Why does the "film look" matter so much?

[drbuzz0]

One thing I have never really understood is why it is so important to so many that their footage (whether recorded or played) has the "film look" to it. For this reason, some seem to really hate things like televisions with motion interpolation that converts the 24fps to something higher, because it no longer looks like "film" or who detest encoding that removes film grain.

The other way to think of footage is to consider it a "representation of reality" in which case, you want the footage to be as objectively close to the real event and recording motion and detail in a manner that preserves as much original information as possible.

Aspects of the "Film look"

1. Progressive scanning - This is obviously better than interlaced scanning, at least all things being equal. It allows for full resolution capturing of all parts of a frame regardless of motion. Film is natively progressive. Interlaced scanning can make the motion a little smoother (although this can be achieved by a higher frame rate too) but really it exists because it helped avoid excessive flicker with early CRT systems. CRT's no longer being the dominant method of displaying video, interlacing is becoming obsolete anyway.

2. 24 FPS - Seems interesting that this would be considered "Desirable" because really, it's not the rate chosen for any reason other than it's acceptably fast.

The human eye sees motion at a given rate and the illusion can be created by showing a rapid series of still images. This is how television and movies work. Low rates have a strobe effect. Higher rates appear to be continuous motion, but still can seem a little choppy or unnatural. As the rate increases, the footage looks smoother or more fluid.

Film is normally 24 frames per second. (though sometimes non-standard frame rates have been used) PAL tv is 25 fps (50 fields per second) and NTSC is 30/60 (actually it's 29.97) Many new forms of video like 720p can be 60 fps. Motion interpolation can restore interframe motion to achieve 120 fps or even 240 fps, way higher than the eye can perceive.

Why was 24 fps used for film? It's not because it is the best rate. It's not because it provides the smoothest motion. It's because it was about the lowest rate they could get away with. Some early Edison films used 48 or even 60 fps, but it was discovered that the rate could be reduced with only marginal loss of fluidity. Film stock is expensive and it has to go on big reels. Slower frame rates mean that more can fit on a reel and also allow the film to run more slowly, reducing breaking.

24 fps was a compromise basically being as slow as they could get away with. Much slower and the motion becomes way too jerky.

If you want the video to contain as much information as possible, be as smooth and close to reality as possible and be as natural as it can, you would want the highest possible frame rate, up to a point (above 100 fps or so, it's just impossible to tell, but certainly 60 fps provides more temporal resolution than 24 fps)


Film Grain - I never could understand why anyone wants to see this. It's not part of the picture. It's not part of the action. It's not something the director put there for effect. It's noise. That's all it is. Photochemical film has grain. Nobody wanted it there, but it's the nature of the beast. In fact, expensive Hollywood productions used the finest grained film they could find to reduce this noise. Larger film stock has less grain in the final image. 16mm will show more grain than 35mm which will show more than 70mm. Nobody used 16mm because they loved the grain and having less fine detail. They used it because it's a lot cheaper and was acceptable quality for many applications.

Grain is easy to remove, however, because it varies per frame. A simple fine-detailed temporal denoise can detect it and wipe most of the grain away. No, it's not quite as good as if the grain were never there, but it can come close.

For some reason, people hate this. I never got it.

Strobing - A motion picture projector does not show one frame after another without blanking. There is a distinct period when the shutter is closed. This allows the film to advance one frame. So you see one frame followed by a fraction of a second of black then the next frame and so on.

CRT's do this too, in what is called "vertical blanking" but to a much lesser extent. The distinctive flicker is from film projection. I've seen those who dislike that DLP and LCD projectors lose this on-off-on-off flicker.

But the flicker was again, never there because anyone wanted it. It's the nature of the beast. The film needs to advance and if it were to do so while showing on the screen, the result would be noticeable wobble of the scene. So the shutter is there to stop this. It's an artifact of the medium.


So really... I don't get it. Aside from being progressive scanned, I don't see any thing about the "film look" that is objectively better than more modern high resolution video.


Why would you choose a lower frame rate when we can have higher or even convert a lower rate to a smoother rate with it barely being noticeable? Why would you want more noise in your picture?


