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25 FPS Vs. 30 FPS

Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC

Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC

I'm starting to realize that my present production will look bbetter rendered at 30 fps over 25 fps with all of the special effects and CGI I'm doing because too much is getting lost with the fancy effects I'm doing with laser fire and disintergration.

I know 25 fps is more like film. But, in this day and age of digital effects, is the standard shifting over to 30 fps?
 
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There's more to it than frame rates. "30P" is actually 720x480 at 29.97 frames per second, at least for NTSC, the former standard for North America video. And if the image is NOT progressive and it is interlaced than it's shooting 60 FIELDS per second which is entirely different than frames.

PAL, the European format is not only 25 frames per second, but the resolution is 720x576, which is nearly 100 more lines of resolution per frame. So not only is the frame rate nearly the same as film, but it has the advantage of being a lot more robust and detailed an image.

THE HOBBIT is shooting 48 frames per second more because it helps with the 3D, not because the frame rate is inherently better just because there are more frames. There is another format developed by special FX guru Douglas Trumball called "Showscan" that does shoot at a true 60 frames per second.
 
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I'm thinking the faster the better now. When I was just making a meal before, I remembered what a Hollywood stunt coordinator told me a few years back, shoot with high speed cameras for action. 60 fps for digital or 48 fps for film.

My choices for rendering avi with Song Vegas Pro are NTSC 720X480 30 fps, HD 720 P at 25 or 30 fps, and HD 1080 p 25 or 30 fps.

With Adobe Premiere Elements Mpegs NTSC 720X480 30 fps, HD 720 P 25 or 30 fps, and HD 1080 P 25 or 30 fps.

The 30 fps is better with CGI and special effects. You also see more of the action with 30 fps.
 
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I'd disagree with that, if you're making a narrative feature or narrative TV show or similar aimed at a North American (and probably European as well) audience then 24fps, or 25 in this case is better than 30. It's a subtle detail, but the slower fps mimics what we all grew up knowing As more expensive where 30 looks cheap. It may sound backwards, but the motion blur is nice.

Peter Jackson and James Cameron are doing higher frame rates... With top of the line crew, equipment, makeup, props, costumes, effects and similar to do it right. They may be starting a new trend, well probably. They can do that though haha.
 
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The stunt coordinator who suggested high speed cameras worked with all of Hollywood's high profile filmmakers / directors for over 40 years. He retired two or three years ago.

I'm thinking whatever making the action and special effects look its' best is what I should do the final cut with. Right now, I'm noticing CGI that looked great in the preview is muffled with 25 fps and looks like the preview at 30 fps.
 
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I wasn't even able to get a screen grab of the blond girl in my avatar next to me clocking a silver demon hunter with a big hook because she was moving a real full speed and clocked him in the head for real and the chain and hook reckosheaed too fast for 25 fps. I'm going to try to grab the frame at a 30 fps output. That was an accident, of course, because the actress was just getting into character when she clocked the SDH for real and he instintanously did a great back flip and hit the ground at real time speed.

So, I can see the benefits of high speed frame rate.
 
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Am I the only one who hates the look of 60fps?

Years ago I ran some experiments with computer-generated animations to see if I was crazy or not. My results:

  • 24 fps: Standard film-ish looking video, can strobe bit on fast pans.
  • 30 fps: Very similar to 24 fps. Whenever I used my Digital8 I always set it to 30 fps progressive (it didn't support 24 fps) since it looked nice.
  • 48 fps: Very pretty-looking. Looks both cinematic and smooth.
  • 60 fps: Horribly ugly. I don't know what it is about this frame rate, but I can't stand how it looks. My current guess is that 60 fps hits a low spot of a sort of uncanny valley for frame rates. Hate hate HATE. I avoid this frame rate at all costs.
  • 75 fps: Back to nicely-fluid video.
  • 100 fps: This is where things start to look hyper-realistic. Beautifully fluid motion. I'm betting that at some point in the future we're all going to be shooting at 120 frames per second because of how real everything seems to move.

So my personal advice is avoid 60fps like the plague. Also, avoid interlaced footage like the plague. Dealing with interlaced footage just flat-out sucks.
 
