The Big Picture: Frame Rate

Rhys Davies

New member
Mar 18, 2010
2
0
0
medv4380 said:
Interesting mention of the 48fps but it misses out on a lot of the historical details.


For some reason they don't understand
24 Fluid Frames Per Second is what Film is at
Games on the other hand run at
60 Still Frames Per Second
This. An exposure =/= as a still rendered image in a video game.

that said I do see 48 as having potential ><

I don't see one as being objectively better than the other, but it does irritate me when people seem to think that because it's a higher number, it ergo must be objectively better because they play video games at higher frame rates.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
1,262
0
0
medv4380 said:
Your eye actually has a very slow frame rate (~15fps for color much higher for gray scale),
Eyes don't have a frame rate, because they don't use frames. Where are you getting the 15fps figure from? It sounds like quackery to me.

medv4380 said:
The next problem is the 48fps is an attempt to get the frames to have less blur. Which makes a fast moving scene clearer, but will also look fake. The reason has nothing to do with the makeup or props. It's because your brain knows that something that is moving is supposed to have a lot of blur.
That doesn't make any sense. If the film is moving faster than your eyes/brain can perceive, then you will perceive that as "blur," just as you would with real-life objects moving faster than you can perceive in detail.

If your comment was true, it would mean that film-makers have found a way to bypass human perception, and give the brain more information than it can process outside of a cinema. That would be a pretty amazing discovery, something worthy of a Nobel Prize or other distinguished science award. I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening, especially as 48fps is a pretty low speed, and well within human perception if you're not intoxicated or have vision difficulties.
 

T'Generalissimo

New member
Nov 9, 2008
317
0
0
j-e-f-f-e-r-s said:
This idea that people are already throwing around on the thread that 48fps is objectively better simply because it has a higher value is ludicrous.
You're right, it is ludicrous, but so is treating 48fps as objectively worse. It's simply different and artists who are actually thinking about what they are doing will choose the technology that better serves the movie they're trying to make. This whole thing makes me think of "realistic" graphics and the gaming industry; new technology didn't render old art styles obsolete but realism is as valid a style to strive for as an other.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
1,262
0
0
Rhys Davies said:
This. An exposure =/= as a still rendered image in a video game.
How is it not? The process to create it is not the same, but the end result is functionally identical. Actually, in computer-generated films (i.e Pixar, etc.) the process is also identical to that of video games.
 

BiscuitTrouser

Elite Member
May 19, 2008
2,860
0
41
Aardvaarkman said:
Eyes don't have a frame rate, because they don't use frames. Where are you getting the 15fps figure from? It sounds like quackery to me.
Actually they technically do. There is only a maximum number of times per second your optic nerve can transmit an impulse to receive an image. If you show an image for less than this time you dont even see it. As long as the recording is above a certain threshhold the motion looks fluid. Anything far less and you start seeing jerky motion. There is no maximum limit to your eyes FPS in terms of media because it will look more fluid up to a point. There is most certainly a minimum value though, which IS about 15-24 above which motion looks fluid. The maximum FPS of your eyes is predicted to be around 200 (pilots can see and remember an image flashed for 1/220th of a second max). But thats totally unnecessary to be honest. The minimum value is all that is necessary for smooth motion since your brain fills in the rest. The brain cuts a LOT of corners to make reality easier to distinguish and understand. Motion is one of them. Our max FPS doesnt have a huge effect on how we see motion since our brain will fill in the gaps after 24 FPS anyway.
 

Pyrian

Hat Man
Legacy
Jul 8, 2011
1,399
8
13
San Diego, CA
Country
US
Gender
Male
Aardvaarkman said:
If the film is moving faster than your eyes/brain can perceive, then you will perceive that as "blur," just as you would with real-life objects moving faster than you can perceive in detail.
Right on. Here's the interesting thing: the eye can perceive motion at very high "frame rate", or rather it takes a very high frame rate to deceive the eye into seeing motion where there is none. (Even attempting to assign a number may be inappropriate, since for any object you can perceive at all, the ratio between the size of the moving object and the distance it moves per frame is more relevant than the speed per se, although I think you could find an upper limit where any object you can perceive moving is adequately represented, that upper limit would be very high.) 48FPS should need half as much motion blur as 24FPS, but it still needs motion blur IMO. Motion blur at 24FPS tends to be exaggerated; it "looks like film" because it is, but it doesn't look real, at least not to me. I haven't seen The Hobbit yet and do not know how it looks to me, nor even if they're using a frame-rate appropriate motion blur or not.

