HFR - High Frame Rates
Discussion
Who reckons this is the future of cinema or is it a dead end?
I remember watching the Hobbit at 48 FPS and Gemini Man at 60 FPS. I would love to have seen that at 120 but couldn't find anywhere that was showing it.
I was pretty struck by my reactions to it. Sometimes I didn't notice it, other times I thought it added a little something other times I found it painful and made everything look like an Eldorado episode or a real estate promotion on Youtube.
Some have said 24 FPS adds a crucial later of artifice that we all collectively buy in to. Remove it and things start to look a little naked. I think I agree.
Have you checked any out and did it work for you?
I remember watching the Hobbit at 48 FPS and Gemini Man at 60 FPS. I would love to have seen that at 120 but couldn't find anywhere that was showing it.
I was pretty struck by my reactions to it. Sometimes I didn't notice it, other times I thought it added a little something other times I found it painful and made everything look like an Eldorado episode or a real estate promotion on Youtube.
Some have said 24 FPS adds a crucial later of artifice that we all collectively buy in to. Remove it and things start to look a little naked. I think I agree.
Have you checked any out and did it work for you?
I remember reading something about the higher frame rates will lead to 3d with out the need for glasses. Which could possibly be where the new Avatar film will be heading.
But for home I doubt it will catch on, I hated the higher frame rate hobbit. It made the modelling look like an old Ray Harryhauser fim.
But for home I doubt it will catch on, I hated the higher frame rate hobbit. It made the modelling look like an old Ray Harryhauser fim.
Zirconia said:
Too much legacy and clinging to the mains I think. We get sport 50i and p.
Sport makes sense. You want as much visual info as you can get. I was thinking more about the scripted and acted side of things.
Tony Starks said:
I remember reading something about the higher frame rates will lead to 3d with out the need for glasses. Which could possibly be where the new Avatar film will be heading.
I think James Cameron has binned his HFR plans. bloomen said:
Zirconia said:
Too much legacy and clinging to the mains I think. We get sport 50i and p.
Sport makes sense. You want as much visual info as you can get. I was thinking more about the scripted and acted side of things.
Tony Starks said:
I remember reading something about the higher frame rates will lead to 3d with out the need for glasses. Which could possibly be where the new Avatar film will be heading.
I think James Cameron has binned his HFR plans. 8K will be interesting.
Zirconia said:
Yeah, understood filmy stuff, legacy I expect and storage and the punters not really clamouring for it. It can be done, but how much kit in the system can display it I wonder? Camera's for film are now amazing things with a lot of capabilities. Looking at the RED specs I wonder what a 4k at 120fps does for a storage solution after editing.
8K will be interesting.
There were 12 cinemas in the whole US that could manage 3d 120fps 4K for Gemini Man which doesn't bode too well. 8K will be interesting.
I spent several minutes staring at an 8K TV. I'm a right image queen but had serious difficulty making out any difference between that and 4K. It seems they're pushing the upscaling rather than specific content.
My internet can barely cope with 4K streaming and downloading as is.
Raw Red 8K is 121gb per minute.
8K I was think more for initial capture for edit, it is already happening for some stuff. Down convert the various formats but one reviewer went to a demo last years CES and said the 8K demo, whilst amazing, was making him queasy. 3D had similar issues especially for sport but careful management of left eye and right eye delivered.
But, big budget, storage then editing down, is the industry the ones saying "nah, we good thanks"? Most people watch a DVD over other formats, 4k is a sliver of the overall sales. Apathy another driver?
But, big budget, storage then editing down, is the industry the ones saying "nah, we good thanks"? Most people watch a DVD over other formats, 4k is a sliver of the overall sales. Apathy another driver?
On file sizes, it's getting massive and requires pretty hefty infrastructure to deal with it.
My business is in post production and we're currently doing a lot of restoration of old content by going back to the original 35mm film, scanning it at 4K, 4096x3112 pixels (which is approximately what 35mm film's native resolution is) and then re-making the content from scratch (matching the original edit, doing a new colour grade, replicating any graphics etc.). The results are simply unreal and I think more so for old content than for new.
