Current HD standard is a FAIL

[2Bdecided]

So do you really believe that digital is real life ?
It's not, analog IS real life. Digital always means samples and samples are just a way to cut real life into small pieces with the hope to give back the illusion of real life.

And if you do believe that a CD is more accurate than a vinyl then the marketing has done his job well and you fell into the trap. I'm talking about dynamics and phasis and maybe with 24 bits at 100 kHz we may get close to the original. Maybe.
Visit http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/
Vinyl is equivalent to about 14bits 50kHz with huge amounts of distortion and inter-channel break-through.

No one has ever proven they can hear the difference between vinyl, and a CD quality (16-bits 44.1kHz stereo) digital recording of the vinyl.

Some very high profile vinyl fans tried and failed, even when CD was in its infancy...

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm

...if you can pass the test with modern equipment, feel free to drop by hydrogen audio and post your results - you'll be the first person to manage it.


What you want is music and cinema to change because they don't match with the hardware you have bought so music and cinema must be wrong because you have paid so much for that hardware!?!

I want more frames per second because 24 isn't enough to adequately represent motion.

I'm in good company...

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864.html?categoryid=2868&cs=1

(that's James Cameron, the director or "Titanic", championing 48fps).


And don't you find it ironic that you're dismissing digital because it is "just a way to cut real life into small pieces with the hope to give back the illusion of real life" - and yet that's the very problem with film that I'm objecting to - not enough "pieces" (frames!) per second to give the illusion of real life.

btw, if you read and understood sampling theory (Nyquist / Shannon), you'd understand that for a continuous signal like audio, "cut .. into small pieces" means the pieces can be transported perfectly, and put back together perfectly (or as "perfectly" as you want to make the system). There are no gaps!

With film/video and frames per second, sadly there isn't an achievable magic number where the temporal sampling process has no effect - but 24fps has a huge detrimental effect.

Cheers,
David.

P.S. I've paid very little for my video hardware - I'm not a videophile. But I've got a great record player, and thousands of records. CDs are still better. ;)

[TinTime]

I want more frames per second because 24 isn't enough to adequately represent motion.

At least we're not pigeons (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3634153/Gorillas-can-talk...-and-24-other-QI-facts.html). See fact 17.

And the clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51njbgcr_NU) from Qi :)

[MfA]

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864.html?categoryid=2868&cs=1

(that's James Cameron, the director or "Titanic", championing 48fps).
Action movies really suffer most, especially with shaky cam ... take a movie like Transformers, millions of CGI for what? A screen filled with blurry pixels.

[reepa]

"Sorry, I wasn't clear. The video should be 24p but will include pulldown flags so that it can be output from the player at either 24p or 60i."

I don't think Blu-Ray movies use pull-down flags (rff, tff). See http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=867283 for example.

[Inventive Software]

A lot of it is people seeing 3-2 pulldown for the first time - that comes as a shock, especially when you think you've "upgraded" from DVD to BluRay, and everything starts juddering like mad! It's an expensive mistake to buy a TV that won't do 24p - given that 25p/50i have worked together just fine for the best part of a century, it's a shock to realise you need a "special" feature (not available on many earlier HDTVs) to avoid 3-2 judder.

It's nice having audio at the correct speed though.

Cheers,
David.

It's why I love living in a PAL land - everything with numbers rounds so much nicer! No pull-down either! :D

[Brazil2]

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm
...if you can pass the test with modern equipment, feel free to drop by hydrogen audio and post your results - you'll be the first person to manage it.
14 bits is a joke for accurate dynamics, the actual 16 bits srandard is not enough.
I take the challenge but not with a vocalist solo voice only, I want something with dynamics from people who are well known to take a lot of care about audio quality. For instance I would like to do the test with this material:
Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother album
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here album
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome album
Yes - 90125 album
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony N°5 or N°9 directed by Herbert von Karajan (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft recording)

Trained ears will definitely detect a difference in dynamics between analog and digital. Non trained ears will 'feel' something different even though they might not be able to tell about what it is. This is inherent to the digital standard as it is nowadays. That's even the reason why CD's sound so 'compressed' compared to the orginal source or are even compressed more on purpose to avoid problems due to digital mastering. Digital does NOT handle clipping at all.


I want more frames per second because 24 isn't enough to adequately represent motion.

