VARIABLE FRAME RATE - DEBATE

Assuming you're willing to bear the cost of S3D, it's not that much more money to do 4K or HFR. Other than Arri, the cameras are out there already, there's no real technology change, and storage is dirt cheap. No VFX house charges by the pixel anyway. They might be scared of the change, but it's not going to impact them financially much, and they'll pass at least 100% of the cost onto the client. Based on the number of VFX studios that are jumping into VR? And those that have deep imaging as their default pipeline? They're playing dumb if they think they're going to be financially burdened by a simple I/O increase, and like I said, some things actually become easier.

I don't think you've spent much time at the bigger end of town.

I just shot a US cable series. I mentioned 4K (and this was a VFX heavy show) and the Universal EP money guy literally ran across the room to tell me to stop talking.

They don't want to pay for 4K.

They don't see any advantage or need for 4K.

Post houses most certainly DO charge for 4K pipelines.

We shot "just 1920 ProRes" instead. Let me share the numbers.

For 13 episodes we shot for 98 days, generating 427 hours of rushes across 54 TB of files. at 24 Fps. Tell me what the storage would be for UHD ProRes let alone the kind of infrastructure a network needs to have to be able to service multiple workstations for editing, and then to also do it at 60 FPS ???

You can't seriously think no one is going to charge for that.

JB

Rushes would approach a petabyte! And then add all the backups and edit versions. Serious data requiring serious infrastructure to share that data with all the workstations.


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I'm not saying they shouldn't charge for it. Of course they should and will. I'm saying the increased cost (not what they charge, what it costs) is quite small compared to other expenses. This isn't S3D where everything gets more complex. If they choose to do a 1000% markup on the added cost, they're going to lose the bid to someone who has a more reasonable markup.

Does it increase render times? Sure, but sub-linearly. Does it increase the cost of everything? No, and some things get cheaper. But when you break down a production budget and show all the things it doesn't affect, you see it's really minor. It doesn't affect marketing and distribution, cast and crew, insurance, rentals, craft services, etc.. There's only a few things that are affected, and those aren't the big ticket items.

Even for post production, the costs don't increase just because of the I/O and processing. If 60fps cost 2.5x as much as 24fps, then B&W should cost 1/3 as much as color, right? If there isn't much savings in reducing I/O and processing, then there shouldn't be much cost in increasing it.

Rushes would approach a petabyte! And then add all the backups and edit versions. Serious data requiring serious infrastructure to share that data with all the workstations.

Yeah, costs will go up, but any storage infrastucture that can handle 54TB can handle 540TB. It's just a matter of adding more drives. You may not even need more servers. You certainly don't need more labor. Same thing with backups. Yes, your DLT costs are going up, but you'll pay less per TB and may not need additional robots or licenses. The cost of a 20Gb/s network isn't 10x the cost of a 2Gb/s network. If you are a permanent studio, you'll amortize it over time, too. So yes, costs will go up, but you can provide a better product to your customer while only charging a small amount more. And we know Sony and Amazon will pay for it. They have incentive to.

Rushes would approach a petabyte! And then add all the backups and edit versions. Serious data requiring serious infrastructure to share that data with all the workstations.

Yeah, costs will go up, but any storage infrastucture that can handle 54TB can handle 540TB.

Not that I've ever seen. The costs scale, you don't just "add more drives"

You're arguing that quadrupling the data (4K) then doubling it again (60 fps) won't cost a commensurate amount extra to handle and that the big end of town will just wear it anyway ?

You know most big end film VFX shots are still at 2K right ?

I think you underestimate how much costs are really watched by those making content. And it's very much connected to want. If consumers won't notice or don't notice or don't want it, then they won't do it.

I was talking to a senior studio exec whoose official title was "VP in charge of physical production" His job was to create the budget and test the feasibility of productions against the projected box office for projects they were considering green lighting. This was when 3D was starting to be the thing around 2010. For each job he ran the numbers on doing it in post as a conversion or doing it with actual 3D cameras. He generalised but basically said it cost about 20% more to shoot in 3D or about 1-2 million to do a post conversion to 3D.

Let's look at how many films have ACTUALLY shot 3D lately....

What way do you think they MOSTLY decide to go...? Even at the tens of millions budget stage.

