Hobbit at 48FPS

Started by rcallicotte, April 14, 2011, 10:25:03 AM

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Oshyan

Those are both definitely useful comparisons, though it's *critical* to remember that both actual recorded video (from the real world) *and* CGI will differ somewhat from those representations, depending on how they're handled. Differences in motion blur, shutter speed (different from frames per second!), aperture (simulated or otherwise), depth of field, etc, etc. all have a not-insignificant impact in this area. That's why real side-by-side simultaneously shot video footage would be ideal as a comparison. Not to mention differences in output device capabilities, for example my LCD monitor doesn't have a super fast response time so even on the "no motion blur at 60fps" example I see some blur.

I suppose you could try making your own short TG animations, a couple seconds long, with the same motion at 30fps and 60fps. Would be an interesting experiment...

Some good quotes on both those pages as well, e.g.
QuoteBy not showing enough visual information, we force the brain into filling in the gaps... it draws you in even more.
which is conjecture but is a possibly good (partial?) explanation for why 24fps film might be more "immersive". And
QuoteYou get used to this new look very quickly and it becomes a much more lifelike and comfortable viewing experience. It's similar to the moment when vinyl records were supplanted by digital CDs.
which is what I would expect to be the case, and the comparison to CDs is a good one. We totally take that change for granted now, but many did throw up a fuss when it happened. I was not one of them and never expected to be in the future, which is why the 24-48+fps change is particularly interesting to me as I too see the seeming "artificiality" or "too smooth" feel of higher frame rate content. But I'm hopeful I'll soon get used to it.

- Oshyan

TheBadger

#16
Wow! Ask and receive! Nice.
Those were very helpful, thanks for posting!

About Oshyan's last post, and also the notion of "suspension of disbelief"

Based on what I just saw in those links and what I know about SOD, I think that there would be absolutely no problem for almost anyone to become immersed in a high frame rate movie. The simple fact is that within the first 5 min a viewer will be hooked or not. And being hooked depends nearly entirely on non-esthetic maters. The story and the characters will hold the viewer or they won't. I think if the story is good, Oshayn, you would not even think about it during the film.
But in terms of what we are doing here, I am very interested in your idea of having to adjust to the new rates.
This reminds me of how my brother told me he did not like how HD video looked, compared to analog, which is what he was used to.
I was really shocked to hear it, I could not imagine how anyone could not *feel* (and see) how HD was so much better.

As to wether frame rate can make something more real or not... Well, If it can, than I would want it be used. The more real the images and image sequences are, the easier it is to except the unbelievable events that happen in movies. The word vivid should be used here some place. I think someone used the term super real in this thread. But we have to decide if we are comparing only frame rates, or we are comparing video to actual reality. They will have, I am sure, different answers.

I like Oshyan's suggestion to try this in terragen. But I don't think repeating such a simple test can be of any benefit. We would have to do a short sequence, something that involves edits, cuts and transitions. Because the question cannot simply be at what frame rate does a ball bouncing up and down look best though that is a *Great* start. Or if a man walking looks more real, as I first asked.
Now we need to see how the frame rates effect both objective and subjective story telling.

As I type this I thought of Cypher's work "Arrival" http://vimeo.com/23390908
This would be the kind of thing we would need to do to really see the effect. The test needs to be a little long in duration to allow the viewers eyes enough time to adjust.

I would like to do this test. But I'm to backlogged right now. Maybe in the near future though.
It has been eaten.

Tangled-Universe

Very well said Michael. Especially the first part. A movie hooks you right away and that has little to do with esthetics. I think the same way about that.

As for testing this with TG2. I suppose that, since we can't set fps in TG2, you'll need to fiddle with the motion blur (MB) length to make it look right?

Now that I'm thinking of it. How useful is MB anyway as how it is implemented now in TG2 without a fps specification parameter?
TG2 would never know if I intended the 1000m camera move of 480 frames to be projected in 20 seconds or in 10 or 8 seconds, wouldn't it?
MB length would be off, wouldn't it be?

I know many people don't render with MB and apply it in post, when you do have a fixed fps and thus can tweak it manually.

Oshyan

Aesthetics *do* matter to many people, story and acting do go a long way toward immersiveness but technical issues can *absolutely* have an effect on it. I would cite 3D as a prime example. Many people, myself included, feel like 3D is generally more of a distraction than an improvement. I know I'm not in the majority here but the point still stands: I simply can't ignore 3D, especially badly done post-3D, regardless of how good the story, production, acting, etc. are. The same is likely true of frame rates, both faster and slower. Imagine watching a movie at 15fps, are you saying you wouldn't notice or care? Clearly there's a line somewhere, and why would we suppose it is 24fps?