I'm in good company...
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117983864.html?categoryid=2868&cs=1
(that's James Cameron, the director or "Titanic", championing 48fps).
Guess what, when you're watching a movie in a theater you are in fact seeing 48 FPS, 24 of them being black frames when the shutter of the projector closes down for the film to move. Do you ever notice these black frames ? No you don't which simply proves that 24 FPS are enough.

What Cameron is talking about is Digital 3D. This is not cinema but video. Although I got the idea, for instance Spielberg has done something special in "Saving Private Ryan" with a shorter exposure time than usual to create sharper images on purpose so we can keep them in mind better. At least that was his goal. But this is having side effects during the beach landing of the allied invasion of Normandy scene where the impression of movement is sometimes missing. But this is a director's choice! Other directors may prefer normal exposure time even for films with a lot of action so if you watching at the movie frame by frame you will see that most of them are kind of blurry but you don't notice that blurriness at all at the normal speed.

That's why cinema is still magic, there are no locked rules, you can play with many things like exposure time, lens, aperture, lights etc because films are made and meant to be seen on large screens in theaters whilst in comparison video is much more closed because no film support is used and it's made to be seen on small screens like TV's or monitors, CRT or LCD.
The cinema itself is not to blame, as seen above 24 FPS are enough, again the problem is the port to digital for the screens we are using at home.

And finally video is quite young compared to cinema, and home video even younger. We are able to watch movies on our computers since the mid 90's when 3DFX invented the 3D acceleration and 15 years is still a very young technology. The main problem is stil and ever the port from cinema to digital since the main home usage is based on TV's and it's going to take a loooong time before all TV sets will change from their original standard of 525/625 lines at 59.94 Hz/50 Hz to anything else higher.

So big question: should we kill cinema because a lot of users prefer to watch a DVD/BD at home rather than going to a theater for watching at a real film ? Not to mention that most users of these forums are experienced users with top end hardware but I'm not sure that they really are a representation of the masses of users all over the world.

[Audionut]

What Cameron is talking about is Digital 3D.

I didn't want to get involved in this conversation, but.


For three-fourths of a century of 2-D cinema, we have grown accustomed to the strobing effect produced by the 24 frame per second display rate.

But 4K doesn't solve the curse of 24 frames per second. In fact it tends to stand in the way of the solutions to that more fundamental problem.

[MfA]

What Cameron is talking about is Digital 3D. This is not cinema but video.
Haha, a luddite and an elitist ...

By that reasoning hand cranked non-talky black and white movies are real cinema ;) Digital is the future in general and stereoscopic is the future of action movies ... the rest of the world will keep calling it cinema.
But this is a director's choice!
So you are all for choices as long as the choice of 48 fps is denied? :)

[TinTime]

That's why cinema is still magic, there are no locked rules, you can play with many things like exposure time, lens, aperture, lights etc because films are made and meant to be seen on large screens in theaters whilst in comparison video is much more closed because no film support is used and it's made to be seen on small screens like TV's or monitors, CRT or LCD.

24fps is a locked rule, and one that film-makers routinely have to consider and work around when framing shots.

Now, I sort of agree with you - I'm happy enough with 24fps, although that might be because it's what I'm used to. However I don't think it's reasonable to argue that an improvement to the current standard is a bad thing. That's especially true if the improvement in question is 48fps film and so, by default, contains the 24fps status quo as a sub-set for compatibility. Higher frame rates wouldn't prevent films looking like Saving Private Ryan from being made, but would open up other options.

Higher frame rates wouldn't kill cinema. The absolute worst case scenario is that it would make no difference! The best case scenario is that it presents artists with new possibilities. Where's the harm in that?

[Brazil2]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that things shouldn't evolve.
The whole point of this thread is that 24 FPS are not enough, which is clearly not true.

So my point is that 24 FPS are enough for cinema and that the problem is in the hardware we are using at home. The standards we have today like DVD and BD were made thinking of the current existing PAL/SECAM/NTSC TV sets park which is about 1.5 billion all over the world. Big companies are making things for the masses and not for a small elite. And it's going to take ages before this whole TV park will be renewed to something with higher specs.

Maybe a new standard for home video should be created. Why not ? I'm not against that at all. I guess it will happen sooner or later anyway.
But what I still enjoy the most is to go to a theater and watch at a good movie on a 10m wide screen. Nothing at home can replace that. And for some reason, I've never noticed any stuttering in a theater :)

[Tack]

Guess what, when you're watching a movie in a theater you are in fact seeing 48 FPS, 24 of them being black frames when the shutter of the projector closes down for the film to move.
Actually, theater film projectors flash each frame twice.

