Peter Jackson Confirms He's Shooting The Hobbit at 48 FPS

[MarsProbe]

Explains all the motion blur and difficulty focusing i've been noticing. I was just spoiled by games this whole time.

Hmm, maybe that's the problem. I've also noticed a lot of blurring in the cinema these days with some films, especially with the panning shots. Though I originally thought maybe my eyesight was failing...

 

[uc.asc]

There was a thing a few years back. People were asked to listen to two samples of the same song, one high quality and the other low, and say which one sounded better. People who were used to listening to shitty low bitrate mp3s actually preferred the low quality samples.

People whining about movies finally being dragged out of the dark ages are the sort of people who listen to those 96 kbps flv rips from youtube. 24 fps is bullshit, and if you really like watching crap then reencode to xvid and leave the rest of us out of it.

 

[Mister Benoit]

Sounds like a plan. Even though we're not supposed to be able to tell the difference beyond 30fps, I think it'll make the whole thing play out smoother.

http://www.boallen.com/fps-compare.html
Watch. Share. Destroy the ignorance.

That's a wonderful link.

It's actually something that has bothered me and my gf at home.

Back in November I bought a new Samsung 46inch 1080p TV, when I play certain TV shows and movies they just seem a off. Like they were filmed with a bad camera or something. Not because of the quality but it looks like a filter is missing or something. Everything is just really really clear.

For example we watched Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone and it looked incredibly amateur, same goes for Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and the tv series Breaking Bad (Which was the first time I noticed the difference, we were 4 people watching and all wondering why it looked a little off.)

 

[Aurgelmir]

Good for him, can't wait to see it

Problem is my lowly local theater will probably not be one of the venues where this film can be shown, even by then.

All digital Cinemas can show it. And there is still so much Film Cinemas out there that they will do a frame reduction (remove every second frame) for a Film release.

So Digital gets 48, Film gets 24. To much money involved to exclude the Film market.

 

[Optimystic]

http://www.xkcd.com/732/

THIS. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS. (Mouse-over the comic for relevance to FPS)

CURSES! You beat me to it.

I am so glad this trend is FINALLY being bucked - and on a film that's guaranteed to be a commercial success no less!

 

[Phishfood]

Sounds like a plan. Even though we're not supposed to be able to tell the difference beyond 30fps, I think it'll make the whole thing play out smoother.

http://www.boallen.com/fps-compare.html
Watch. Share. Destroy the ignorance.

Finally managed to watch that link (it was firewalled at work) and while it does show the difference between frame rates its a computer graphic. An actual filmed scene has some motion blur in it that helps smooth out the frame rates.

 

[RobCoxxy]

As "Film Guy" this makes me very happy.

 

[Jegsimmons]

honestly, i think peter can pull of anything he want with these films, besides the fact he has the best special effects company behind him (weta workshops) but the dude is an amazing director, he's been know to work an entire day on just on little dialogue scene from different angles, so he's a perfectionist.
and best of all...story first....

my only complaint...3d? seriously? i thought you were above that peter!

 

[jpblade666]

I'm not technically sound in the slightest, but this sounds pretty cool. All I could really get from is was "this is the standard number, this is a number that is doubled, we will use the doubled number, I'M PETER JACKSON!!" Sounds fair enough, now I just have to wait for The Hobbit to come out in theaters.

 

[unwesen]

While vinyl may not offer a total 100% accururate representation of the sound, the fact that it is analogue, and thus based off the original waveforms, not digital reconstructions of them, inherently means it will be a 'truer' representation.

Not really.

Equalization's results are that low frequencies are captured with less detail, higher frequencies with higher detail. That makes it a de-facto information loss on the side of the low frequencies, that cannot be regained during playback. Digitized music, by comparison, loses information evenly distributed all over the frequency spectrum.

It's entirely debatable which form of information loss is better or worse, or which you prefer, but information loss is information loss is information loss...

I speak as someone who has an extensive digital library of music. There are many reasons to prefer CDs over Vinyl LPS: they scratch less eaasily, are more portable, you can listen to more than 20 minutes of music without having to change disc...

