Pretty soon there were 7 or 8 people sitting around the "fire" and telling stories, just like it was real...

The reason why so few people are actually watching HDTV (only 3 percent of all households recieve an HDTV signal) is because of the sale of the HD ready television that does not include an ATSC HD digital tuner. Millions of Americans bought this ripoff and after spending thousands of dollars on a television refused to pay a dime more for an HDTV reciever so they end up watching crummy analog programing and they delude themselves into thinking they are getting a clear picture because the picture is free of snow and is a big screen picture. the HD ready television also perpetuates the myth that HDTV offers no gain in picture quality. The FCC is starting to crack down by outlawing the sale of HD ready televisions and by 2007 all televisions over 13 inches will include free digital tuners.

Buying an HD ready television without an HDTV digital tuner is like buying a color television with only a black and white tuner. In other words its a ripoff. The public gets ripped off because most people do not know what HDTV is. Most people think that picture quality is determined only by screen size.

LOL

Great story Boyd. (Even more bizarre off-topic; going on Pirates of the Carribean: Damn, if there isn't something extra cool about those 'fires' on that ride and the fake burning timber...)

HDTV

I won't even consider buyin into this cosumerism until I can get at least a 35" for a under $500.00 (Gonna be awhile)

Tommy, you seem to have made the mistake that many others make by thinking that digital = high def. It doesn't. The FCC will want people to receive digital, not high def. Thats the reason they would insist on integrated digital receivers.

and continuing off-topic further about "Pirates of the Caribbean" and fake fire-light: the gaffer of that film (and the currently filming next TWO sequels!) worked for me on the feature I shot last year, and he showed me the rig he used for a firelight gag on "Pirates". It was a bunch of standard-issue rope light mounted on a 2x3 frame, tightly snaked to cover the whole surface. Plugged into a flicker box, it created a warm, directional and pleasing look just like firelight. Clever!

For all practical purposes the switch to digital will ultimately be the switch to high definition. Digital is the highway that makes possible the transmission of high definition signals and high definition television was the reason why the FCC is mandating the switch from analog to digital television. It is true that the FCC is only mandating that televisions come equipped with digital tuners and not necesarily high definition. However no television manufacturer is going to put a standard definition digital tuner in a high definition television. All HDTVs are going to come equipped with HDTV digital tuners otherwise implied warranties of fitness for a particular purpose will be violated and no manufacturer would dare assemble a television with such incompatible equipment. Standard defintion televisions will come factory equipped with standard definition digital tuners or hdtv recievers that are downconverted.
Which brings up another interesting point. In the United States standard definition digital recievers are simply not available as a set top box. There is no market for them. In the United States all digital tuners are high definition capable.

It is true that the FCC does not require the broadcasters to broadcast in HDTV but then again the FCC does not require the broadcasters to broadcast in color.


The United States is going to give free digital tuners to every household in order to make the switch to digital television and so that the analog spectrum can be sold. Hopefully these digital tuners will be HDTV capable.

HDTV can be cheaper than standard definition television. Many people after learning that they can recieve free HDTV signals over the air end up firing the cable company and saving a lot of money.

In many ways 24p is still economically more sound than another frame rate.

A 120 minute movie at 30P is 216,000 frames. The same movie shot at 24P is only 172,800 frames. That's 43,200 frames that you don't have to find storage for. Factor in that when editing a good rule of thumb is to expect to be working with at least three times the amount of footage that will be in the final cut -- so a 120 minute movie may have 360 minutes stored. Estimating about 1MB per frame, that's 129GB of storage you don't have to come up with.

And then what if it's a visual effects film? 43,200 frames played at 24P is half an hour! It's not unusual for a frame of visual effects film to take three or four processor hours to render depending on complexity, but we can round it down to one just because it's still significant.

It's rare for every frame of a film to be a visual effects render, but it's becoming common for a 2 hour film to have about half an hour of VFX. So you're still talking about 10,800 fewer frames, shooting 24 instead of 30. That's 10,800 fewer processor hours, shaving days off the deadline and hundreds of thousands of dollars off the budget. And for footage that takes an artist's frame-by-frame touch, estimating that it takes 10 minutes per frame, you're shaving an hour off each second of footage he has to do. An artist can turn out 5 seconds of 24P for every 4 of 30P. That adds up fast.

I don't think 24P is dying. If making features, I doubt I'd ever bother to shoot on anything else, in fact.

All very good points.