Costs do matter. They do impact. They are felt by production. I've had more luck convincing smaller local networs to go 4K than any of the larger scale productions. And even then it was with substantial extra cost applied by the post house.

You can "say" that it doesn't cost more, but post houses will always charge a premium for a 4K pipeline and storage. It takes them longer. It's more time and work. It costs.

JB

Rushes would approach a petabyte! And then add all the backups and edit versions. Serious data requiring serious infrastructure to share that data with all the workstations.

Yeah, costs will go up, but any storage infrastucture that can handle 54TB can handle 540TB.

Not that I've ever seen. The costs scale, you don't just "add more drives"

You're arguing that quadrupling the data (4K) then doubling it again (60 fps) won't cost a commensurate amount extra to handle and that the big end of town will just wear it anyway ?

You know most big end film VFX shots are still at 2K right ?

I think you underestimate how much costs are really watched by those making content. And it's very much connected to want. If consumers won't notice or don't notice or don't want it, then they won't do it.

I was talking to a senior studio exec whoose official title was "VP in charge of physical production" His job was to create the budget and test the feasibility of productions against the projected box office for projects they were considering green lighting. This was when 3D was starting to be the thing around 2010. For each job he ran the numbers on doing it in post as a conversion or doing it with actual 3D cameras. He generalised but basically said it cost about 20% more to shoot in 3D or about 1-2 million to do a post conversion to 3D.

Let's look at how many films have ACTUALLY shot 3D lately....

What way do you think they MOSTLY decide to go...? Even at the tens of millions budget stage.

Costs do matter. They do impact. They are felt by production. I've had more luck convincing smaller local networs to go 4K than any of the larger scale productions. And even then it was with substantial extra cost applied by the post house.

You can "say" that it doesn't cost more, but post houses will always charge a premium for a 4K pipeline and storage. It takes them longer. It's more time and work. It costs.

JB

I can confirm that there are for more post-converted 3D movies than native productions. I know of maybe two movies shot in S3D coming out this year, and all the rest are post-converted. Although, I don't know if Underworld 5 is native or conversion at this point. The last one was native using 3ality Technica Rigs.

Costs are everything. Most of the time if I want to shoot a certain way that is beyond the budget, I cover the costs. That's on lower end stuff. On the big productions, you don't have a choice because it's their budget. Not all of us are James Cameron or Peter Jackson. I'm amazed Ang Lee was able to do Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk in S3D native and HFR. Bryan Singer managed to stay native with X-Men: Apocalypse. However, War of the Planet of the Apes will be converted despite Dawn of the Planet of the Apes being shot native.

Rushes would approach a petabyte! And then add all the backups and edit versions. Serious data requiring serious infrastructure to share that data with all the workstations.

Yeah, costs will go up, but any storage infrastucture that can handle 54TB can handle 540TB.

Not that I've ever seen. The costs scale, you don't just "add more drives"

I'm not saying they don't go up. They do. I'm saying they go up sub-linearly. As you scale up, the cost per TB goes way down. And the total cost go up in an easily calculated way. And yes, with scalable storage you add more drives. You don't forklift a system because you went from 24fps to 60fps. For your example of 54TB -> 540TB, you'd be looking at what, $55K? And 8-12U of space? A 32 port 10Gb switch with NICs is what, $20K? So you're looking at $75K in capital expenses (less if you lease) to get 10x the storage and 10x the bandwidth? What is $75K in CapEX in relation to the total budget for the series? Not just for post, for the whole budget, including marketing?

You're arguing that quadrupling the data (4K) then doubling it again (60 fps) won't cost a commensurate amount extra to handle and that the big end of town will just wear it anyway ?

Commensurate? No, unless you are looking only at the IT costs. And even then, it's sub-linear because your other expenses don't go up by the same amount. You don't hire 10x more IT staff or use 10x more keyboards.

You know most big end film VFX shots are still at 2K right ?

By current DCI standards, you can be HFR or 4K, but not both at the same time. So you're looking at a 4x or a 2.5x increase in costs, not a 10x. So using what films "still" are, it's not even as severe of an upgrade. Now we're talking a $20K upgrade. Future DCI specs, however, are expected to change. And UHDTV standards nearly everywhere they are being developed are at least 2160 @ 50Hz. I doubt cinemas will allow broadcast TV to be better for very long.