Yes, I've got a few CDs myself... my wife says too many, let's leave it at that

But don't just take my word for it. Science tells us this is true.

Awesome That's almost got me convinced

 

[pacati]

Ironic. He compares it to Vinyl-CD evolution.

That revolution reduced resolution (vinyl = infinite resolution, CD = 16 bit) whereas his film evolution increases resolution.

Well, nobody is championing Jackson for his engineering knowledge.

 

[beema]

It better be in 4-D too, or me and my fat popcorn-inhaling cohorts shall not be satisfied!!!!

ps: I HATE the way everything looks on those new TV's with motion-smoothing. If this is anything like that, count me out. I don't want everything looking like a low budget soap opera

 

[pacati]

While vinyl may not offer a total 100% accururate representation of the sound, the fact that it is analogue, and thus based off the original waveforms, not digital reconstructions of them, inherently means it will be a 'truer' representation.

Not really.

Equalization's results are that low frequencies are captured with less detail, higher frequencies with higher detail. That makes it a de-facto information loss on the side of the low frequencies, that cannot be regained during playback. Digitized music, by comparison, loses information evenly distributed all over the frequency spectrum.

It's entirely debatable which form of information loss is better or worse, or which you prefer, but information loss is information loss is information loss...

I speak as someone who has an extensive digital library of music. There are many reasons to prefer CDs over Vinyl LPS: they scratch less eaasily, are more portable, you can listen to more than 20 minutes of music without having to change disc...

Yes, I've got a few CDs myself... my wife says too many, let's leave it at that

But don't just take my word for it. Science tells us this is true.

Awesome That's almost got me convinced

Listen to a pristine, unworn, unscratched vinyl, you won't miss a thing. The resolution makes it sound like they're playing right in the room. It's a live performance, as opposed to a sampled version of the sound. But do note, if you're listening to a vinyl that was originally a digital recording, you're missing the best of both worlds.

As far as highs and lows, a high frequency is a shorter wave. The following is best explained with a pen and paper to illustrate the Staircase Effect digital sampling has, but I'll do my best to describe it. If you can imagine a shorter wave, then you know it's also a steeper wave that changes its amplitude at a greater, well, frequency. When ANY digital medium "samples" that sound, it takes a snapshot of the position the wave is at, and then (depending on the resolution, CDs are 16 bit which is pathetic) you don't get another representation of the wave until the digital medium takes a snapshot or "sample" again. This makes your smooth soundwave look like a staircase. At higher frequencies, this misrepresentation is more exaggerated because the wave is rising and falling faster. Thus recordings on CD makes cymbols sound a bit like breaking glass, or something, but nothing like a real cymbol. And complex recordings like classical music make it sound like the orchestra just shrunk.

The only reason the CD "revolution" happened was most people took awful care of their records. When a record is worn and/or scratched, a CD is going to win everytime. And both failures are super easy to do (scratches from vinyl's manual cueuing, wear from a cheap, heavy needle, which most turntables used).

 

[Wolfenbarg]

There was a thing a few years back. People were asked to listen to two samples of the same song, one high quality and the other low, and say which one sounded better. People who were used to listening to shitty low bitrate mp3s actually preferred the low quality samples.

People whining about movies finally being dragged out of the dark ages are the sort of people who listen to those 96 kbps flv rips from youtube. 24 fps is bullshit, and if you really like watching crap then reencode to xvid and leave the rest of us out of it.

Or maybe they're people who actually have a stake in film production instead of just outsiders who think more frames are better because it's true in video games? Plenty of things shoot in higher frame rates, but people almost universally associate them with shit. 24 frames per second is the look of cinema. You can change the standard screenwriting font from Courier to Arial and make the same claim that it's bigger, better, and easier, but it would ultimately go down the exact same road. It's an aesthetic choice that wider audiences will ultimately find less endearing.

I don't have any problem with this particular film or the next Avatar being shot in higher frame rates if it means the 3D won't be a gimmick at best, but as a general trend for all movies to adopt, these people are crazy.