Computer technology is increasing a thousand fold every 20 years. By the year 2025 it will be no more difficult to store 24,000 frames than it is to store24 frames. However since there is a limit to the framerate I suspect in the future computational resources will be dedicated to 3 dimensional holographic images. To display a three dimensional high definition image will require 1000 times more information for each frame or one billion pixels.

I don't think 24p is as complicated as some are making it sound. 24p looks like smooth motion because when captured with 24 frames a second, motion will have more motion blur per frame. When this is played back to the eye, the eye burns it in for a fraction of a second, so the effect is seeing the object AND the blur. With 30fps or 60i your eye has to MAKE the motion blur, because you are mostly only seeing the object, not the motion blur.

To sum it up 24p offers object+motionblur, creating fluid movement.
30p/60i offers just the object, little motion blur. forcing the eye to create motion blur. This makes motion smooth, but not as fluid.

24p doesn't have anything to do with missing information that the brain "participates" in by creating new information. If anything the brain has to participate in 60i by creating motion blur.

just my 2 cents.

I dont agree with Tommy on much but the 24P is more efficient argument is a silly one. You have to have an expensive camera to shoot it, an expensive NLE to edit it and by the very same criteria... wouldn't 12P be even MORE efficient?


ash =o)

Urr no. The DVX100 does 24p, and pretty much all the NLE's around today can edit 24p as well.

I think there are examples today and/or the very near future that illustrate Michael's point--take the upcoming HVX200. Shooting in 24p mode will net you 20 minutes of footage on an 8gb card: shooting at 60 will require three such cards for the same amount of footage. That's a very real and immediate issue for someone considering shooting a feature with this camera once it comes out--how many cards will I need, how much can I afford (even as a rental item)?

Ash, I know you are being flippant on the 12 fps issue but I'm sure you will agree that since we have all grown up with 24 fps footage, anything less than that (or at a stretch, 22 fps) will not look like "normal" movement.

My point is that if you have a $3000 camera and a $3000 cpu/nle then it seems silly to be arguing over 20% less of cheap hard drive space!!

I was being flippant CP... I like 24P for movies and there are many arguements for it but I dont like the conserve space/speed up rendering one.

It makes more sense for the HVX but I wont even be tempted until the storage is cheaper and the workflow clarified. Like I say about everything, it is PROJECT dependent. I would never do something to conserve space or speed it up if it adversely effected the project.


ash =o)

Ash, the efficiency is significant for DVD's since the extra bits from fewer frames can be used to make the other frames look better. That's always a good thing. I can tell the difference in quality in 24p vs 60i DVDs I encode with TMPGenc.

Actually, I think 30P looks great when bumped to NTSC DVD... Again, I love 24P, it is NOT dead but it is also not for everything. It is an effect that you should choose for a particular aesthetic, not because it looks better or is more efficient...


ash =o)

Agreed. And I've made a subtle change to the title of this thread to reflect the continuing debate herein.

My take on the argument is this: When one sets out to make a “movie” (the word ‘movie’ in this context refers to what the average Joe perceives to be a movie) one has to subscribe to a film language. This film language is rooted in all movies of the past and present, and can not be undone. The only way it can be undone is by not only brainwashing the public to accept 60p as the new film language, but also by re-shooting every movie from the past in 60p as well.

The past of cinema, which inspires us all to make movies in the first place, is permanently tied to the present and future. 24p is one of the key ingredients of film language. It's kind of like Nietzsche's theory of eternal recurrence of the same, the past and the future are one.

There seems to be a lack of fundamental understanding here. Let me see if I can help clear some things up here.

First of all, "Empire" is broadcast on the ABC Network, which except for Dallas (which is 1080i60) every other ABC station is 720p60. So, they are at 60Fps whether you realize it or not. (unless, they actually are broadcasting at 24Fps? Seems highly unlikely because many, many shows on ABC are 60Fps.)

Second, what makes you believe the series was shot digitally? How can you know for sure that it wasn't shot on film? If I saw it, I could tell... probably by the depth of field if nothing else. 2/3" video and 35mm look quite different if you didn't already know! If they used a Pro35mm lens adapter, that would blur the lines, of course.

Third, you noticed that fast action was blurred and this is probably indicative of, more than anything else, artifacts of the lousy MPEG2 encoding which erodes quickly under fast motion. That is part of the broadcast stream... The original output from the camera likely was much cleaner.

Or, although it is quite unlikely, it could have been an error on the part of the camera crew. If the action was shot at 24Fps that was a mistake, although a highly unlikely mistake. Generally action would be shot at 48Fps -or another 'overcrank' speed- then playback would still be at 24Fps. The effect is much like simply slowing down a clip by 50% on your non-linear editing software.