I think you underestimate how much costs are really watched by those making content. And it's very much connected to want. If consumers won't notice or don't notice or don't want it, then they won't do it.

Oh, I have. I've been through this fight before. I've gone over these numbers before with a couple major studios, and they're afraid of doing anything different, even if you can point out how little affect it has on their costs. Heck, they're afraid of HDR costs... Like really? You think that's going to put this movie in the red? You can pay your leading actor $25M, but you can't take your already high dynamic range movie and you know, LEAVE it high dynamic range? Studios and film finance people are terrified of technology. They're totally spooked. No one wants to take a risk anymore. Only a few directors are totally independent enough to take the risks themselves. Cameron can say "we're doing this" and he can because he's a sure thing and he's bankrolling much of it himself anyway. Jackson paid for HFR himself. But most directors, even the guys with the Academy Awards, are worried about losing their movie entirely, so they let the studios peel off all the risk.

Let's look at how many films have ACTUALLY shot 3D lately....

What way do you think they MOSTLY decide to go...? Even at the tens of millions budget stage.

S3D, shot native or not, DOES affect a lot of the production. It changes so much of what you can shoot and it makes every shot more complex. I never said S3D was cheap. It isn't. And the cost of it is slippery. It's hard to know exactly how much more that cost will be. But 4K and HFR and HDR? Those are all REALLY easy to calculate and relatively cheap.

You can "say" that it doesn't cost more, but post houses will always charge a premium for a 4K pipeline and storage. It takes them longer. It's more time and work. It costs.

I can say it because I've tried it. Hardest part was getting a projector set up to do 4K @ 120. Some things are harder and some are easier. Overall it costs more, but it's not 2.5x more or 10x more. It was closer to .1x more, but the costs have come down recently to the point where I'd expect it to be maybe .05x more.

I'm not saying they don't go up. They do. I'm saying they go up sub-linearly. As you scale up, the cost per TB goes way down.

You know it's not just the cost of media right ? This is a lot more complicated than cost per Gb of hard drive space.

Shooting 4K means you need a lot more media on set too. There's a GREATER THAN .1 multiplcation of cost right there. It means on Alexa you're shooting Codex media instead of much cheaper and readily available SxS for example.

Then there the TIME is takes to offload that media. More storage doesn't make that go any faster. It still takes what it takes. We had a data wrangler working full time and on big days with two units shooting "only" 1920 they would often not be able to process all the days rushes.

For 4K I'm presuming you'd need a second workstation just for data wrangling. Plus 4K monitors of course. You've just more than doubled your costs of production for that area right there.

So that's not a .1 multiplier of costs either.

THEN, you have to transcode those rushes for editorial. That also takes TIME. Time to render. The time difference to render to Dnx HD from a 4K file instead of ProRes ?

Same really for any costs to conform...costs to pull shots for VFX...it' all costs time.

Time is what the post companies are charging for. Not the cost of storage.

The fact is, I've seen many quotes from post companies big and small for large and small jobs and all of them charge a premium for 4K (let alone what we're talking about here in terms of HFR) and even if in your mind they can't justify the premium in IT or hardware terms there is still a far greater than .1 multiplier of costs to shoot 4K.

So either, every single one of them is ripping us all off or...maybe it's more complicated than just the cost of media and infrastructure.

Time is the less obvious cost. Shooting these kinds of data rates adds a heck of a lot of time. To handle, to copy, to move, to transcode, to process.

Post production is one of the most competitive and cut throat fields of endeavour. Same with VFX. If it was really that simple we'd all be shooting 4K now. The cameras have been around for a while now.

Its going to cost a heck of a lot more than .1 of a multiplier, even if you think that's the only cost differential to a post company.

Please show me a quote from a post company that has a bottom line with that as the cost premium for 4K.

jb

Arri is the cost outlier, yes. Same with Canon. Both would require Codex to do high resolution and high frame rate simultaneously. I've seen it done though. Vision Research, Sony and RED, as well as Blackmagic and Aja are much simpler. But even so, unless you're doing an indie film, there's no way the increase in shooting media and DIT time would, even with the storage and networking costs, amount to more than 10% of your total budget. I recently worked on a 4K HFR commercial job shot on Flex 4K, and out of the 19 crew on set, only 1 was brought in for the extra DIT workload. The footage still ran through the same Resolve workstation that would have been used for 2K @ 24. So between the increased camera/media/reader rental costs and the extra hand on set, the costs were increased, yes, but not by 2000x (assuming we shot the Phantom at an average of 500fps).