You expect a new documentary to look great, what tends to get the wow factor is when a music video from the 80s looks like it was shot yesterday. Each scanned frame is 73MB though so scanning at 8K takes that up close to 300MB per frame so 400-450GB per minute (and that's only at 24fps).
We've only done one of those 8K beasts so far and it took some serious rendering! Final delivery in 8K to the client goes down to about 30GB per minute then a tiny fraction of that once it reaches your home, compression is a wonderful thing!
My business is in post production and we're currently doing a lot of restoration of old content by going back to the original 35mm film, scanning it at 4K, 4096x3112 pixels (which is approximately what 35mm film's native resolution is) and then re-making the content from scratch (matching the original edit, doing a new colour grade, replicating any graphics etc.). The results are simply unreal and I think more so for old content than for new.
You expect a new documentary to look great, what tends to get the wow factor is when a music video from the 80s looks like it was shot yesterday. Each scanned frame is 73MB though so scanning at 8K takes that up close to 300MB per frame so 400-450GB per minute (and that's only at 24fps).
We've only done one of those 8K beasts so far and it took some serious rendering! Final delivery in 8K to the client goes down to about 30GB per minute then a tiny fraction of that once it reaches your home, compression is a wonderful thing!
Tyndall said:
On file sizes, it's getting massive and requires pretty hefty infrastructure to deal with it.
I've always found it fascinating how technology manages to never let up. More bandwidth and storage? Let's make the content concurrently humongous too. Can't be slacking off now. What are the main specs for the cinema in the UK anyway? Never dealt with that side. Say for example they have fast links in, 10gb/s and store the film on pre download from the distributers servers a week away from release. No longer running around with a few tins I suppose or does some one pop in with a hard drive or 2. Server internally deals with the projector to each screen, that network will need to cope. I am guessing here what happens?
Would have though 10gb/s was optimistic inside production? 4k 50p running at 13gb/s and HD up to 3?
Would have though 10gb/s was optimistic inside production? 4k 50p running at 13gb/s and HD up to 3?
Zirconia said:
What are the main specs for the cinema in the UK anyway? Never dealt with that side. Say for example they have fast links in, 10gb/s and store the film on pre download from the distributers servers a week away from release. No longer running around with a few tins I suppose or does some one pop in with a hard drive or 2. Server internally deals with the projector to each screen, that network will need to cope. I am guessing here what happens?
Would have though 10gb/s was optimistic inside production? 4k 50p running at 13gb/s and HD up to 3?
Virtually all cinema globally takes DCP for their delivery (Digital Cinema Package). This is delivered at 2K or 4K (mostly 2K as there are very few 4K screens in cinemas) but crucially, it's is the same bitrate for both at about 250Mb/s so an hour in the cinema is approx 110Gb regardless of being 4K or 2K. It means the file sizes are pretty small compared with production so their lines aren't an issue - a lot are delivered physically anyway on drives.Would have though 10gb/s was optimistic inside production? 4k 50p running at 13gb/s and HD up to 3?
We're mainly short form content which makes thing a lot easier. When you're editing you don't actually edit those huge native scans. You make lower res compressed proxy files which are identical in terms of frame rate/duration and edit using those before linking it all up to the big stuff at the end. The colourists then do their bit.
Tyndall said:
Virtually all cinema globally takes DCP for their delivery (Digital Cinema Package). This is delivered at 2K or 4K (mostly 2K as there are very few 4K screens in cinemas) but crucially, it's is the same bitrate for both at about 250Mb/s so an hour in the cinema is approx 110Gb regardless of being 4K or 2K. It means the file sizes are pretty small compared with production so their lines aren't an issue - a lot are delivered physically anyway on drives.
We're mainly short form content which makes thing a lot easier. When you're editing you don't actually edit those huge native scans. You make lower res compressed proxy files which are identical in terms of frame rate/duration and edit using those before linking it all up to the big stuff at the end. The colourists then do their bit.
Cheers. I only dealt with live at the start of its journey.We're mainly short form content which makes thing a lot easier. When you're editing you don't actually edit those huge native scans. You make lower res compressed proxy files which are identical in terms of frame rate/duration and edit using those before linking it all up to the big stuff at the end. The colourists then do their bit.