(I also wouldn't make any assumptions about the shutter speed being equivalent in duration to when aperture is open.)

[MfA]

Guess what, when you're watching a movie in a theater you are in fact seeing 48 FPS, 24 of them being black frames when the shutter of the projector closes down for the film to move. Do you ever notice these black frames ? No you don't which simply proves that 24 FPS are enough.
Hmm should have caught this earlier ... but no, not for a long time. 24 Hz flickers or judders severely (depending on how long the black interval is). The frame is shown twice with black intervals in between, this does allow the eye to move on without getting stuck on an image, unfortunately it creates a ghost image messing up detail even more on top of motion blur.

Detail is what suffers most from 24 fps.

[simps]

24fps is bad, and not enough for me.
It is the obvious thing to think about it going up in the future.
And when it goes up, people will look back and rate the fact that old movies were 24fps. The same people defending 24fps now, will probably be the ones saying how bad old movies in 24fps look, once fps goes up. And current HD standard bluray is not compliant to some 1080p / 48fps for example. In my opinion they could have predicted it. Anyway...

When you go to cinema, there is a bit of jerkyness there too, but it is not so bad as the jerkness in 1080p bluray @ 24fps at your home.
That is because the cinema image is blurrier compared to 1080p on your HDTV, and also, because of the pixel way of showing the frame, of lcd tvs, with huge contrasts, etc. Cinema is projection, it is not a big lcd tv showing the image.

I had a 1080p HDTV capable of playing true 24fps. TV was 52", and it was a JOKE.
1080p BluRay playing at 24fps on my 52" tv was INSANELY JERKY.

I had to buy a new TV, with interpolation feature, called AMP 120Hz, to make the jerkness go away, of my BluRay.
1080p frames of BluRay are crystal clear and sharp. Add that to the LCD pixel way of showing the frame, and you have a completly different story from what you see on cinema.

Jerkness of 1080p bluray on lcd TV's playing 24fps without any interpolation feature is VERY BAD.
Again, if you are buying a HD TV these days, please, only go for the ones capable of 24fps AND have some interplation tech.
Don't buy 1080p TV's, that can only play real 24fps, but don't have any interpolation feature in it. <--- This is GARBAGE and outdated technology already.

[]'s
Simps

[Tack]

When you go to cinema, there is a bit of jerkyness there too, but it is not so bad as the jerkness in 1080p bluray @ 24fps at your home.
I emphatically disagree. Obviously this statement is highly subjective, and likely depends significantly on the quality of the display and personal traits.

Although I occasionally observe judder from the low framerate of 24p, by and large it's quite smooth at when viewed at 72Hz. In contrast, I can no longer stand the flicker at movie theaters, and only go for films that I'm too impatient to wait for Bluray.

So, you seem to be predisposed to a sensitivity to low framerate judder, while -- I suspect -- simultaneously viewing 1080p24 content on a low or questionable quality display, and then proceed to espouse such an absolute conviction that 24p content without frame interpolation is garbage, even after several pages on this thread of people who have differing opinions.

You might, perhaps, consider that this topic is highly subjective and stop being so certain about yourself.

[simps]

My 52" TV was actually high end.
Also, on the store, I compared it to some other more high end stuff, some big tv's from Sony (cost about $5000,00), some badass samsungs at $4000,00 and those were bad too.

Just go to a store and see for yourself. Either the big screen tv has some interpolation feature to make jerkyness go away, or it is just bad.

Just put side by side, a big screen 1080p tv, with and without interpolation playing the same movie (with fast action scenes). You will understand what I am saying.

Been capable of playing true 24fps IS NOT ENOUGH. You want it to play real 24fps AND interpolate to make the jerkness go away. That is the good deal.

There is absolute no way I would recommend a 1080p tv without interpolation to anyone. I won't recommend that, when you have on the market, better TV's with interpolation, and the price is just about the same.

I don't want to watch movies with some crazy jerkyness going on. I just recommend 1080p TV's with interpolation feature, and I won't take my word back on this. I experienced this, and it was a pain for me. Like I said, go to a store and see for yourself. If you don't see a difference, then either your eyes are broken, or my eyes are far too sensitive.