The rushes were done mixed, most were done at a proxy resolution, some were done at 4K, but only as a check on a couple shots that were some concern over, and there was already a 4K projector near by, so why not. Wasn't really needed though, even when looking at the 4K footage back at the Resolve station, nobody had a problem checking focus or details cropped in on the HD monitor. And no one shooting had a 4K monitor either. Same thing with the HFR. We watched some clips at a couple different framerates to get a feel for what it would be, but obviously we skipped a lot of frames because we didn't have 1000fps monitor. No one had a problem with that either. Editorial, from what was in the plan, I didn't stick around for it, was supposed to be HD at 24 or 30, I forget which. They didn't need the extra data for editing. A conform would be done afterward. I don't know how this particular project did with that, but I've done such conforms on other projects with only minor hiccups.

The issue here is that no one is doing cost plus bidding. So there's no way to find out what the real costs are or could have been in order to be competitive. It's not a studio system either where they have vertical integration. If someone says "Here's a job for $500K, how much would it be, as an option to take back to the producer, to do it in 4K HFR?" no one is going to say "Well, we can keep track and just charge you that plus a markup." More likely they're going to give a high number and either make a lot of money extra, not have to do any more work than they were originally planning, or make no extra money, but be able to do the work more or less carte blanche. But no one bids or accepts bids based on "We'll see what it costs and send you the bill". But at some point someone will put out a job and the 4K or HFR will be a requirement and you'll be doing competitive bidding. At that point things start getting closer to costs because that's how mature markets work. But right now? This isn't a mature market. There's no baseline standard that Sony can say "Why is it this much? The last dozen 4K HFR films we did didn't cost this much."

And like I said, currently the market for 4K HFR is small. You can do 4K OR HFR with current cinema projectors. Current DCI specs limit you unless you do something like Dolby 6P. But that's going to change and so is the broadcast standards for UHDTV. So things will mature and settle down. But doing either 4K OR HFR now isn't that big of a deal from a cost perspective relative to the total cost of the program unless it's a low budget project.

I'm doing a project this month where we're shooting it at 60fps even though it's going to go out to many venues at 30. We'd rather have the extra frames than not, and there is no change for us in labor or equipment to have that available, so it's a bonus we added to our bid that made it more attractive and makes the project more flexible for ourselves and for the client. If I didn't have experience doing this, I might be more cautious. But I know the costs and risks, and I'm OK with that.

You know it's not just the cost of media right ? This is a lot more complicated than cost per Gb of hard drive space.

I want to fill in on this. John Brawley really hits it but i think i can clarify it. To begin with i need to cite Jim Gray from Microsoft:

Tape is Dead
Disk is Tape
Flash is Disk
RAM Locality is King

Yes, the cost of storage is going down quickly However the cost of Bandwidth is not. Bandwidth is quickly becoming a scarce resource both in terms of the PCI-E interface, storage adapter, network interface etc. To efficiently work in a post house producing with uncompressed or visually lossless material you need some sort of SAN or network data storage solution. Going to these bitrates sort of requires the workstations to be outfitted with a 10 gigabit network interface, that together with a switching solution with a backplane that supports the multiple 10 gigabit interfaces and a massive interface towards the SAN. These investments are E X P E N S I V E since it isn't a matter of just "adding more disks". Some parts of the entire topology might need to be rearchitectured together with software having to be rewritten to efficiently use hardware acceleration to handle the higher bitrates. Recording in 4K today is the smallest part of the problem due to the explosive increase in sensor development, ingesting this footage is a completely other story.

However there is hope! The new M.2 interface for desktop computers sets the standard of what small devices can achieve in write speed (2500 mbit/s read, 1500 mbit/s write is not uncommon with early M.2 SSD's http://www.anandtech.com/show/9702/samsung-950-pro-ssd-review-256gb-512gb) but this will take a while to trickle down to the recording stage. It might even take longer for these devices to hit the datacenter where SSD is just starting to gather ground in the data shelving industry. 100G switches with good backplanes are starting to hit the market, although it will take a while before the SFP modules and switches come down to a fair price. At this point handling multiple source of 4K60 will be a breeze (assuming 1 second of 4K2160-60FPS is 2.1GB of data) since 10gbit SFPs and switching hardware will be closer to 1 gbit SFP's at that point.