Pal of mine is a head of IT for a BIG TV / movie company and he was telling me 4k data storage is a headache, and loads of stuff is shot at 2k then scaled back up once finished, to keep editing work flowing and the data overhead down.
As for HFR - I wanted to like it but it's just too odd. Takes me out of the film, so to speak. It takes away the "filmic" feel. It's just the same if you enable any of the motion smoothing on my TV. I notice it immediately. (Watched a new format for the first time the other day - Dolby vision - and my TV reverted to defaults as it was a new type of stream (The Irishman). After 5 mins of confusion I realised what had happened. I thought they'd filmed it in HFR for a few mins.
As for HFR - I wanted to like it but it's just too odd. Takes me out of the film, so to speak. It takes away the "filmic" feel. It's just the same if you enable any of the motion smoothing on my TV. I notice it immediately. (Watched a new format for the first time the other day - Dolby vision - and my TV reverted to defaults as it was a new type of stream (The Irishman). After 5 mins of confusion I realised what had happened. I thought they'd filmed it in HFR for a few mins.
Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 10th January 01:59
Zirconia said:
^^
Is it because we (our brains) are all used to the lower rates I wonder. If the industry had started on the higher rates, would we look at lower rates as inferior?
That's what I've been asking myself. I guess we'll never know but the law of primacy will no doubt apply. Is it because we (our brains) are all used to the lower rates I wonder. If the industry had started on the higher rates, would we look at lower rates as inferior?
This video has some good pondering about it from the comments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPZXR4sxfRc
I skimmed the YouTube comments but two piqued my interest . Two things I noticed when accidentally watching The Irishman with motion smoothing enabled (so adding extra frames I assume).
1) the acting looked "bad". It looked like the actors speaking their lines, not them actually being their characters.
2) a scene where a guy is kicked on the ground looked totally staged.
On d smoothing was disabled all was as it should be again.
Now what is really interesting is this implies that the issue is the smoothness (too much of) that causes the issue, not extra information, as there was no real extra information, other than duplicated frames.
I reckon it's to do with persistence of vision. We make up extra " frames" to smooth out 24p in our heads. We make it up so it seems natural. When this is done by the movie itself something different happens. Don't know what, but that's my inkling.
1) the acting looked "bad". It looked like the actors speaking their lines, not them actually being their characters.
2) a scene where a guy is kicked on the ground looked totally staged.
On d smoothing was disabled all was as it should be again.
Now what is really interesting is this implies that the issue is the smoothness (too much of) that causes the issue, not extra information, as there was no real extra information, other than duplicated frames.
I reckon it's to do with persistence of vision. We make up extra " frames" to smooth out 24p in our heads. We make it up so it seems natural. When this is done by the movie itself something different happens. Don't know what, but that's my inkling.
ash73 said:
I'm curious why BBC iPlayer uses 50fps, it doubles the size of the files with no benefit (except sport).
I suspect the extra frames are just duplicates too; I re-encoded some content at 25fps and can't see any difference.
It's odd they chose 720x50 instead of 1080x25.
UK and US have a legacy of mains frequencies (50hz and 60hz). Huge can o worms, it messes up things today with dropped frames, duplicated, pull up and pull down etc. I fancy with new panels and delivery at a cinema a rethink could happen but it costs I suppose.I suspect the extra frames are just duplicates too; I re-encoded some content at 25fps and can't see any difference.
It's odd they chose 720x50 instead of 1080x25.
Re encoding already compressed stuff is not a great test I would have thought (certainly frowned upon in the delivery chain). 50i and 50p are noticeable differences in detail, 25 is OK but a camera moving will show it up. Problem with an already compressed signal is you have taken say 1.485gb/s live feed and rung it through the mangle to get a 5mb/s feed (guessing the same as other providers). Not sure what it is over the aerial.
ash73 said:
You can see it for yourself if you download a couple of videos in iPlayer and put them in VLC, then use the "E" key to advance a single frame at a time. News programmes and sport are true 50fps, whereas every drama programme I've tested they just duplicate each frame to make it 50fps. You can re-encode it to 25fps and reduce the file size by 50% with no drop in quality.
Just think of all the wasted bandwidth!
Mis read you. I see, apols.Just think of all the wasted bandwidth!
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