[]'s
Simps

Everyone can have your opinion. I respect it, but respect mine. Just go to a store and see the difference yourself. Big 1080p TV's without interpolation are old technology, and you should avoid it. The difference is HUGE.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Been capable of playing true 24fps IS NOT ENOUGH. You want it to play real 24fps AND interpolate to make the jerkness go away. That is the good deal.First things first though... As I mentioned earlier:

"How do Blu-ray players puke-out "true" 24p moving images when the (MPEG-2, AVC, VC-1) source video streams are 23.976fps?"

[2Bdecided]

"How do Blu-ray players puke-out "true" 24p moving images when the (MPEG-2, AVC, VC-1) source video streams are 23.976fps?""Everyone knows" that when they say 24p, they mean 24/1.001.

There are standards with actual true 24p in them, but AFAIK know one is using them.

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

Guess what, when you're watching a movie in a theater you are in fact seeing 48 FPS, 24 of them being black frames when the shutter of the projector closes down for the film to move. Do you ever notice these black frames ? No you don't which simply proves that 24 FPS are enough.I'm glad other people stepped in to point out how wrong this is - i.e. double and triple bladed projectors actually giving double and triple images on reasonably fast pans - a very obvious fault.

Oh, and audio bit depth defines the noise floor. Nothing else. It won't squash any dynamics, though ridiculously quiet signals might get lost in the noise. 16-bits put the noise floor ~90dB below peak signal. Vinyl puts it ~70dB at absolute best (and it varies greatly with frequency).

I would like to do the test with this material:
Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother album
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here album
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome album
Yes - 90125 album
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony N°5 or N°9 directed by Herbert von Karajan (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft recording)Go ahead - they're all analogue masters that have noise far far higher than the 16-bit noise floor.

Cheers,
David.

[foxyshadis]

14 bits is a joke for accurate dynamics, the actual 16 bits srandard is not enough.
I take the challenge but not with a vocalist solo voice only, I want something with dynamics from people who are well known to take a lot of care about audio quality. For instance I would like to do the test with this material:
Pink Floyd - Atom Heart Mother album
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here album
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Welcome to the Pleasuredome album
Yes - 90125 album
The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony N°5 or N°9 directed by Herbert von Karajan (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft recording)



Trained ears will definitely detect a difference in dynamics between analog and digital. Non trained ears will 'feel' something different even though they might not be able to tell about what it is. This is inherent to the digital standard as it is nowadays. That's even the reason why CD's sound so 'compressed' compared to the orginal source or are even compressed more on purpose to avoid problems due to digital mastering. Digital does NOT handle clipping at all.[/QUOTE]

Analogue doesn't handle clipping either. Ever seen what happens when the signal actually goes off the tape? Horrible distortion, time to recalibrate. Haven't you ever heard a PA system, old amps pushed too hard, or a bad garage band tape recording clipping? None of those are digital. CDs were originally intended to use ~80% of the available range, which is still a nearly equal dynamic range, with the outside being a clipping capture zone, that's why old CDs are quieter. Compression and clipping are inventions of unscrupulous studios who care more about loudness than quality, nothing more, and started even before CDs. What makes you think it's inherent in digital media?

Compressed digital formats are a whole different world, though. You have a great point if you talk about those.

Analogue is just as poor a way to record real life - it doesn't have the true fidelity of the world, it doesn't last (warping, fading, coloration), recording and playing devices are mostly rubbish. The only difference is you trade the artifacts you're used to with for the ones you're not. Fighting digital is quaint; instead, enjoy the best that both have to offer.

Go to hydrogen audio if you honestly believe CDs are incapable of holding a vinyl in full fidelity, they can educate you on ways to proove it to yourself and what equipment to rent that you'll need to perform the test.

[buletti]

of course, you could shoot digitally with no problems (the RED camera goes up to 180fps in 2k, the Phantom camera goes up to ~6000fps in 1080), but digital removes a lot of options that cinematographers tend to rely on. hopefully soon digital acquisition will mature and it'll become easier to work with. right now it's a real wrestle to get good pictures out of it

http://vimeo.com/4167288 is showing off the incredible temporal and spatial resolution of the SprintCam, but I cannot imagine how to get a film look from such digital high speed cams. Will cinematographers then tend to shoot at max. temporal resolution (coz hard discs are cheap) and try to add the film look later via post processing?

[SeeMoreDigital]

"Everyone knows" that when they say 24p, they mean 24/1.001.

There are standards with actual true 24p in them, but AFAIK know one is using them.Hmmm....

So if nobody's puking out Blu-ray titles at true film speeds, ie: 24p, what's all the fuss about TV's supporting 24p? Especially when current TV's are perfectly capable at supporting 23.976p.