The Video Devices Pix 5/7E is already using this type of drive, in a custom enclosure.

Yeah, my budget estimates above (and the projects I've worked on in this format) were all running 10Gb to the workstations and up to 40Gb in the racks.

10Gb is massively dropping in price, especially over copper. There's no reason why a studio who only does 1080p24 wouldn't want to have that available to them. Heck, 8 drives SOHO NAS's have dual 10Gb these days. Same with some single processor motherboards. It's no longer an enterprise thing.

NVMe storage is great for workstations and cache servers alike. I have a workstation with a 950 Pro on the motherboard as a boot drive. 512GB and only using one side of the board. They could easily make a 1.5TB version if they used the full length and both sides. The latency on it is incredibly low, too. I also have an Intel 750 1.2TB in the 2.5" form factor that I use for localized media cache. The two together take up 8 PCIe lanes, so it helps to have a CPU with lots of lanes available. There are some NVMe adapters out there too that take a 16x slot and mount 4 drives. If you use two of those and 8 P3608 drives, you could have a single server in 1U that can read 32TB at 40GB/s! That's impressive performance AND density there. That's 1.3PB in a single sided rack pumping "out" 1.6TB/s. Of course you have a bottleneck in the network, and probably the CPU, too, but that's still pretty neat.

The Video Devices Pix 5/7E is already using this type of drive, in a custom enclosure.

That's mSATA, not NVMe M.2. A single NMVe "gumstick" could theoretically record 4K raw at 240fps, and with none of that lossy raw compression, either. Of course the densest you can get NVMe today is 4TB in a 2.5" enclosure, which would only give you 20 or so minutes of recording time at that rate.

For a deliverable format now: http://www.adobe.com/products/animate/versions.html

Looks like Adobe just updated Flash Professional CC to Animate CC, which includes:

4K+ video export, custom resolution and FPS

So that should make for an interesting update.

Does it increase render times? Sure, but sub-linearly.

This can really depend on what you are rendering, particularly when you start talking about post-production VFX. For 3D generated rendering, 4x the pixels can often mean more than 4x the render time. Sometimes much more. And they will very much charge for it. Sure the man hours to generate the footage may not be much more, but if you are going to eat their render farm and force them to push back other customers, you had better be willing to pay for it. With X amount of render time, if they can either do your stuff or three other customers stuff, that's going to produce a premium for you.

For a deliverable format now: http://www.adobe.com/products/animate/versions.html

Looks like Adobe just updated Flash Professional CC to Animate CC, which includes:

4K+ video export, custom resolution and FPS

So that should make for an interesting update.

No. Did you even read what i wrote? They are only encoding it, no guarantee it will play anywhere due to the state of decoding. It's just buzzwords.

Does it increase render times? Sure, but sub-linearly.

This can really depend on what you are rendering, particularly when you start talking about post-production VFX. For 3D generated rendering, 4x the pixels can often mean more than 4x the render time. Sometimes much more. And they will very much charge for it. Sure the man hours to generate the footage may not be much more, but if you are going to eat their render farm and force them to push back other customers, you had better be willing to pay for it. With X amount of render time, if they can either do your stuff or three other customers stuff, that's going to produce a premium for you.

I've never seen superlinear scaling. Not for rasterizing, not for pathtracing, not for raymarching, not for image processing. Part of that is because certain things are fixed, like the time needed to load the scene and assets. Other things become more efficient as size increases, like compression and storage. In general, images become lower frequency as they increase in size, based on anything you'll see captured in camera or generated with CGI. That lower frequency means less sampling and higher compression.

And for higher framerates, things like pathtracing become much faster because HVS tolerance for image noise is raised when the images have lower persistence. We've seen cases where 120fps rendered with only 100% more samples than 24fps.

In either case, we're ONLY talking about rendering, which is never 100% of the cost anyway. The labor costs always outstrip that anyway, and that certainly is sublinear. Renderfarms are never at 100% occupancy, and even if they were, bringing in more render power or sending out render jobs doesn't linearly increase costs. There simply is never the case where a 4K job displaces 4 2K jobs.