Ultimately I think it has already been said that higher frame rates seem less "cinematic" to many people. This is a simple reality. As your anecdote about your brother and High Definition demonstrates, technically better is not always subjectively better. But the reality is we know HD to be superior, and everything is moving that direction. This is a good thing. The same is true of higher frame rates, it's something that is being done and we'll all just get used to with time. In 20 years 48fps or higher will probably be more common than 24 or 30fps, and everyone will think it looks great. We need pioneers like Jackson to push through our predispositions and give us better technology despite our misgivings. The future will thank us for it.

But *again*, this does not necessarily mean that everyone should immediately follow that lead, especially where other perhaps more significant issues are involved, e.g. render time, availability of playback methods, etc. You could end up with twice as much render time and cost and hardly anyone could see the benefit of it (due to lack of widely available >30fps playback methods), and even those that did might not all actually appreciate it. So the answer to the original question remains the same in my view: don't bother with higher frame rates, not yet. All the testing in the world won't change the reasoning for that decision. I'd be interested in the results of such tests in general, but they would not be a significant factor in any decision I made on whether to animate at higher frame rates at this point. Wait until the support is more widespread.

- Oshyan

TheBadger

#19
Hi again,

Yes aesthetics matter. Too much sometimes. But they matter. I only mean that it is easier to watch a movie or play with good story and acting and bad sets or effects, than it is to see a film with great effects and terrible everything else. Remember 2012, Transformers 2 & especially 3! (I give #1 a pass for my own reasons) They were horrible movies, but they looked great.

But I certainly get your points. And I agree that there is a good amount of time before we need to worry about this. Though I am going to keep my eyes on this, it will likely be very important at some point.

Now since it was brought up and I want more info on it too...
In After Effects, a user can tell the software what frame rate to create a file with when the file is created. This is not possible in TG2, Maya, or any other 3D software that I am aware of. Why?

Is there any good reason why 3d software does not have this option that you know of? Why cant we do it in TG2? It seems like it would be a great thing to have. I know that when I composite or edit. I like to have all my footage at the same resolution and frame rates.
Now I know that I can figure it out in TG2 and Maya. But why not just have a box to tick, or a input field so that its always perfect?.. especially where motion blur is concerned, wouldn't this make the calculations the software makes more true?
It has been eaten.

Kadri

#20

After effects , Premiere kind of programs goal is to make videos . So you have to choose FPS .

In a 3D application you choose all the parameters.
If they have a previewer or some camera settings you choose the frames per second there and can control your animation accordingly.
If you use PAL and want to make a camera pan from left to right in 1 second you put the last keyframe on the 25th frame.
With NTSC 30 etc. If you want to last the pan 2 seconds you make them 50 or 60 accordingly.
In Lightwave it is a percentage like in TG2(i think).
Actually in real life with a camera they are kinda the same.
It is the difference between frames the camera and-or the objects are moved + the shutter speed.
Because using a 3d animation program is actually independent of the FPS used by a camera (you can use whatever you want) they use a percentage between the first and the next frame.
It depends on shutter speed the shooting speed(FPS)like in an normal camera.
I mostly use very small percentage of motion blur if any.
It is not natural as it seem at first if you ask me.
Because when you look at a fast moving object that goes from left to right with your eye and with an camera there is not a problem at first.
But when you look at the surrounding part at the video after the shoot all is blurred.
If you look at the surrounding as the object goes from left to right (in real life) you can see it without blur ,basically it depend where you look at the moment.
But in a picture you can look where you want. You are not restricted to the focused parts.
Not sure if this makes sense.
There are probably better explanations somewhere on the net and some of our friends here could make it more comprehensible i am sure.
One of the reasons i do not like it , is, it is used as a cheap method to hide bad parts in cgi , comping . Especially on tv .
You can be sure wherever you see high motion blur or better said plenty blur they are hiding bad and or cheap VFX .
I used it too in the same way for some basic work that wasn't as good as i liked ;)

I really want to see those 48 - 60 frames movies  .
After so much years lesser motion blur hopefully .
As you guys talked about this 48 FPS situation here it may bring some different things with it.
But i made some tests years ago as my computer at those times could barely play them and i liked them .
I want crystal clear images  :)

Matt

I can comment on how FPS works with motion blur for rendered images where you're animating according to frames, as we do in Terragen.

In our case, FPS just changes how many frames are displayed per second, but the renderer does not care about this because it only has to think about frames. To produce motion blur it only needs to know how the scene changes between the current frame and the next (or perhaps also the previous frame if you have a negative shutter offset). When motion blur length is set to 1, this means that the shutter is open for the duration of one frame. Things in your scene will move a certain distance while that shutter is open. When you animate you set your key frames according to frame number, so the distance that the object moves while the shutter is open is exactly the same no matter what FPS you decide to play the frames at later on. The key thing here is that FPS only affects playback later on, and the content of each frame is the same regardless of the FPS you want to play at.