Further-more, if we're all being encouraged to set our TV's to support 24p when the Blu-ray source is only 23.976, then surely there's going to be a timing conflict...

Plus... Who here likes the idea of having to re-purchase our Blu-rays disc when the genuine "24p" versions are released... Not me... What a con!

[scharfis_brain]

To be honest, will you ever notice a 0.1% slowdown?
Most people even don't rekognise the 5% speedup of PAL-movies.

Also as I read it from the other thread discussing the video renderer that supports 100% smooth video output without lags,
I understood, that nearly all displays will sync theirselves to the input signal within a certain range.
And 24.000 vs. 23.976 is well within this range.
so 23.976 vs 24.000 is no issue at all. You won't find a display that only supports one of them.

[2Bdecided]

Hmmm....

So if nobody's puking out Blu-ray titles at true film speeds, ie: 24p, what's all the fuss about TV's supporting 24p? Especially when current TV's are perfectly capable at supporting 23.976p.?!

First generation HDTVs can't support 23.976p. That's the whole point. When they say new TVs support 24p, they mean 23.976p.

The label "24p" isn't there to draw a distinction between 23.976p and 24p.

Cheers,
David.

[nuhi]

Hi guys,
I made a demo of 60fps clip to a friend of mine so here is the pan video interpolated up to 60fps for those interested to see the difference.

Original (http://forum.videohelp.com/images/guides/p1964709/pan.avi) (link by simps)

60fps convert (http://www.2shared.com/file/5981469/fe9cda12/pan60.html).
It's a free file upload host so it is kinda annoying. It will come up with a link shortly on lower-right labeled:
Save file to your PC: click here

I used one-pass compression just to demonstrate the fluidity so don't focus on compression artifacts. Also you need a reasonably fast computer to have this 60fps playback smoothly otherwise check the statistics for dropped frames if you see it behaving weird.
Codec is x264, interpolator used is MVTools2 through AviSynth.

[SeeMoreDigital]

First generation HDTVs can't support 23.976p. That's the whole point. When they say new TVs support 24p, they mean 23.976p.

The label "24p" isn't there to draw a distinction between 23.976p and 24p.Eh...

My six year old flat-screen (component/DVI capable) HDTV's is able support 23.976p... With or without pull-down flags. Even my Toshiba CRT TV (from 2001) could support progressive NTSC and PAL DVD sources.

[Shinigami-Sama]

Toshiba CRT TV (from 2001) could support progressive NTSC and PAL DVD sources.
+1
I've got a toshiba 1080i CRT and it supports 23.967 just fine...
theres even an option to treat as video or film...

[pie1394]

For the Impulse-type display device like CRT / PDP, it is impossible to do flicking-free display with just 24 Hz scaning / driving rate. 60 / 72 Hz are the most popular options.

Some old CRT HDTVs support the progressive-scan mode especially for FILM type 24 fps contents. To prevent the flicking issue, it often uses 72 Hz frame scanning rate. It is heard that 72 Hz panel driving speed for 24 fps input signals is used by Pioneer Kuro PDP as well. (Regardless 72fps motion frame interpolation on/off for the US models. It is heard that the visual effect is better to turn it off.)

Recently some new PDP TVs can do up to 600 Hz driving. Basically I don't think it is to deal with motion blur issue, but still to get better flicking-free and higher contrast visual effects.

For the recent LCD TV's 200 / 240 Hz products, it is often the 100 / 120 frames with extra 100 / 120 interpolated black or contrast color frames. Never heard there is such powerful video processor which can do 200 / 240 Hz motion estimation in real-time, especially for FullHD resolutioned contents.

Several years agao, some Japanese LCD vendors used the flashing CCFL back-light system to simulate the Impulse-type display for LCD TV. The motion object's visual effect is indeed improved. Yet such display system is diffcult to design, and cost is not cheap to maintain the reasonable reliability.

[MfA]

As I said in the other thread the 600 Hz for plasmas is not the same as framerate, to get equivalent framerates to a 200 Hz LCD a plasma would need >1600 Hz subfields per second. Also the computation cost for MC framerate conversion does not scale linearly with the output framerate, whether you do conversion to 100/120 Hz or 200/240 Hz framerate you only ever have to do motion estimation for each input frame once.

Anyway the display technology doesn't matter, 24 Hz without interpolation is jerky regardless.