Don't believe me about motion requiring a very high frame rate for eye-blur to kick in? Try this simple test. If you have motion blur turned on for your mouse pointer, turn it off. Now move the mouse around quickly. Do you see a blur, or do see a cascade of discrete after-images? At 60FPS, you will easily see the discrete frames of the mouse being moved. The notion that the eye cannot distinguish frame rates above 15/24/60 is self-evidently nonsense, as anybody with a computer can test with a trivial exercise.

No, what the eye has difficulty with is detecting the difference between movement and well-implemented motion blur (and film can do a very fine job of simulating motion blur by the simple expedient of functioning similarly to eye itself). Proving that you can fool the eye does not prove that the eye cannot distinguish frames.
 

Rhys Davies

New member
Mar 18, 2010
2
0
0
Aardvaarkman said:
Rhys Davies said:
This. An exposure =/= as a still rendered image in a video game.
How is it not? The process to create it is not the same, but the end result is functionally identical. Actually, in computer-generated films (i.e Pixar, etc.) the process is also identical to that of video games.
Because as it's stated in the video, an exposure has motion blur, as each exposure lasts 1/48th of a second (or 1/96th for 48). Video games on the other hand are a completely still frame. games try to overcome this by adding their own form of motion blur, but doing this in real time just doesn't look any ware near effective as actual motion blur from an exposure.

CGI and 3D animated films add motion blur into their renders, and as they don't have to render it in real time, the motion blur is imposed correctly and subtly. pause toy story when it's in motion and you can see the motion blur clearly... it's what films look smooth at 24 but games look jumpy.
 

The_Waspman

New member
Sep 14, 2011
569
0
0
Milanezi said:
Hmpf... I don't care, but I wish they'd stop with the CGI. When CGI gets old it gets VERY ugly, to the point of us saying "dude, that's not how I remember it", using props and stuff though, when they're well done, those stick forever or at least get a classic stamp to them.
I wholeheartedly agree. And its not just when it gets old either. I saw this in the standard 24 fps, and I thought the majority of the cgi (like in the LOTR trilogy) was extremely unconvincing. If, as Bob says, the props, makeup and (I assume) visual effects appear more obvious in 48 fps, I can only imagine how terrible the cgi must look at that speed.

I really don't know how to explain it really. I mean, you can go all the way back to Jurassic Park, and (for the most part) the cg still stands up. Which I find surprising, because its all living creatures - which cgi has big problem with. Cgi animals and cgi people always stand out in films, and I can never really figure out why. Something about the way they move perhaps, or how their skin moves, like they don't have a skeletal system, or they entirely lack weight.

When I first heard about this 48 fps thing, I naturally turned my nose up at it with disgust. I cant claim to enjoy change that much. Not that I'm a luditte by any means, but when change is forced upon us when it is quite clearly un-needed (and for the most part doesn't work - thats right, I'm looking at YOU, 3D!) then I start to have a problem...
 

Sonic Doctor

Time Lord / Whack-A-Newbie!
Jan 9, 2010
3,042
0
0
Zachary Amaranth said:
HDTVs can do frame rates in excess of 48.
I'm guessing that is why most everything I watch on the new HDTV that my dad got himself last Christmas, looks like I'm watching a stage theater production rather than movie/tv broadcasts.

The first thing I saw on that TV was "Christmas Vacation", and I was weirded-out by how real it looked.
 

snowfi6916

New member
Nov 22, 2010
336
0
0
I never understood the problem with 48 fps. What's wrong with technology advancing a little? Bob did say it's been 24 fps for quite a while now. I'd be willing to watch movies in 48 fps once they work the kinks out.
 

medv4380

The Crazy One
Feb 26, 2010
672
4
23
Aardvaarkman said:
Eyes don't have a frame rate, because they don't use frames. Where are you getting the 15fps figure from? It sounds like quackery to me.

That doesn't make any sense. If the film is moving faster than your eyes/brain can perceive, then you will perceive that as "blur," just as you would with real-life objects moving faster than you can perceive in detail.

If your comment was true, it would mean that film-makers have found a way to bypass human perception, and give the brain more information than it can process outside of a cinema. That would be a pretty amazing discovery, something worthy of a Nobel Prize or other distinguished science award. I'm pretty sure that's not what's happening, especially as 48fps is a pretty low speed, and well within human perception if you're not intoxicated or have vision difficulties.
We do see in frames. Here is a book for reference.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jzbUUL0xJAEC&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false
We see at about 15fps when you're talking about color. The Retina resets about ever 1/15th of a Second which is 15 frames per second. For some it's as low as 12 and others it could be a bit faster than 15.
There are a couple of notable exceptions though. Your night vision which is in Gray Scale is more sensitive. It has a faster refresh than color. It's also why good compression tech splits RGB into YUV which is Gray Scale, Red Croma, and Blue Croma. Because we're more sensitive to changes in the Gray scale we put the best compression on Gray and the loosy compression on the Croma values.

