Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeformed | Hacker News Reader

It's not conditioning. Frame rate is a tool in the toolbox, and more isn't always better, just like a colorized black and white film isn't better just because it has added information.

This is most easily apparent in animation, which frequently makes use of variable frame rates to achieve different effects and feelings, often even within elements of the same scene. A character might be animated at 12 fps while the background is at 8 fps. Bumping those all up to 60 would be an entirely different shot with very different vibes.

View on HN

Surely 24 fps was made the standard to save money on film.

It's about the slowest frame rate that's not very distracting.

Needless to say, film is no longer the major expense it used to be. In the early days the film itself was a fairly big part of the production cost (and don't forget distribution - cost to replicate the film - and operating cost for the projectors - handling film rolls twice as big, etc.).

And standards are sticky, so the industry stayed on 24fps for decades.

> It's about the slowest frame rate that's not very distracting.

Except, it is very distracting. Around 60 it starts to become bearable for me and allow camera pans to be interpreted as fluid motion.

It's quite astonishing how terrible 24 FPS really is, but as the GP mentioned it was "good enough" for the time. It's a scale, and costs and processing was prohibited that it was the point where most scenes, especially dramas and human interest type things, were served well by the format.

Action scenes are just brutal at 24FPS. Running, pans, and so on. Either it's a blurry mess at a 180 degree shutter, or it turns into a rapid slide show (like early in Saving Private Ryan).

This is as much about frame rate as it is about display technology.

24hz on an OLED with very quick pixels is a very different experience than 24hz on a CRT or 24hz on a film projector.

Actually, more is always better. What do you think why we try to run PC games at 144, or even 240 and 360 fps?

What's the point? Can people even tell?

Of course they can. If you ever try to go back, it looks like garbage. There is no limit to improving the illusion of smooth motion, but it scales non-linearly (you need to double the frame rate each time to improve it noticeably). I can't personally tell apart whether it is running at 144 or 120 fps, but the larger jumps are very obvious.

Yea 120 v 144 isn’t too big of a difference for me. Actually until I got a new GPU that could actually output 120fps at 1440p, I left my monitor on 120hz. When AMDs AFMF drivers came out I actually went ahead and bumped the refresh to 144hz as I was definitely starting to see screen tearing but it was still pretty fluid. I’d be curious on whether the next jump for meto will be 4k 144hz or 1440p 240hz

Absolutely they can, though I found anything above 240hz to be indistingushable for myself personally. Though the monitor I'm writing this on is 300hz; it's motion clarity is only bested by OLEDs and the $2000 AUD (twice what I paid for this) 360hz bigger brother PG27AQN.

I’ve never had a display refresh rate higher than 144, but maybe because I play games but I can definitely tell the difference between 30/60 and even 60/120. After 120 the difference between 120/144 starts to diminish but there’s still a slight difference though it’s more pronounced in very fast moving objects like moving a mouse.

PC gamers pushing for higher framerates is mostly about reducing latency, which doesn't matter for a movie.

Need some way to justify an overpriced graphics card, is what I always assumed.

Games are different. Interactive media requires responsiveness. Saying that higher framerate is always better in cinema is a pretty bold statement, one that would fail a simple survey among moviegoers. What does "better" even mean, in this context? Fidelity is just one of many axes of expression when creating art. Higher isn't better than lower, or vice versa.

For me the higher frame rate is not really about response time, it is all about smooth motion. Panning the camera at 60Hz is just barely acceptable. 120Hz is where it starts looking real nice and I can really see things during the pan. 24Hz pans are unwatchable garbage.

A movie properly authored at 120Hz (not interpolated with potential artifacts) would be objectively better than a 24Hz one in every possible way.

Also with higher frame rate I can see subtle patterns in the movement and flow of things (clothes, water, humans). Also the eye can see more details and can recognize the texture of things, the different kinds of fabrics, all kind of details like this.

Only some people try to run at 144/240/360. I set my max FPS on my PC games to 60 because it 1) feels right and 2) uses less electricity/generates less heat. I only bump it for competitive FPS where a higher FPS makes target acquisition easier.

Animation frames are almost totally orthogonal to what we're talking about here. In fact, I'd argue they're the exception that proves the rule. Animation had to develop tricks like spaghettification to look good at 12 fps because it looks inherently worse than higher frame rates. In fact, techniques like smear frames are often used to directly emulate higher frame rates. It's an art form born of limitation, not a neutral tool. Just look at any 3d animated show that just drops the frame rate of mocapped characters to 12fps (Dragon Prince is one that comes to mind) - it looks like jarring, choppy shit.

Those are the origins, but the result is a style that can look good or better than higher framerates depending on what you're going for. Art is not held back by fidelity - instead fidelity is part of what defines it, as well as other constraints.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com