[2Bdecided]

My six year old flat-screen (component/DVI capable) HDTV's is able support 23.976p... With or without pull-down flags. Even my Toshiba CRT TV (from 2001) could support progressive NTSC and PAL DVD sources.You may have a rare beast, or else you may be mistaken.

e.g. you talk about progressive DVD sources. We all know how to encode that content onto a disc - but I'm not aware of an SD 24p analogue connection. Of course 25p-in-50i is ubiquitous, and most flat screen TVs will recover the 25p; 24p-in-60i is common, and many flat screen TVs (also some CRTs) will recover the 24p - but that's different to supporting native 24p.

Cheers,
David.

[SeeMoreDigital]

You may have a rare beast, or else you may be mistaken.

e.g. you talk about progressive DVD sources. We all know how to encode that content onto a disc - but I'm not aware of an SD 24p analogue connection. Of course 25p-in-50i is ubiquitous, and most flat screen TVs will recover the 25p; 24p-in-60i is common, and many flat screen TVs (also some CRTs) will recover the 24p - but that's different to supporting native 24p.To confirm, I'm referring to the playback of 23.976fps progressive sources, not 24.000fps.

In the days when I had a Sigma Xcard hooked up to my Toshiba TV via (analogue Y-Pb-Pr) component, I would remove the pull-down from NTSC (movie) DVD's, amend the MPEG-2 streams "Picture Coding" and "Sequence" extensions. Then mux the 6Ch AC3 audio and 23.976p MPEG-2 video streams into the .MPG container.

Playback via the Xcard was perfect. The Toshiba was even able to confirm it was receiving a "progressive" signal. DVD players that supported .MPG files burned to disc could also pump out progressive signals at 23.976p via component.

[TinTime]

There are plenty of displays out there that won't accept a 24p signal at all, and plenty more that will accept 24p and then convert it to 60p prior to display. This was particularly true of LCD, Plasma, DLP and so on. Perhaps CRT is a bit more flexible.

So it's good that manufacturers are finally realising that accepting a 24p signal and displaying it at a multiple of 24 refresh rate is desirable.

[thewebchat]

You know, I find it odd that everyone here is talking about high framerates like 120fps and "6000fps red1" from back in page 2 when cartoons are drawn at about 8fps and don't look particularly jerky.

[bob0r]

@simps

I have
http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/detail/spec.do?group=television&type=television&subtype=tftlcd&model_cd=LE52A656A1FXXU&fullspec=F
and i turned OFF all useless noise and motion features.
That way the video is nice and clean.

Using MPC-HC to play x264 hdtv encodes... and totalmedia theatre to play blu-ray discs, all via a computer.

I am not using any reclock or other filters, just DVI>HDMI works perfect, no tearing or other weirdness.

[2Bdecided]

To confirm, I'm referring to the playback of 23.976fps progressive sources, not 24.000fps.

In the days when I had a Sigma Xcard hooked up to my Toshiba TV via (analogue Y-Pb-Pr) component, I would remove the pull-down from NTSC (movie) DVD's, amend the MPEG-2 streams "Picture Coding" and "Sequence" extensions. Then mux the 6Ch AC3 audio and 23.976p MPEG-2 video streams into the .MPG container.

Playback via the Xcard was perfect. The Toshiba was even able to confirm it was receiving a "progressive" signal. DVD players that supported .MPG files burned to disc could also pump out progressive signals at 23.976p via component.
That doesn't prove it was sent as SD (ED) 24p via analogue (Y Pr Pb) component - mainly because no such standard exists. 50p and 60p are your choices. Standard "Progressive" SD DVD players are outputting one of these.

AFAIK!

You can prove me wrong by pointing to the ITU, SMPTE, or CEA standard that defines an SD 24p analogue component interface.

Cheers,
David.

[SeeMoreDigital]

You can prove me wrong by pointing to the ITU, SMPTE, or CEA standard that defines an SD 24p analogue component interface.I'm confused...

Why do you keep referring to 24p, when I'm talking about playback of 23.976p?

[2Bdecided]

I'm confused why you think it matters which I'm talking about! ;)

Neither exists as an analogue SD standard.

Cheers,
David.

[BassPig]

I shoot exclusively in 24P on CineAlta iron these days, because of Blu-ray. If on a contract to shoot for television, I may shoot 30P or 60P, but never 60i.