Another 'mistake' could have been, if they were indeed shooting digitally, and on a Panasonic VariCam in 720P, they might have been not using a fast enough shutter speed to accomodate the increased framerate. On a motion picture camera that normally would have a 1/48th shutter at 24Fps would by the nature of increasing the framerate to 48Fps, then have a shutter speed twice as fast as before, so in this case, 1/96th.

When you adjust a film camera to a faster framerate, the shutter speed automatically increases in proportion. Digital cameras do not automatically increase in proportion! The effect of having a 1/48th shutter speed at 48Fps would be a blurrier-than-normal motion, which isn't anything at all like the sharp slow motion from a film camera.

The solution is to simply select the appropriate shutter speed for the framerate you are using. Digital cameras must be 'dialed in' to the correct settings -- it is not automatic.

Yet another possibility is if they shot the series at 1080p on a Sony camera the only option for 'slo motion' would be de-interlacing the camera's output from 1080i60, which isn't anywhere close to ideal, but it does work. In this case, they most definitely would have not thought about cranking up the shutter speed, maybe from inexperience? I don't know for sure...

There are a lot of buttons on a digital camera and sometimes crews forget to push the right ones!

Honestly, I would find out if the show was shot digitally or film before dismissing a piece of technology. It hurts, man!

Brian Wells
24P FanBoy

Haven't seen this particular show, but I feel less and less like I can consistently pick out well-shot HD from 35mm on the small screen as more DP's get the hang of the medium...just found out from a friend who worked on the Showtime series "Weeds" that it was HD, and having seen three episodes of it it never occurred to me to wonder if it was film or digital, so I was quite surprised.

Agreed. I was just seeing how far I could push it. . .

Now that it's quoted, it's too late for me to fix, but I must apologize to the universe and my high school English teachers for the sentence "I feel less and less like I can consistently pick out well-shot HD ..." That one's a red-line.

Here are some non-24p creations.
I use the word creations so as not to upset the 24p afficionados. To them I guess they are possibly not films as they posses a 30p reality look,

....though I would admit when I saw Julie Andrews come running over a hill top with a bunch of kids back in the mid 60s I thought wow, that looks real :) 'in caps'



Oklahoma (1955)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956), United Artists
South Pacific (1958), 20th Century Fox
Porgy and Bess (1959), MGM
Can Can (1960), 20th Century Fox
The Alamo (1960), United Artists
Cleopatra (1963), 20th Century Fox
The Sound of Music (1965), 20th Century Fox
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), 20th Century Fox
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), 20th Century Fox
Doctor Dolittle (1967), 20th Century Fox
Star (1968), 20th Century Fox
Hello Dolly (1969), 20th Century Fox
Airport (1970), Universal Pictures
Baraka (1992)

I can hardly wait for the HD DVD version of Baraka.

Amen. I am guessing you mean "as created through the use of 35mm adapters". I experimented with them and couldn't shake that weird look they get. Fortunately, I remembered my last viewing of Kurosawa's Ran and it made me realize a great background is at least as good as shallow DOF. Of course, it took Kurosawa 10 years to make. But I have the advantage of NO schedule to worry about. So... using the old axiom "Quick, Good, Cheap... pick two" I will just take 'Good' and 'Quick'... Heh.

Interesting thing about this list. This a list of Todd-AO films, but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd-AO

It was barely ten years ago that the first mainstream digital still cameras hit the market, and back then many said such cameras would never threaten film photography -- today film photography is on its way out for all but a few purists and specialty purposes. If it takes much more than another ten years to convert the movie industry to digital acquisition and delivery that will be surprising.

Last night I saw the latest Bond film in a theater and noticed motion artifacts in several scenes which looked like the results of too slow frame rates. I still can't see any logical reason to prefer 24 fps over smoother, more realistic motion at higher frame rates, but I guess that's partly a matter of personal taste. Good movie though: as usual content matters more than format.

The movie industry will only switch over once digital offers both a quality incentive and a money incentive. At the moment, when it comes to cameras which can be used as an alternative to film such as the Dalsa etc, it offers neither. The cameras are too big and bulky, and the workflow for such new devices isn't standardised in the industry.

Remember, 35mm is an established workflow for Hollywood. It runs like clockwork. Digital currently doesn't currently offer them any real reasons to abandon film. Also remember that not all films go through a DI process either. So in the scheme of things shooting everything digital in Hollywood doesn't make sense. On top of this, it will take cinemas a long, long time to all convert to digital projection. Its a very expensive upgrade.