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once more unto the breach

Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC said:
I'm thinking the faster the better now. When I was just making a meal before, I remembered what a Hollywood stunt coordinator told me a few years back, shoot with high speed cameras for action. 60 fps for digital or 48 fps for film.
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That is for SLOW MOTION. That means 60fps is 50% speed for video and 48 frames per second is 50% for film.

In "Hollywood", everything is 24 frames per second playback. There hasn't been a different playback speed of film in close to 100 years... There are no other frame rates for film projectors and hasn't been since the beginning of the 20th century when they still did 18 frames per second. This is kind of common knowledge and easy to verify, even outside of your many mysterious friends in the industry that you have spoken to that tend to almost always give you misinformation.

The reason your effects and playback don' t look right at 25 frames per second is because you didn't SHOOT in 25 frames per second. You did not use PAL cameras that natively shoot that frame rate so your 60i/30P footage gets re-rendered from 720x480 to not only the new frame rate, losing 6 frames/12 fields a second - but you're also re-rendering the footage to 720x576 - without those extra lines of resolution.

You are basically lowering the resolution of your clips everytime you do that. Make sure to use the SAME settings to EDIT and do effects that you SHOT. That will maintain your image quality. Do you know what settings the camera was on when you shot?

This will end in disaster. Trying to answer Mike Cervello and give him sound advice is an exercise in futility. There will be some experts, whose names are unknown, who back his already clearly wrong opinions, but they are industry veterans... who never seem to have accurate information about the technicals of filmmaking.
 
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sonnyboo said:
This will end in disaster. Trying to answer Mike Cervello and give him sound advice is an exercise in futility. There will be some experts, whose names are unknown, who back his already clearly wrong opinions, but they are industry veterans... who never seem to have accurate information about the technicals of filmmaking.
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?

*looks at author of thread's original post*

Oh heck.
 
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Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC said:
But, for special effects? 30 fps seems to be a happy medium.
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You do the FX in the same frame rate you shot in. It's that simple.

All of the FX in Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Spider-man, X-Men, The Matrix, and pretty much every movie EVER made were at 24 frames per second, at least they played back at 24 frames per second at the movie theater, on TV, and on DVD.

escher said:
?

*looks at author of thread's original post*
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MDM has been on several forums before this IT, asking the exact same questions, getting the same responses, and replying that he has friends in the industry that told him these blatantly wrong technical information for several years.

Trying to help Mike Cervello is a frustrating, futile endeavor. Even when something is soooooo blatantly obvious like this one.
 
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I have to say that 30 fps is the ideal frame rate for the CGI. Everything perfectly matches the preview screen. It looks like 1080 P 30 fps or 720 P 30 fps is the ideal output for the CGI and action to show best.

If I slow it to 25 fps, the cgi has missing frames of animation from what I created with Sony Vegas.

Interesting observation, opening the project properties in Sony Vegas Pro:

It is at 24 fps and renders HD at 24 fps.

The animation loses the frames when converted to Mpeg HD 1080 P 25 fps or 720 P 25 fps with Premiere Elements. But, it maintains the frames with an Mpeg 30 fps. It could be something compressing the files to Mpeg?

Thanks for the 411. I have to see if there is a bug in the compression of HD avi to HD Mpegs that can cause a loss of frames.

This has been helpful in debugging what is going on with the software.
 
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escher said:
Am I the only one who hates the look of 60fps?
....
[*]60 fps: Horribly ugly. I don't know what it is about this frame rate, but I can't stand how it looks. My current guess is that 60 fps hits a low spot of a sort of uncanny valley for frame rates. Hate hate HATE. I avoid this frame rate at all costs.
Click to expand...
Your assessment makes no sense, that is why you can't articulate it properly or quantify it. This type of reasoning can lead to errors in other areas of life, etc.
 