My observations about frame judder: It's most noticeable on slow pans, when the shutter angle is 90º or narrower and the frame is brightly-lit. Sharp detail in the frame makes it more prevalent.
Minimizing frame judder is the responsibility of skilled cinematographers. Slowing the shutter speed is one way, by blurring the motion, we have a form of interpolation. Slowing the pan rate is considered the correct way. Pans of 160º should take at least 20 seconds. Faster panning results in too much position change interframe, and is seen as judder.
With high action and a static camera position, perpendicular shooting is a poor choice. Shooting at an oblique angle reduces relative speed of the subject vs. the camera position (geometry and algebra at work) and hence the judder is less perceived.

So we have sharpness or acuity of the image, brightness, shutter speed (affects acuity) as three major factors that affect how severely we perceive judder. I should add that the larger an area of vision your screen subtends, the more that judder is going to bother you. Sitting close to a large screen with judder motion can actually give one a headache!

On films of late, I am observing a lot more rule-breaking with regard to pans. Plus there is this new phenomena of hand-held, very shaky camera handling. The best directors are careful to use static shots most of the time, avoid zooms, and pan only judiciously and when it's essential for story-telling.

I find that 'soft' footage is less objectionable with judder, because it's got less of the hard edges to attract the eye with motion. When shooting very high resolution formats, and where a large amount of unsharp masking is done to the final process, the resulting footage will be unforgiving to improper panning/zooming/position relative to moving objects (such as trains).

24fps can look good, if you shoot it right. It's not easy to shoot correctly for 24P. It was even harder back in the 16fps days.
Back in the '60s when I had my Bolex H8, I had the ability to shoot in 12,16,18,24,32,48 & 64 fps. 16 was the usual rate, as film was expensive and for most uses, it seemed adequate. The next model up, the Bolex H16, could shoot as low as 8fps. Think of the judder there! So for me, 24fps seems quite enough if you shoot with the proper techniques.

The unfortunate thing is that Hollywood and many 'indie' filmmakers are forgetting/do not understand the physical rules of working with 24fps photography, so they shoot fast & wrecklessly and the result is a lot of film that looks bad, necessitating the need for set makers to come up with bandaids for the problem that consumers well notice, such as these 120Hz TVs.

[MfA]

You say shooting right, I say limiting your expressive options.

I see Sony's new projectors can do 60P (at 2x2K simultaneous stereo at that). They should see if they can sweet talk Cameron into doing parts of Battle Angel in 60P, would be perfect for it.

[BassPig]

While I think it's great to have technology that can do higher frame rates, I also realize that bad camera work can drive an audience right out of the Theater. I remember back some 35 years ago, I went to see a screening of "The French Connection"... the cinematography was so jerky and frenetic (spastic might be a more accurate word here) that I walked out halfway through the movie. Shaking the camera around like that is like taking the viewer's head and shaking it around. I don't know anyone who likes that sort of experience in a theater or at home on Blu-ray.

[Mug Funky]

michael bay anyone? (btw, "spastic" typically means very limited movement, rather than too much of it)

i think it's important to at least know the rules, but i haven't got a problem with them being broken. otherwise cinematography becomes very dry, austere and boring (i remember a feature a couple of years ago where i'm not sure if the camera moved at all within a shot for the entire film... let's just say i wont be re-watching it).

costs are faaaaar too prohibitive to get into higher framerates in cinemas, but as film is slowly abandoned as an acquisition media, and more importantly as a release media, we'll probably see the framerates increase. imagine making release prints for a worldwide release at 60fps! why do you think nobody shoots 70mm anymore except for imax? it's just tooo much celluloid and each print costs more than the best of all domestic TVs.

all we need now is for digital acquisition to suck a little less. i had an idea for "re-usable" film that was photoelectric rather than photochemical, but i'm not sure it's physically possible in colour, and don't have the maths, time or resources to develop the idea...

[BassPig]

There are commonly-understood (almost common sense) ground rules for cinematography, and I do realize creativity when I see it, but a lot of the movies of late are just badly-shot. I think if you have a good story to tell, and the screenplay is written well, with careful and meaningful camera moves, not just movement for movement's sake, but to draw attention to a shift in the subject, etc., then it will be successful.

Today's audience is about special FX, rather than content. Even in TV, you see interview/talk shows shot with cameras that are moving slowly on tracks the whole time. Somehow the networks feel that the content is too boring to watch, so generate some artificial motion to make up for the lack of real content.

Almost fifty years ago, I remember watching Mike Wallace and David Susskind and other interview shows. They were interesting because of the quality of ideas being discussed. The cinematography was simple. A static camera. Blackout background. Two chairs illuminated by a spotlight. Most of the frame was dark, but for the faces of the interviewer/ee. And we watched because it was CONTENT that kepts us focused, not jerky camera motion.