For a deliverable format now: http://www.adobe.com/products/animate/versions.html

Looks like Adobe just updated Flash Professional CC to Animate CC, which includes:

4K+ video export, custom resolution and FPS

So that should make for an interesting update.

No. Did you even read what i wrote? They are only encoding it, no guarantee it will play anywhere due to the state of decoding. It's just buzzwords.

That's not what my Adobe post was about. Yes, I read your post, and totally agree about decoding. The key here is that Adobe's latest update allows for the encoding of various frame rates and resolutions. I'm going to be curious to play around with it in the future.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind ... ynn-873090

Above is a link a S3D contact of mine recently shared. Two people I know will be sharing the stage with Ang Lee at NAB 2016 when he presents some footage from his upcoming 4K HFR HDR film "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" and I really wish I could be there. For anyone going to NAB this April please feel free to drop by their presentation to see how amazing this footage looks.

Stereographer Demetri Portelli Facebook Share

Screen Shot 2016-03-07 at 9.41.19 PM.png (113.81 KiB) Viewed 10629 times

It's unlikely the film will be screened anytime soon in it's entirety in the proper format. If you have a chance to see this, take it, you may not get another, certainly not in distribution.

Here a Variety article giving an update on all the challenges faced during production, post-production, and the challenges facing the team with distribution: http://variety.com/2016/artisans/news/a ... 201752886/

It's a great read. Tomorrow is the first screening of the 11-minute demo. Wish I could see it, but alas, this year I couldn't make it out to CinemaCon or NAB.


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Lee needs to get Trumbull a print so anyone who comes out to the Berkshires can see it in all it's glory. Trumbull's screening room is just about the most insane thing of it's kind.

Many people are too quick to judge hfr. There simply has not been enough hfr movies to make the evaluation.

I think at this stage we can say that hfr is not better than the standard 24, but we can't say that 24 is better than hfr either, yet.

Maybe the increase in realism from hfr together with hdr, can produce something more compelling.

According to early reports the footage "stunned" those who got to see it: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/ang-l ... 201755151/

I've read a lot of positive words a few places now. It looks like this film may be able to show how useful HFR is in storytelling. And, remember that this is a drama set during the Iraq war.

I'm going to search out a theater that can show the full movie in 4K/3D/120fps. There will only be a few, but I'm very interested.

Sony has not committed to showing it in 4K/3D/120. There are currently no theaters that would support it (other than Trumbull's, but his isn't commercial). One of the major issues is the complete lack of DCI support for the format. There's almost no chance a film will be sent for exhibition without DCP protection.

An interesting and very insightful review on HFR with the new Ang Lee film.

I really do think HFR is a dead end....like 3D...

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movi ... mob_tw_top


JB

As with any war movie, reviews will be mixed.

http://variety.com/2016/film/reviews/bi ... 201889270/

The real question is the relative ticket sales for the different versions. I would bet real money that the HFR 4K 3D screening sell better.

60 / 24 = 2.5
120 / 24 = 5
That divisibility makes all the difference. Watching 24fps on a 120Hz display is identical (not similar or comparable, identical) to watching it on a 24Hz display.

What's interesting is you can cut between 24, 30, 60, and 120 Hz footage at will and it still works. So action sequences can be higher frame rates than dialog. You can even run them concurrently, have a 24fps 16mm film projected on a wall next to a 60Hz computer monitor and film an actor standing between them at 120Hz.

Consumer displays are all DC now anyway, so I'm not sure why 50Hz AC power would have any effect moving forward. Running 50fps content at 120Hz is no worse than running 24fps content at 60Hz. Ideally, the content would have frame rate metadata and the display would switch from 120Hz to 100Hz, and that's not outrageous for something that say Amazon or Netflix to do with specific smart TVs, sticks, or STBs.

An interesting and very insightful review on HFR with the new Ang Lee film.

I really do think HFR is a dead end....like 3D...

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movi ... mob_tw_top


JB

Yes, I've been reading all the reviews. I haven't lost faith just yet. I think that it was a good thing for Ang Lee to experiment with this HFR 4K 3D film. I haven't had the opportunity to watch it yet. And likely, I won't be able to see it in the 120 fps presentation because I'm not close to the 2 theaters that can show it. However, I should be able to see the 60 fps 4K 3D version.