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vic3433 said:
Your assessment makes no sense, that is why you can't articulate it properly or quantify it. This type of reasoning can lead to errors in other areas of life, etc.
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I thought I articulated it quite well (look up "uncanny valley"). You're reading too much into that. That type of reasoning can lead to incorrect judgement of others in this particular area of life. :P

It's not like I just sit back and say "60 fps is ugly!", I actually did an experiment and compared that frame rate to others. It really does look bad, and I have a reasonable theory as to why -- the rate is too fast for good-looking (eg. aesthetic) motion blur but too slow to look truly fluid, hence my reference to the uncanny valley (where is normally used to refer to human-like representations of a character that are too realistic to be cartoonish but not real enough to be "close enough", triggering the brain's "that's creepy!" response).
 
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The concern for getting all of the animation to show with Mpegs is for both cutting DVDs and uploading to Vimeo.

I'm working on original gun effects I hope to post eventually. I'm working on pulse / laser rifle effects. Originally, I wanted to but the science fiction effects pack from Tapetube.com. I've been seeing their laser effects being used in so many TV spots and movie trailers that it is already looking too stcck.

I want a more original look. So far, my new original robo vision look is getting a favorable response as making a world of sense of how a robot or cyborg would see our world through a camera lens with digital data flowing. My new library search to ID someone is also getting a good response where the cyborgs break up someone into a pixel screen and split screen the image into a digital wire frame breakdown that rotates with 1s and 0s streaming.

My new pulse fire is white in the center and lite blue on the outside, using the New Blue Dual Tone Plug-in. The white to blue contrast is way more subtle than the stock look with very sharp dark blue, red, or green to white.

I also want my disintergration / reintergrate scene to show with all of the animation frames I made for a greenscreened scene where Amazon Colonel Alkaia blasts cyborg General Gail Storm with a big laser blast. The original Mpegs was losing too much of the details of the animation.

But now, I think I have a workaround with the frme rate for the Mpegs.
 
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escher said:
Am I the only one who hates the look of 60fps?

Years ago I ran some experiments with computer-generated animations to see if I was crazy or not. My results:

  • 24 fps: Standard film-ish looking video, can strobe bit on fast pans.
  • 30 fps: Very similar to 24 fps. Whenever I used my Digital8 I always set it to 30 fps progressive (it didn't support 24 fps) since it looked nice.
  • 48 fps: Very pretty-looking. Looks both cinematic and smooth.
  • 60 fps: Horribly ugly. I don't know what it is about this frame rate, but I can't stand how it looks. My current guess is that 60 fps hits a low spot of a sort of uncanny valley for frame rates. Hate hate HATE. I avoid this frame rate at all costs.
  • 75 fps: Back to nicely-fluid video.
  • 100 fps: This is where things start to look hyper-realistic. Beautifully fluid motion. I'm betting that at some point in the future we're all going to be shooting at 120 frames per second because of how real everything seems to move.

So my personal advice is avoid 60fps like the plague. Also, avoid interlaced footage like the plague. Dealing with interlaced footage just flat-out sucks.
Click to expand...

I agree, the 60fps look is terrible. Looks like a really cheap bad porno movie actually. It's only okay for slow motion. I'm interested in what 120 fps looks like after reading this. Any easy to find movies, shot in that? This is why they should make modern digital cameras with a manual handcrank option. Since they don't want to put down 20 different frame rate options on the camera, just put a hand crank, and the you can have as many frames as fast as you can turn the crank. It's seems just as practical as a manual lens lol.
 
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harmonica44 said:
...just put a hand crank, and the you can have as many frames as fast as you can turn the crank. It's seems just as practical as a manual lens lol.
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The move to motorized camera film feed was driven by quality control. With hand cranked film, the camera operator had to make sure that when pushing the crank down, it was at the same rate as pulling it back up on the return or the frame rate would differ throughout the shot. It's part of the "charm" of old film, reality was that it was a quality control nightmare for folks trying to get the best motion possible 100 years ago.

The next iteration was a clockwork drive run by a coil spring. This gave consistent shots so long as you didn't let the spring run down (the film would slow, so the action on screen would speed up on playback)... you also didn't want to overcrank the spring so it would last longer and not break rendering your camera useless.

Moving to an electric motor was lightyears ahead as far as consistency went...

as for manual focus, once you let the computers make decisions for you, you're one step closer to Terminator becoming a reality.
 
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