It will happen eventually. But it won't happen overnight, and film will be around for a very long time yet.

Stills photography cannot really be used as a comparison because the needs and workflow are totally different.

35mm film is very good for HD transfers, and is archivable for many years, and doesn't require banks of hard drive arrays to store. 35mm doesn't require constant backups, and the data can't be lost in a computer crash.

Digital makes grading easier. But thats about it. Quality wise, 35mm film still rules the roost.

If the financial incentive is there the quality issues may become secondary, and the quality will get there sooner or later. Again, we had this same discussion ten years ago for film photography and that's pretty well settled now. A lot can happen in ten years.

Are there really major motion pictures being made today by splicing film originals and replicating the result without use of digital intermediaries? Examples?

Film inherently deteriorates from the moment it's exposed and requires carefully controlled storage, can't be duplicated exactly and can easily be destroyed by fire or other disasters. There are some advantages to having a physical image as opposed to a bunch of bits on a disk, but that's manageable.

Any film with a negative cutter credit. I'm sure there's still plenty.

[edit: I just went to IMDB to find a recent movie with that credit. Casino Royale qualifies]

Batman Begins too.

"Phantom of the Opera" didn't do a D.I. Neither did Nolan's "The Prestige". Plenty of smaller films don't do a D.I. either, like "Girl with a Pearl Earring" or "Capote". I just had a film out earlier this year that I shot called "Akeelah and the Bee" and it didn't go through a D.I.

But D.I.'s will become more and more commonplace, that's for sure. But the reason isn't a lack of faith in the long-term archivability of film, which if stored properly (and this includes archival masters) should last over a hundred years or more. In fact, many studios are looking into ways of outputting the data files for D.I.'s onto 35mm b&w film separations for long-term storage, which shows you which medium they have more faith in. With so many computer file and tape formats becoming obsolete, the studios would rather go with a more stable technology that will be easily machine readable decades from now, i.e. film.

In response to the first post in this thread... It's simple to change the shutter speed so that you capture less blur and more motion in the shots...

I'm puzzled, a hard drive is more fragile than 35mm film since it's an electro-mechanical device, it's something we can count on to fail (no one quotes MTBF [mean-time between failures] for film, however it's standard procedure to do it for hard drives) at some point in it's life. No medium is perfect, they each have their limitations.

With hard drives, couldn't you pay a lot of money to get the data recovered? (Much like... film.)

Call one of those hard drive recovery services and get a quote... and they can't always recover from catastrophic failures in which the head crashes and tears the *&^$% out of the media.

But we're getting off-topic so I'll stop myself, this was about 24P after all, not film.

Some interesting thoughts on this thread…
But one of the important reasons why 24p looks (or seems) to us as a “film-like” is that we have simply become accustomed to certain conventions over the years. For us film has always been 24 fps, and on top of whatever advantages 24 fps might have over other frame-rates, whether visual, economical, or any other, this is the frame-rate we’ve always watched movies in the movie theaters.
Just like in some countries it’s normal to watch a foreign film with only one translator narrating a whole film and overshadowing original actor’s (or actresses) voices. While in US, we’ve become familiar to reading subtitles and any other way of watching foreign film (such as dubbed, or other) seems unnatural and wrong to us.
Vic

How about the material? Film is called film because it is shot on film and video is shot ... well in many different ways, but not on film. Film gives texture, etc. This is in addition to and on top of frame rates, DOFs, etc

Well, no; you have blur specifically because you're capturing more motion. A faster shutter speed gives you less blur because the exposure time is shorter and moving objects don't move as much during the exposure.

The Film Industry decided to convert from the earlier 10 to 19 fps variable speeds (there was no standard film speed until talkies came out) to 24 fps in the 1920s when engineers of the time were attempting to add an optical sound track to film. Audio couldn't be reproduced faithfully at lower speeds, so projector and camera manufacturers and operators decided on 24 fps (this was the birth of SMPTE, although television had not yet been invented).

Optical cutters were limited and could not make the cuts small enough to attain acceptable high frequency response for audio (especially music) at the slower film speeds of the time. They determined that 24 fps was the minimum speed the film could move across the optical pickup and faithfully reproduce high frequencies.

So we owe 24 fps to the Film Industry's conversion from silent films to talkies in the 1920s... and that's the truth.

According to Mark Schubin of The Schubin Report, 24fps was standardized due to the need for stable sound, but we owe the specific frame rate to a researcher from Western Electric who measured average hand crank speed at various theaters.

Here's the direct link to his podcast. The 24p story starts at 6:07 which is at about the 40% point.