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Comment by DoctorWhoof | Hacker News Reader

Most of the issues (like "judder") that people have with 24fps are due to viewing it on 60 fps screens, which will sometimes double a frame, sometimes triple it, creating uneven motion. Viewing a well shot film with perfect, expressive motion blur on a proper film screen is surprisingly smooth.

The "soap opera" feel is NOT from bad interpolation that can somehow be done right. It's inherent from the high frame rate. It has nothing to do with "video cameras", and a lot to do with being simply too real, like watching a scene through a window. There's no magic in it.

Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them, and its choice, driven by technical constraints of the time when films added sound, was one of happiest accidents in the history of Arts.

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> Films are more like dreams than like real life.

Yes! The other happy accident of movies that contribute to the dream-like quality, besides the lower frame rate, is the edit. As Walter Murch says in "In the Blink of an Eye", we don't object to jumps in time or location when we watch a film. As humans we understand what has happened, despite such a thing being impossible in reality. The only time we ever experience jumps in time and location is when we dream.

I would go further and say that a really good film, well edited, induces a dreamlike state in the viewer.

And going even further than that, a popular film being viewed by thousands of people at once is as though those people are dreaming the same dream.

I would say that cuts are something we get used to rather than something that is intrinsically “natural” to us.

I remember when I was very little that it was actually somewhat “confusing”, or at least quite taxing mentally, and I’m pretty sure I see this in my own very little children.

As we grow and “practice” watching plays, TV, movies, read books, our brains adapts and we become completely used to it.

True. Maybe we experience jumps in time and location in our dreams because we've been conditioned to it by films.

Cuts aren't "natural" but they're part of the language of filmmaking, and most peoples experience of them is consistent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect#:~:text=The%20...

> Most of the issues (like "judder") that people have with 24fps are due to viewing it on 60 fps screens

That can be a factor, but I think this effect can be so jarring that many would realize that there's a technical problem behind it.

For me 24 fps is usually just fine, but then if I find myself tracking something with my eyes that wasn't intended to be tracked, then it can look jumpy/snappy. Like watching fast flowing end credits but instead of following the text, keeping the eyes fixed at some point.

> Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them, and its choice, driven by technical constraints of the time when films added sound, was one of happiest accidents in the history of Arts.

I wonder though, had the industry started with 60 fps, would people now applaud the 24/30 fps as a nice dream-like effect everyone should incorporate into movies and series alike?

I have a 120 fps TV. Panning shots at 24 fps still give me an instant headache.

Real is good, it’s ergonomic and accessible. Until filmmakers understand that, I’ll have to keep interpolation on at the lowest setting.

It's not just the framerate mismatch, OLED's un-pulsed presentation with almost instant response time greatly reduces the perceived motion smoothness of lower framerate content compared to eg, CRTs or plasma displays

The same happens to me in cinemas at 24 fps, it’s not the display technology that is giving me headaches.

Not sure if it's the same thing, but nearly all cinemas are digital nowadays, and panning artifacts are absolutely still there

It’s happened to me since before any cinemas were digital. I only figured out why by trying to play games below 30 fps. At least for me, it’s definitely the frame rate.

It depends on the shot a lot too. Good DPs will use a panning speed that looks much smoother at 24fps.

Problem is modern OLED tv's, they have no motion blur so its a chopfest at 24hz (or 24fps content at 120hz) when you turn off all motion settings.

24 FPS simply cannot have fast smooth movement without blurring everything into an unrecognizable mess. The minor judder from the display framerate not being a multiple of the source framerate is inconsequential compared to that.

> Films are more like dreams than like real life. That frame rate is essential to them

Complete bullshit.

24 fps looks like terrible judder to me in the cinema too. I'm not afraid to admit it even if it will ruffle the feathers of the old 24 fps purists. It was always just a compromise between film cost and smoothness. A compromise that isn't relevant any longer with digital medium. But we can't have nice things it seems, because some people can't get over what they're used to.

>It was always just a compromise between film cost and smoothness.

I think the criticisms of The Hobbit when it came out in 48fps showed that it's not just that.

That film had many problems, but the acceptable frame rate was not one of them. Most criticism wasn’t about that.

True but there was specific criticism about how the framerate made it far too easy to see the parts of the effects, sets and costumes that made it clear things were props and spoiled the illusion. Maybe we just require a new level of quality in set design to enable higher frame rates but it clearly has some tradeoff.

I think that’s definitely the case with 4K, and we’ve seen set detail design drastically improve lately as a response.

I don’t see how it’s the case for frame rate, except perhaps for CGI (which has also improved).

I think just like with games, there’s an initial surprised reaction; so many console-only gamers insisted they can’t see the point of 60 fps. And just like with games, it only takes a little exposure to get over that and begin preferring it.

The 48 fps of The Hobbit was glorious. First time I have ever been able to see what is happening on screen instead of just some slide deck mess. There were many other things worth criticizing, but the framerate was not it.

Variable refresh rate displays are becoming popular in smartphones and PCs, hopefully this won't be a technical issue soon.

Yes, and records sound better than digital audio.

You've just learned to associate good films with this shitty framerate. Also, most established film makers have yet to learn (but probably never will) how to make stuff look good on high frames. It's less forgiving.

It'll probably take the next generation of viewers and directors..

Yeah with GP's mindset we wouldn't have HD resolutions either because sets from the SD era look obviously fake with that much detail captured. Thankfully set designers just upped their game instead of trying to gaslight us into thinking that TV has to be low resolution.

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