Why use 24p

Are we just so used to 24p that we've become narrow minded at the prospect of anything else on offer? In some ways, this is true.

After all, the frame rate didn't become a standard for any artistic reason; just like any bygone filming technique, it was chosen because of limitations with technology or budget. Also, it comes down to whether or not the motion effect that a certain frame rate provides suits a particular project.

I can't help but feel that it is more than that and it's not so easy to simply dismiss that legacy. It is true that 24fps may not have originally been an artistic choice, but the reality is that it very much is now.

Many have talked about the slower frame rate giving a dreamlike quality, arguing that this is why 24fps suits the fantasy of a film. It's hard to argue against that point. It's become as much a part of the artistic process as using a shallow depth of field.

In the end, I think of the circumstances of how 24fps came about simply as a happy accident. It's possible that, had it not have happened, some artistic cinematographer would have come along and done it anyway and audiences still would have loved it.

An Avatar sequel will probably still look gorgeous at fps and the creative freedom to use a different technique to tell a story is wonderful. If it suits a project, experimentation can produce wonderful results a great example is Saving Private Ryan using 90 and 45 degree shutter angles.

The fact is that 24fps does suit film and it always will. Graphic by Shutterstock. Tags: Technology. RedShark is a multiplatform online publication for anyone with an interest in moving image technology and craft.

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Popular Quantum Computing just got desktop sized. Solid-state batteries will change everything. I would much prefer to watch sports at p or a wildlife documentary at p because I want to see detail and not have motion blur.

I want to feel like I am right there. Conversely, there is a certain amount of magic about seeing a theatrical release movie at 24fps, because it suspends disbelieve and transforms you into another world. Shooting at 24fps helps mask a certain level of sharpness, softens motion, and helps with set design, costumes, and make-up. At higher frame rates, you can see flaws in sets, and make-up and costumes can look not quite right.

The ultra-sharp look of using higher frame rates and a higher shutter speed can take you out of the viewing experience when watching a movie. It immediately created a heated debate in the film industry. Audiences and critics complained about the ultra-sharp look of the HFR version.

Subsequently, Jackson was forced to change the look to the follow-up films in the series. Again, it is what we are used to that greatly affects our perceived interpretation of what we are viewing. You can also put this down to the differences between TV and film. We associate a certain look with TV and so if we see a movie that looks like TV it subconsciously makes us react in a different way. Neither movie was well received and both were box office flops. Now, resolution is directly effected by framerate.

Perceived image fidelity is not simply about resolution. At first glance, when objects are moving or appear only very briefly, your eye cannot perceive the difference between a 1K and a 4K image.

For fine detail to be resolved at higher resolutions, your eye needs time to rest on the image. If the image is moving or cut too quickly the extra resolution cannot be perceived. If you have perfect eyesight and were sitting in the first two rows of the theatre you were in could you actually enjoy the benefits of 4K.

Anyone sitting further back would not be able to perceive the difference in resolution. To get the benefit of 4K at home you either need to be sitting very close to the screen or have a very large 4K TV.

The only way to perceive a difference between 2K and 4K when the camera is moving is to use a higher frame rate and shutter speed — with less resulting motion blur. If you want to have higher resolution for motion pictures where objects are moving and the camera is moving, then you need to use higher frame rates for capture and display to see a difference.

Within the industry, the jury still seems to be out on whether HFR material still looks at all like film and whether strobing artifact effects are needed for it to retain its film look. There are now digital cinema projectors that are capable of progressive frames per second, so the technology is in place, but the question remains: will the aesthetics be accepted by directors, the industry, and most importantly the audience?

If we want to stick to 24fps for movies then the endless resolution push seems a bit pointless to me. There is no such thing as one framerate to rule them all.

Anyone who thinks you should shoot everything at 24p is making a very dumb argument. Here is a good overview of both film and computer animation motion blur and why it's so computationally expensive to simulate. Note also that, in high-FPS-preferred video games, you're typically not just watching for the sake of seeing what's going to happen, you're watching for the sake of aiming, dodging, etc.

Fast cuts between blurry shakycams were annoying enough when watching Jason Bourne try to survive a fight, but the important part of those scenes was the tension, not the specific geometry of the action.

In a video game the tension comes from your interaction with such scenes, and making it hard to see exactly what's happening in the fraction of a second when you need to react would be outright unacceptable.

Actually 18 fps was the slowest frame rate where motion appears smooth. Incidentally, this is why Chaplin and other clips often appear so fast and choppy, because they were shot in 18 fps but played at 24 fps in most archive footage. Shoot, I should patent that.

There are considerations for shutter speed and exposure as well that limit the speed of capture. A few considerations P for Progressive - that's a big part of it. A progressively sampled video delivers greater clarity than interlaced video generally. It is basically higher resolution. People often feel the unique motion characteristics lend a more filmic quality to the image. I find the decressed temporal resolution unplesant, and don't consider the increased apparent spatial resolution balances that out.

Now, higher rate progressive standards are a different issue! Well, it's worth talking about Douglas Trumbull. He created something called Showscan which shot and then projected film at 60 frames per second big large pictures nearly looked real, so some place near 60 frames perhaps ?

But 60fps looks more real And that's a problem. We're used to and educated around 24 frames. We like that look - have you ever seen a child watch a movie for the first time? It blows television away; it's huge and moving, etc Some other things that occur to me Nearly every 'major' film has rotoscoping work done drawn using computers nowadays.

You're talking about nearly tripling the work to be done. Our data storage? At huge frame sizes? Yeah, best triple your data path and storage too. Full film 4k quadruples that.