PS. Don't yell at me over this. I'm just opening the floor to opinion on this. I don't hate you for loving film grain. Don't hate me for loving clarity.

[Guest]

You falsely assume the aim is always to attain realism. That can be seen as harsh and sharp when the subject matter may require for example a surreal, organic, or fantastical treatment.

[Atak_Snajpera]

you could also ask why people still paint landscapes using oil paints when we have multi mega pixel digital cameras.

[Groucho2004]

Film Grain - I never could understand why anyone wants to see this. It's not part of the picture. It's not part of the action. It's not something the director put there for effect.Not true. Directors like Tarantino, Rodriguez or Aronofsky use it as a stylistic device.
Grain is easy to remove, however, because it varies per frame. A simple fine-detailed temporal denoise can detect it and wipe most of the grain away.Yes, and it usually introduces other problems like banding.

[2Bdecided]

High resolution / definition, high framerate, artefact-free video looks gorgeous and expensive, and exudes quality. I'm talking about 100fps+, and 2k+. Few people have seen it.

But convert the same thing to SD, and many people consider it looks cheap. It's hard to do this at a reasonable bitrate without introducing artefacts, and then most of us would probably agree that it looks cheap. Yet drop that SD copy to 24fps, and many people will judge that it look expensive again!

Google Cameron 48fps - not every film maker loves 24fps so much ;)

Cheers,
David.

[Atak_Snajpera]

we must also mention that film look is not only limited to fps and grain. during post process color grading is also applied (using curves).eg greenish matrix 1, bluesh matrix 2

[blubb444]

I'll have to agree with you. Ever since I own a 1080-50p camera (Panasonic HDC-TM700) I don't want to go to any lower framerate. Sometimes I'd even like a higher framerate because the image can still look slightly juddery in cases of very low exposure time (1/1000s or below) and high motion. Still I'm very happy with it and never would trade for a low-fps (24p) cam even if the resolution is higher (let's say 4K or even UHDV).
My personal opinion is that people prefer it for nostalgia reasons or because they associate 24fps with high artistic quality movies and 50/60fps with cheap soap operas.
I'd say it's kind of similar with people preferring vinyl over CD even though the CD has a much higher usable dynamic range/SNR (~96 dB) than vinyl (~70 dB) but ironically more than often the vinyl release of an album has less compression and limiting (a.k.a. loudness war treatment) than the CD release so in that case the vinyl is actually of a higher artistic quality than the CD release (example: most of the modern RHCP releases) even though the CD has more potential.

[drbuzz0]

Not true. Directors like Tarantino, Rodriguez or Aronofsky use it as a stylistic device.

Yeah, occasionally. But the fact that it is there to begin with is really an accident. They just decided to play with it


Yes, and it usually introduces other problems like banding.

Indeed it can be hard to deal with perfect removal of grain. Would be better if the grain was minimal to begin with.

[drbuzz0]

High resolution / definition, high framerate, artefact-free video looks gorgeous and expensive, and exudes quality. I'm talking about 100fps+, and 2k+. Few people have seen it.

But convert the same thing to SD, and many people consider it looks cheap. It's hard to do this at a reasonable bitrate without introducing artefacts, and then most of us would probably agree that it looks cheap. Yet drop that SD copy to 24fps, and many people will judge that it look expensive again!

Google Cameron 48fps - not every film maker loves 24fps so much ;)

Cheers,
David.
Yeah. I've seen a lot of criticism of it, which i find idiotic. There's MORE information there. If you dislike it so much, you can drop every other frame and watch it strobe on you.

However 48 fps -> 24 fps is easy. 24 fps can never be accurately converted to 48 fps. Yes, there are motion interpolation algorithms that do an amazingly good job, but they are just a simulation. They are not true 48 fps. The information is not there. They are just making a best guess at the data that is missing.


I saw some previews and the hobbit looks amazing in 48 fps. Its proof that the human eye can indeed tell the difference and detect motion above the 24 fps threshold.

That said, there's an upper limit. I highly doubt that 60 fps would really stand out much compared to 48 fps and there's no way you could tell much difference between 120 fps and 240 fps.


My standard for video has always been pretty simple: As much resolution as possible. As fast a frame rate as possible. The faster the better. As little compression loss as possible, the less the better.