Now, if the motion blur settings were based on the number of seconds that the shutter is open, we would have to think about FPS when rendering. You would have to tell Terragen the speed of the shutter and the FPS. However, usually when shooting movies it's quite common to want the shutter duration to be a certain fraction of a frame. Half of the frame time, "180 degrees", or 0.5 in Terragen, is quite common. If you animate according to frames, not seconds, you don't need to know the FPS to render a sequence of images with a 0.5 (180 degree) shutter.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Matt

#22
I personally think that higher FPS will be a good thing, provided film production quality can cope with the higher fidelity. 24 FPS is quite horrible to look at panning backgrounds in film. Maybe I will change my mind when I actually see it... ;)

Regarding the "strobing" that the audiences have noticed at 48 fps, I wonder if it would help to keep the shutter open for the same time that they would for 24 fps, i.e. a 360 degree shutter at 48 fps. Or as close as possible given limitations of the camera. So motion would still be as blurred as a 24 fps movie, but a lot smoother. One advantage of doing this is that you could produce a 24 fps version simply by dropping half of the frames, and the motion blur would be "normal" for 24 fps.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.


TheBadger

Thanks Kadri, some bits you wrote helped to clarify things for me.


Matt,

I checked, and indeed you guys have 0.5 ("0.5 (180 degree) shutter.") as the preset in the blur field. Thanks for the detailed info!

But you said that 0.5 is quite common, you gave a pretty good account of what that is doing. But can you also provide an example of why a user would maybe want to adjust it? Kadri suggested that increasing the blur amount would be a good fix for a bad shot in post.
But why would you lower the value? My impression now is that you put it the default value because that was "best". So the amount of blur is *equal*(?) to speed and distance? How does one even figure that out?
It has been eaten.

Matt

#25
Hi Badger,

I think it's mostly subjective. If you prefer how it looks with less/more motion blur, then that's the right option for you. But we could look at what other film makers prefer. It used to be that 0.5 was very common, but I've seen movies that were shot with greatly reduced motion blur. Much less than 0.5, maybe even less than 0.1. The first one that comes to mind for me is Gladiator, particularly in the action sequences. My guess is that they shot with a high speed sports camera - I am no camera expert. I guess that makes sense because they had some slow-motion shots and time ramps and stuff like that, and the easiest way to do that is to shoot with a high speed camera and then drop out frames in post production to create the speed you want. Since each frame was much shorter in time and you lose some frames in the final shot, you lose a lot of motion blur. Since then I've seen it again in many other movies. Perhaps the director wanted to give the feeling of TV sports shot with a high speed camera, because that's what it looked like to me, or maybe to preserve more detail in the images. Kadri also gave some good reasons why reducing motion blur could be more natural in some cases. Something Kadri said that I empathise with is the idea that you can look at any part of the scene and always see detail just like you would in real life. On the other hand, when you look at the objects that the camera is tracking I think it's better for the background to be motion blurred to remove the unnatural strobing/cloning effect that happens. For this reason I quite like the look you get with motion blur of 1, but few people go that far (not least because it's technically impossible to film that with a real camera without using multiple lenses or some other technique.) So there are always compromises. I personally think that everything looks like a video game when there's no motion blur, but others may have a different reaction according to their own experiences. If you want a "safe" value that is not likely to offend the viewer ;) then I would choose 0.5.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Oshyan

The "sharp, strobing action" effect was also used (prior to Gladiator) in Saving Private Ryan, which I think is more well-known for it, perhaps somewhat pioneering (at least as far as major motion pictures are concerned). It sounds like it's mostly to do with faster shutter speeds which reduces motion blur. Tossing out frames seems to have also been done on Gladiator, possibly in conjunction with 48fps shooting.

I was a bit confused by the use of degrees to refer to shutter speed, but I found an explanation that I think clears it up for me (and is hopefully accurate, it's just from a forum user on another site):
Quote"When camera people talk about their shutter, they talk about what the physical rotating shutter in a film camera is set to. Typically it is a 180 degree shutter. That is to say, a half-circle of flat black metal spins really really fast, and the film is exposed as it flies around and is "absent" from the film plane. Half of a 360 arc is black, half is image striking film."

- Oshyan

Tangled-Universe

So the more degrees the more time the film is being exposed and thus the more motion blur?

Oshyan

That's my understanding of it Martin. But not based on tons of research. ;)

- Oshyan

TheBadger

QuoteSo the more degrees the more time the film is being exposed and thus the more motion blur?
Its a very simple and straight forward way to put it. I think its good when things can be stated clearly and simply.

Thanks guys.
It has been eaten.