I recently checked out the 2D 60 fps Netflix short Meridian that they are using to test their streaming pipeline. I immediately followed it up with Chinatown to compare two neo-noir movies both set in the 1930s-1950s LA. I'll admit that Chinatown felt more like it should have playing at 24 fps, and helped settle me into the past look of the movie. Meridian looked odd, and the HFR felt anachronistic for that time period. That was interesting.

I've seen many different tests, but never one where I was able to do that kind of comparison of what felt right for the period picture. I enjoyed The Hobbit movies in HFR, even if I criticized the subpar storytelling. They shouldn't have stretched the book into three movies, and there were a lot of things that didn't work. It also suffered from being too digital with the CGI. However, I felt that the HFR helped all the CGI being integrated with the real world elements. That's where I feel HFR has it's strength, and as well with fast paced action.

So at this time I'm still on the side of having faith in HFR. I will do my best to see Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk in the closest to its desired format as possible. Time will tell.

We're missing the point here.

Still no one has made a compelling film at any HFR with any technology available.

It's not the technology.

Look at what the reviewer is SAYING about what it does to story.

And by the way, there is still confusion between the DISPLAY rate and the ACQUISITION rate.

Just because you shoot at 24 FPS doesn't mean that's how those frames are displayed. Even on film the projectors had three blades, so it was at least 72 Hz.

When you watch a digital projection of a 24 FPS acquired film, you all realise that you're not watching that as the DISPLAY rate right ???

JB

Most TV sets and movie theatres of course support 24 fps and under such conditions viewing 24 fps is mostly pleasant, except on fast moving scenes.

...
When you watch a digital projection of a 24 FPS acquired film, you all realise that you're not watching that as the DISPLAY rate right ???

JB

Most digital projectors are working at 96Hz refresh rate when displaying 24 FPS material.

Most modern Televisions are operating in excess of 96Hz when displaying 24 fps material.

You're not watching it at 24 FPS EVER.

JB

Yeah, sure, any even multiplier will work. 120 Hz monitor would be perfect for 24, 30, 60 and 120 fps. I hope I had one.

My point however is that 24 fps does not evenly fit 60 Hz monitor, and looks bad.

72hz is an option on most computer display cards.

JB.

We're missing the point here.

Still no one has made a compelling film at any HFR with any technology available.

It's not the technology.

Look at what the reviewer is SAYING about what it does to story.

JB

I'll agree that no one has made a compelling film at any HDR with any technology available... yet. I'm willing to keep an open mind, and trust that someone will do so one day.

I understand what the reviewer is saying about the way it effects the story. However, that reviewer is not the voice of all truth regarding the format. It's that reviewer's professional opinion. Just like I have a professional opinion about certain things. No two professionals have to agree when it comes to something subjective such as this subject matter. HFR elicits an emotional feeling. Right now audiences are not connecting with it and the story. However, that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future.

We're lucky right now that the technology is not the issue. And, we're lucky that we're not being limited by technological boundaries. So it's a matter of the creatives to utilize it all to create a compelling reason for storytellers to use HFR.

I really think we're grasping here.

60 FPS and 50 FPS has already been around a long time in the form of TELEVISION.

It's precisely why reviewers bring up "soap" as a reference to the look of the material.

We all forget that SD TV used to be 50i and 60i.

Not only that, gaming has been doing HFR for a long time now.

It's not the technogy. I think we as humans don't like our stories being told with more temporal reality. Sports, events, rides....sure. But not narrative drama.

JB

Yes, Kim, that's the Ang Lee film being shown in two theatres in 120 fps 3D. The trailer does look a lot like a first person shooter video game. Very surprised at that particular shot lifted right from a video game. That's not going to help Ang Lee's grand experiment. So yes, it screams video and may be off-putting. But Ang Lee is always strong on stories of human drama and the trailer gives us a hint of how gripping this story might be, as long as the only cheap line in the movie was the ridiculous line in the trailer, "... what really happened?" So bad, but the movie might still be so good whether it looks like video or at times looks like sophomoric directing from a sophomoric script. It does appear the intended audience here are teens and twenty somethings that may like the video game genre and simple storytelling.

[Whoa, did I get up on the wrong side of the bed as I wait for that SLR Magic 25mm APO to arrive after eight days of Express Air delivery? Actually it just might be those five phone calls I received on my cell phone around 3 am this morning from an unknown man in Madagascar.]