Yes, this is expensive, but doing things better usually is that way. Sure, super high res costs more than low res. But a BMW will cost more than a Ford Fiesta, and worth it, if you can afford it.

Hence my standard is "get as much detail as possible given the equipment and budget" and never "Intentionally run it at a lower frame rate than your equipment is actually capable of"


Ideally I want to slow it down to 1/8 speed and still have it look fluid. I want to freeze frame it and count zoom into count the pores on the nose of a guy in the extreme background. Probably won't achieve that, but more resolution, higher frame rate, less noise is always better.

[Ghitulescu]

It doesn't. "Film look" (criticised by its very own inventor, Edison, who considered 50fps are ideal, 112 years ago, when he joined Eastman to manufacture 35mm films) is a hype whose only purpose is to save the studios from extra work (today when everything is accelerated). Like "film grain" which is added [back] to simulate film. Maybe they should drop DTS HD MA or TrueHD in favour of the scratched shellacks (with 6000 Hz top), to have a fully classical ambiance. Or even better a pianoman.

[Atak_Snajpera]

btw don't be so excited about hobbit in 48 fps because dvd and bd standard do not allow such frame rates. they would have to convert to 720p60!
i'm sure that average joe will get standard 24fps in 1080p rather than some 720p60 or 480i60

[poisondeathray]

btw don't be so excited about hobbit in 48 fps because dvd and bd standard do not allow such frame rates. they would have to convert to 720p60!
i'm sure that average joe will get standard 24fps in 1080p rather than some 720p60 or 480i60

yes - 48fps version is supposed to be limited release

http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/08/the-hobbit-48-fps-film-limited-release/

[SassBot]

Film Grain - I never could understand why anyone wants to see this. It's not part of the picture. It's not part of the action. It's not something the director put there for effect. It's noise. That's all it is. Photochemical film has grain. Nobody wanted it there, but it's the nature of the beast. In fact, expensive Hollywood productions used the finest grained film they could find to reduce this noise. Larger film stock has less grain in the final image. 16mm will show more grain than 35mm which will show more than 70mm. Nobody used 16mm because they loved the grain and having less fine detail. They used it because it's a lot cheaper and was acceptable quality for many applications.

Grain is easy to remove, however, because it varies per frame. A simple fine-detailed temporal denoise can detect it and wipe most of the grain away. No, it's not quite as good as if the grain were never there, but it can come close.

For some reason, people hate this. I never got it.


People like film grain because when used right it can give films a very gritty look. But, sure, it's not always intentional. Also, any noise is "easy to remove" but that doesn't mean the result will look good. There are plenty of waxy looking HD DVDs and BluRays to drive this point home. But for some reason people believe that videos should just be blasted with DNR defeating the whole point of it being in high resolution to begin with since you've smoothed out so much detail that it might as well be a DVD release. The point being is that the video should be as unmolested as possible. The people who hate grain should just crank up the denoising on their TV rather than thinking that everyone should be subjected to DNRed junk.

[burfadel]

I like to add a very small amount of fine grain on playback, I do this using the JanWillem32 shaders. I use a much lower strength than in the shader normally though.

I don't like it in the original picture, but added in playback can perceptually enhance the quality of the picture. The idea is if you sit at a normal distance away from the TV, the fine grain hides encoding artifacts, but also seems to bring out the proper 'textures' in the video better. Yes it is artificial, but there really isn't such a thing as a 'normal' looking picture because all TV's will display the picture slightly differently just due to the nature of the panel and circuitry, and on top of that all TV's have different processing circuitry and techniques to 'enhance' the picture.

[Ghitulescu]

People like film grain because when used right it can give films a very gritty look. But, sure, it's not always intentional. Also, any noise is "easy to remove" but that doesn't mean the result will look good. There are plenty of waxy looking HD DVDs and BluRays to drive this point home. But for some reason people believe that videos should just be blasted with DNR defeating the whole point of it being in high resolution to begin with since you've smoothed out so much detail that it might as well be a DVD release. The point being is that the video should be as unmolested as possible. The people who hate grain should just crank up the denoising on their TV rather than thinking that everyone should be subjected to DNRed junk.