I miss the wide vistas and gentle, sweeping pans of the old films like Gone with the Wind. Dialog shots where camera movement was not obvious, but effective. Back in the late 1930s, we broadcast engineers had a maxim: "Are mechanical operations apparent?" The point was, we, as broadcasters, had to operate our facilities smoothly, with no dead air, no clicks, pops or buzzes, and present programming seamlessly, so that the audience never thought about the mechanics of radio, but about the content we were broadcasting. Back then it was radio plays during most of the day. NBC had a full orchestra in the studio for background music, as needed, during each radio drama. Everyone knew their job and exactly when to do it. And the show went smoothly.

Today, there seems to be a carelessness to the presentation. Radio is no more than music on hard drive. Gone is the art of presentation. Film alike, has gone south. Very few directors have the vision to enhance story telling via camera angles, editing, use of track and dolly and zoom effects. It seems like all the good ideas in cinema techniques have already been discovered in the days of Alfred Hitchcock.

I'm inclined to believe the antithesis of your tagline: noise is the new signal.

[JohannesL]

I agree about the FPS issue. I play a lot of 60 fps video games, and the transition to watching 24 fps movies is really horrible, even on DVDs. I've seen these interpolation TVs in hardware stores, and the difference in smoothness is really huge. My next TV will without a single doubt have interpolation.

[MfA]

all we need now is for digital acquisition to suck a little less. i had an idea for "re-usable" film that was photoelectric rather than photochemical, but i'm not sure it's physically possible in colour, and don't have the maths, time or resources to develop the idea...
If it's panchromatic you can just put a CFA in front. Although I must say I have my doubts about stability, dark currents will eat away the image if you leave such a film alone for too long. Digital goes too fast anyway ... in 2 more process shrink cycles I doubt either sensors, storage or wireless transfer be too much of a problem anymore for 60 Hz 4K, and I doubt a new film format could be commercialized any faster than that.

Unless patents grind everything down to a halt.

[adam.fred]

The argument that a cinematographer should just use "tricks" for the next 50 years instead of taking advantage of new technology is just backwards thinking. There is no reasonable argument against improving framerates. Even when we have 60P/100P/120P cinema the film maker can emulate 24P (or 1P if they like for the ultimate in the dreamiest of dreamlike stories) whenever they feel the need to do so.

The argument against higher framerates just the basic old "thats how we have always done it around here ... now get off my lawn".

Guess what oldies ... young people don't like 24P.

[Ghitulescu]

The argument that a cinematographer should just use "tricks" for the next 50 years instead of taking advantage of new technology is just backwards thinking. There is no reasonable argument against improving framerates. Even when we have 60P/100P/120P cinema the film maker can emulate 24P (or 1P if they like for the ultimate in the dreamiest of dreamlike stories) whenever they feel the need to do so.

Guess what oldies ... young people don't like 24P.

Improving (raising?) the fps from 24 to 60p will not make the original cinematographic records look better (you can however employ some tricks, like intelligent frame creation), it was a nonsense promulgated some years ago by some LCD manufacturers, since their technology was back then not capable of displaying 24p.

Definitively, a native 60p (or 50p) is far more realistic than 24p, but if I'm recollecting well this issue, the BD standard does not allow FullHD 1080 at 50p or 60p, just interlaced.

On the other hand, video was and still is a matter of trade off. I do not mind to see PAL 50i, but I hate to see "green" people because of tint problems of NTSC. I know Americans that are disappointed about the lack of fluidity of the action (sports mainly) but they don't care about the colors. Some people are concerned about the video artefacts the MPEG-2 compression has (on eg a commercial movie) - this doesn't prevent some of them to sweet the pill by converting it to divx/xdiv, at least it has 1/5th of the size.

I went yesteday in a very big audio/video store to find a BD movie, as a gift. All new movies are nothing else than a collage of violence and FXs (and falsificated history and other facts, like the Italian Cinema Collosal of the '60ies), the good old ones are still high-priced (like 30€ apiece, which is a lot considering the fact that they have been sold 3x by now: as 16mm, VHS and DVD) and most of them I already have. It will bring nothing important to me at higher resolution (the resolution is linked to the display size), at least not at 30€.

We came back to the philosophy of the early pioneers, shot the movie, then forget it and shot another story.