Is 24p dying?
 

When I was watching the new series Empire on my HDTV no doubt it was shot in high definition 24p and it looked fine until the gladiator scenes when the action started to blur. In the new area of digital cinema who in their right minds wants 24p when you can have 60p that handles the fast action so much the better. To me real high definition does not mean just increased spatial resolution but higher temporal resolution as well. But its all these film snobs and their age old ideas that are really holding everything back. The fact is that these film snobs live in the past and they dont want to change. However change is the future and when the concept of change becomes mainstream then there will be nothing holding us back.

I'm not sure I would want to move to a full 60p. I can see 30p though. It has a very beatiful aesthetic when used properly, in my mind.

The problem with 30p or 60p is that they do not transfer well. 30p cannot be bumped to other formats or color standards easily. 24P will be here until we move to 100% digital which is prolly 10-20 years away. Remember there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of theaters and MOST homes that are still on SD and analog.

24P makes perfect sense (for some things) right now... maybe not the distant future but for a while...



ash =o)

60 frames a second has been done in the 70s by some guy and it didnt work.
because allegedly the motion looked too much like video.

24 it seems is the magic number.

B.Gurvich

I agree with Ben.
I'm not a conservative old filmmaker, I'm just an 18-year old filmstudent, but I love the look of 24P.
It's the illusion of film.
People have filmed a century with it, and the most spectacular action scenes are also filmed with 24P so why would we have to change now?

I think the reason 'film' went with 24p is because it was the minimum needed to produce smooth motion. Film costs a lot of money so it makes sense to shoot as little as possible.

One reason you may not like 24p is that panning too fast leads to stuttery motion. The ASC manual recommends an object should take 7 seconds to cross the screen during a pan (or slower) to avoid that problem.

Anyways, it's all up to subjective taste. I personally don't care too much what frame rate something was shot on, although I'd probably prefer 30p (this is in the context of watching images on a CRT-based TV; other display technologies look different in terms of motion reproduction).

But it had some other advantages, including the problem being discussed here. The process was called Showscan, here's an interesting article on the subject...

http://www.barbeefilm.com/showscan%2...It%20Works.htm

Cheers,

-Matt

60 fps would be a horrible frame rate; the human elye can only see about 30 fps and the rest is just blurred. Its like flashing your hand in front of your face, the slower you go, the more clear the picture is, but the more strobe their is, the faster you go, the less strobe thier is, but the their is much more blurr.

I don't understand the fuss about: when you pan fast with 24P it's not all clear.
If you pan fast, that means you don't want people to see everything clear, or am I wrong?
If you want people to see everything, then don't pan fast.
Or am I being to simplistic here?

Actually I disagree. The human eye can see differentiate between 70fps or so. hence the reason video looks like video and different than 30p. Interlaced video is composed of 60 samples of time whereas 30p is 30.

People are too stuck on numbers. Changing frame rate (when you have the luxury of equipment to do so) should be done from an artistic perspective. People like the look of 24p so videographers use it. It's as simple as that.

Firstly it may be a while before we see 1080 60p.

Secondly, while the motion of 24p is not idea from a technical point of view, it does give things a different aesthetic from general television, news etc.

If 1080 60p ever became a standard and everyone used it then there would be nothing to distinguish the motion look of local TV news from the latest Speilberg production!

24p at present creates an unreal motion and emphasises the fictional nature of most films. I don't want my films to look like a reality TV show.

I posted the same thing on another thread somewhere here, so I agree completely: I want films to still look like film: different from reality tv, so you still have the difference between the two!

Agreed. Hence the reason I would choose 30p if a change was enacted :)

Dont pretend frame rate is the only factor... I doubt a Spielberg movie would look like Dog the Bounty Hunter... I beg to argue that 24P is one of a dozen factors. If you shoot Joe Millionaire in 24P will it suddenly change the production? Make it look better? Like film? NO!

Lighting, framing, focus control, dof, angles, camera movement, STORY, editing, etc. etc. etc. are as important, if not moreso than 24P...



ash =o)