Actually the point is why one would buy the newest technique (BD, HDTV, flatscreens), if the images are still low quality?
"The better to see the noise with." would said the wolf to the Red Riding Hood.

Nobody sees the noise in the real life. If ones eyes see noise, he'll better see a physician. Why would something that claims to represent the reality induce such a notion that noise or film grain is better because (erh, what was the excuse?) it provides film feeling.

The answer was given above: because this hype saves the studio a lot of work and money.

I don't see why every time when the noise (film grain) is discussed, someone appears and propose the "waxy figures". There are lots of intermediate results, some very good.

Have a look on all threads here (and elsewhere) where people are keen to denoise many films (ok, mainly anime, but also mainstream films). This job could have been done at studios. Why not? Because ... read below


The art of photography and the art of cinematography are almost twin siblings. Just the latter has a hell lot more frames.
See all those nice colourful fashion magazines (like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, etc etc). Is there any noise there? Are there "waxy figures"?
How much time spent the photographer retouching the several photos of an article? days, weeks maybe.

Imagine multiplying those days with 150'000 (the approximate number of frames in a mainstream movie), no way, 17 years? Accelerate the procedure, and still it would take months. And of course money, directly or indirectly. For what? Better launch the "film feeling" hype .... and fuel it from time to time with paid blogsters, reviewers and forum members.

[SassBot]

Actually the point is why one would buy the newest technique (BD, HDTV, flatscreens), if the images are still low quality?
"The better to see the noise with." would said the wolf to the Red Riding Hood.

Because blasting away the grain blasts away the details? I don't want to watch movies where everyone looks like wax figures because someone whined that it had grain in it. I might as well be watching it on some low-res CRT if all the fine detail has been smeared away.

Nobody sees the noise in the real life. If ones eyes see noise, he'll better see a physician. Why would something that claims to represent the reality induce such a notion that noise or film grain is better because (erh, what was the excuse?) it provides film feeling.

Great, but movies aren't meant to be 100% accurate reproduction of our eyes. So that is pretty much a moot point.

The answer was given above: because this hype saves the studio a lot of work and money.

What hype? The only people who create "hype" are idiot film majors. I don't really care about such nonsense, but I do care about the video releases not looking like crap because they were hit with the DNR hammer.

I don't see why every time when the noise (film grain) is discussed, someone appears and propose the "waxy figures". There are lots of intermediate results, some very good.

Because it has happened often in the past and still happens? Yes, sometimes it can be done right but it is done wrong often enough to make it annoying. Again, if you want to watch DNRed movies, just turn on the post-processing of your TV.

Have a look on all threads here (and elsewhere) where people are keen to denoise many films (ok, mainly anime, but also mainstream films). This job could have been done at studios. Why not? Because ... read below

Yes, I've seen many of those threads and the output from their scripts usually looks like crap. Anime encoders are horrible overly smearing the video and then being heavy-handed with warpsharping. If one squints enough that might look decent, but not to someone who has working eyes.

The art of photography and the art of cinematography are almost twin siblings. Just the latter has a hell lot more frames.
See all those nice colourful fashion magazines (like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, etc etc). Is there any noise there? Are there "waxy figures"?
How much time spent the photographer retouching the several photos of an article? days, weeks maybe.

Actually since they heavily airbrush those models to hide all the imperfections, yes, they do look like waxy models at times.

Imagine multiplying those days with 150'000 (the approximate number of frames in a mainstream movie), no way, 17 years? Accelerate the procedure, and still it would take months. And of course money, directly or indirectly. For what? Better launch the "film feeling" hype .... and fuel it from time to time with paid blogsters, reviewers and forum members.

You keep mentioning this "film feeling hype" yet can you provide any evidence of major studios at all ever talking it up? I've yet to ever see this happen and it's a major red herring since I never once brought it up. I couldn't care less about some arty film look nonsense. I just hate seeing DNR blasted home video releases that look worse than older DVD releases. And there are many, many of them.

[smok3]

shortly: there is clarity and there is lack of clarity, there is light and there is dark, there is strobe and there is smooth, there is mistery and then everything is peachy. Lack of info or covered info is filled with our imagination, grain can act like that as well.

p.s. however the grain era is pretty much over now.