They haven't found a way to bypass human perception. They just found a way to display a fake image to the eye in a way the brain can tell that it's fake. You're also not getting more information. You're losing information on the motion of the image, and gaining clarity of an image. You've actually lost information to gain the clarity so you're not giving the brain more than it can take it. But because it's not how the brain sees it knows the image is fake. In part, this is because we evolved to pay attention to motion and motion blur more than clarity.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
1,262
0
0
medv4380 said:
We do see in frames. Here is a book for reference.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jzbUUL0xJAEC&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false
We see at about 15fps when you're talking about color. The Retina resets about ever 1/15th of a Second which is 15 frames per second. For some it's as low as 12 and others it could be a bit faster than 15..
Those aren't frames. Frames are photographic stills on a film reel. The human brain doesn't process things that way. And a 12-year-old book about film restoration is not an authoritative source for information about human perception. The book you refer to doesn't even have any citations for this claim, and it is a very basic text about film equipment, not a scientific text about how humans perceive motion.
 

medv4380

The Crazy One
Feb 26, 2010
672
4
23
Aardvaarkman said:
medv4380 said:
We do see in frames. Here is a book for reference.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jzbUUL0xJAEC&pg=PA24#v=onepage&q&f=false
We see at about 15fps when you're talking about color. The Retina resets about ever 1/15th of a Second which is 15 frames per second. For some it's as low as 12 and others it could be a bit faster than 15..
Those aren't frames. Frames are photographic stills on a film reel. The human brain doesn't process things that way.
The Image on your Retina is no different than a frame of film, and the fact that we can see it reset gives a clear indication of the maximum rate it take images at.
 

Aardvaarkman

I am the one who eats ants!
Jul 14, 2011
1,262
0
0
medv4380 said:
The Image on your Retina is no different than a frame of film, and the fact that we can see it reset gives a clear indication of the maximum rate it take images at.
It's very different than a frame on film. A frame on film captures a narrow field with specific boundaries. The human eye has more of an uneven field with detail at the center, and more peripheral vision, which tends to be sensitive to motion.

And what's your source for the idea that we can "see it reset"? f that were the case, wouldn't it indicate that we are capable of perceiving things beyond the supposed "frame rate"?
 

Twilight_guy

Sight, Sound, and Mind
Nov 24, 2008
7,131
0
0
What argument do I want to pick at. Games being at 60 FPS and good while movies must be at 24 FPS to be good dispite both using the same moving picture mechanics? An argument over people saying that you need to give new tech a chance despite hating on DRM and saying it will never work? Maybe noting that people are saying that critics are using old thinking while also going on and on about nostalgic games? Oh so many excellent things to point out and then immediately get shouted at for, but I think I'll instead just leave immediately before I get blasted for having the gall to mention certain double standards in people's logic. AWAY!
 

Vinterdraken

New member
Apr 4, 2009
25
0
0
I saw it in 48 FPS and loved it. Sure it took a few minutes to get used to it and at first it pulled me a bit out of the movie. But once things got rolling I found it just added more and drew me in further. Really hope more movies will go 48 fps, it really does make a huge difference in my opinion.
 

Dastardly

Imaginary Friend
Apr 19, 2010
2,420
0
0
MovieBob said:
Frame Rate

How many frames per second does it take to anger critics?

Watch Video
The issue for me has nothing to do with the math. It has to do with the psychology.

When I'm watching something in real-life, there's a certain amount of blur to it, as my mind can only focus on one individual detail at a moment (like everyone else). When I'm focusing intently on someone's nose, let's say, the rest of the "scene" gets a slight haze to it. When something is moving, motion blur does the same thing.

And matching the "frame rate" of the human eye is a flawed idea, anyhow. See, in real life, as your eye tracks movement, you're not getting a consistent frame rate. Every time you move your eyes, your brain shuts down input from your eyes during that split second while your eyes are moving -- this is why you don't see images "drip" or "smear" from one to another. Your brain fills in the gaps and grows accustomed to the out-of-focus elements of the scene, especially during relative movement.

When watching in a very high frame rate, a lot of that blur is undermined. The result is that actually look less natural -- you become more aware that you're watching this scene from a greater distance, and that it's through someone else's eye. Basically, your brain buys the illusion better when it fills in the gaps itself (think Inception).