[drbuzz0]

Because blasting away the grain blasts away the details? I don't want to watch movies where everyone looks like wax figures because someone whined that it had grain in it. I might as well be watching it on some low-res CRT if all the fine detail has been smeared away.


Well...

Anyone who knows the first thing about video editing and transcoding knows that you don't just "blast away" something like film grain by applying some generic filter at a high setting.

Assuming the film grain is reasonably minimal (which it should be on good 35mm or better film stock) you would carefully go through and isolate the film grain, (best to do using a temporal method rather than purely spacial, which gives an overly-smooth look) and carefully remove it by using a filter that you repeatedly tweak to get the best results.

Granted, this is not always the way it's done in the shoddy transfers I've seen, but I've been able to remove film grain to the point you'd never know it was there. It took me a lot of trail and error and sometimes I had to do it scene by scene, but it can be done.

It can depend on the nature of the grain and the scene type. If there's not a lot of motion for a few frames, you can wipe away most of the grain and still have damn near perfect textures.

[Guest]

If there's not a lot of motion for a few frames, you can wipe away most of the grain and still have damn near perfect textures. For the skeptics can you please post a sample source video with the script that you use? It should have good texture with spatial frequency close to the grain, otherwise the task is not so difficult. But you are claiming an ability to distinguish grain from texture, so let's see the beef.

And don't post a static scene, video is characterized by motion, isn't it?

[Atak_Snajpera]

Assuming the film grain is reasonably minimal (which it should be on good 35mm or better film stock) you would carefully go through and isolate the film grain, (best to do using a temporal method rather than purely spacial, which gives an overly-smooth look) and carefully remove it by using a filter that you repeatedly tweak to get the best results.
minimal noise is very often destroyed by lossy compressions (x264) so I really wouldn't bother that much. Unless you encode your backups at VERY HIGH bitrates. Besides I don't mind if noise is monochromatic. Color noise is more annoying.

[Ghitulescu]

See all those nice colourful fashion magazines (like Vogue, Cosmopolitan, etc etc). Is there any noise there? Are there "waxy figures"?

Actually since they heavily airbrush those models to hide all the imperfections, yes, they do look like waxy models at times.

How about then nature images from National geographics magazine or similar, how about their waxy touch :)?

It is possible to remove film grain and noise (they are distinct issues) without adverse effects. It simply takes time. So the the movies are ran through automatic "denoisers" like cintel and live happy.


And BTW, some movies have "added" (not "added back" :)) noise to mimic the film feeling. Like the adding of artificial scratches and sepia tonality to mimic a vintage photo or movie (see most war movies, Forrest Gump and others).

If the movie cannot be fully processed satisfactorily to remove the noise, then the noise is left in place, for artistic reasons.

[Flux]

Film grain is a matter of taste, but it eats bits like crazy, if you want to keep film grain details. Nowadays videos without film grain would be very possible, so we will see how many directors actually like film grain. Same for 24 fps film. Some say that for example 48 fps will introduce "cheap soap opera effect" which probably means unnatural smooth movement. Shouldn't exposure times for each frame have bigger role for that than frame rate? 24 fps would look really really choppy, if they wouldn't use long exposure times which produce visible motion blur.

[StainlessS]

I believe that I'm correct in saying that 24FPS film is displayed twice per frame, how
about 48FPS film, would that be displayed twice per frame too ?

[2Bdecided]

btw don't be so excited about hobbit in 48 fps because dvd and bd standard do not allow such frame rates. they would have to convert to 720p60!
i'm sure that average joe will get standard 24fps in 1080p rather than some 720p60 or 480i60In our half of the world, 720p50, 1080i50, or eventually 1080p50 would do just fine, if you can live with the speed up.

The problem is, it's really 1080p96 (in terms of datarate) because it's 3D. BluRay already outputs something very close to 1080p48 when showing 1080p24 in 3D - but doubling things up again will be a challenge.

(the decoding silicon is already on the way though).

Cheers,
David.

[Atak_Snajpera]

In our half of the world, 720p50, 1080i50, or eventually 1080p50 would do just fine, if you can live with the speed up.
Level 4.1 does not allow 1080p50 and 60.