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Gimme 120fps on a theme park simulator ride. Leave movies alone at 24fps. Every now and then an experimental film to shake things up is fine...but, like 3D, don't overdo it or people will get sick of it...again. I like my movies to look like movies, not video games.

Interesting read:
http://deadline.com/2016/10/ang-lee-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-frame-rate-technology-interview-1201836438/

BTW: to truly mimic the 24 fps film projection on would need 144 Hz display, to 3 times show and blanc each frame

No, it's 72 Hz.

JB

Interesting read:
http://deadline.com/2016/10/ang-lee-billy-lynns-long-halftime-walk-frame-rate-technology-interview-1201836438/

Thanks for the article, Robert. It appears he knew how dangerous this movie making could be:

"... Doug Trumbull who was doing his own 60fps tests, and so was Jim Cameron. And I realized that if you could get close to 120, it would be like what you actually see. It’s not a movie anymore."

But then the article goes on to say essentially the same thing in sixty different ways: that he believes it's like the eye sees, like it is reality we are seeing, that's unbelievably good. His judgment. I'd be embarrassed if I was interviewing Lee.

I stopped reading when it got to the point where Lee said he required "three and a half stops" more light when his techie pointed out they were going effectively from lighting for ISO 800 to ISO 160 and that was 2 ⅓ stops.


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Yes Rick, the higher the frame rate, the faster the shutter, the more light you need. But, Hollywood does have all those 10k, 5K and baby 1K lights to get all the light they need!
Cheers

I just wasn't sure I could take everything at face value that Ang Lee was saying about his experiment when he didn't know it was the equivalent of 2 ⅓ stops. It cast doubt in my mind on his powers of observation. Audiences will make up their own mind.


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Thank you for sharing the Deadline Interview Robert!

What I like about the interview is that they explain why the choice for 120 fps. It was a mathematical choice for putting the movie on to screens that couldn't handle HFR. So for the most part as long as most people can see it in 4K 60 fps and 3D you should get the understanding of why HFR benefits S3D so much.

I stopped reading when it got to the point where Lee said he required "three and a half stops" more light when his techie pointed out they were going effectively from lighting for ISO 800 to ISO 160 and that was 2 ⅓ stops.

I don't like Ang Lee's movies. "Life of Pi" was terrible, "Crouching Tiger" was meh and "Hulk" was...an abomination. See what I did there? He's notorious for that tedious Brokeback movie, but I stopped caring at that point. His opinion on higher frame rates is just his opinion...and if everyone else doesn't agree, then we're not looking at a seachange event. It's just some dude's opinion. If the sometimes excellent James Cameron couldn't get high frame rates to work (read: serve the movie) then I don't see how a hack like Ang Lee could. Also, I hope 3D is on its way out...again.

All I'm saying is excessively high frame rates do nothing to serve the plot of the movie. If the filmmaker is relying on high frame rates to create an immersive experience for the audience then...well...he should go be an engineer and not a storyteller.

I am not quite clear is that film 120fps or 60 fps ? I mean it is 3D. Is it 60 fps for one eye and as showing different image for both eyes, resulting total 120 fps or is it true 120 fps per eye?

They shot each eye at 120 fps because it was easily divisible by 24 fps. This enabled them to make the 24 fps versions without the need for a VFX workaround.

From most studies that have been presented our eye can barely detect a difference above 60 fps once you compare 60 fps to anything above. So, you could easily do 60 fps per eye and it would be any apparent difference to the 120 fps theoretically. However, 60 isn't divided by 24 easily as it's 2.5 times more than 24, so that why they when with 120 as 24 is 1/5 the speed.


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BTW: to truly mimic the 24 fps film projection on would need 144 Hz display, to 3 times show and blanc each frame

Lightboost displays (and I'm sure it's out there under other branding) do exactly that. The LED backlights flicker at twice the framerate so that while the LCD is changing to the next frame the LED backlight is off.

I stopped reading when it got to the point where Lee said he required "three and a half stops" more light when his techie pointed out they were going effectively from lighting for ISO 800 to ISO 160 and that was 2 ⅓ stops.

They're both right. Lee was including the beamsplitter which is a bit more than 1 full stop of loss.

So for the most part as long as most people can see it in 4K 60 fps and 3D you should get the understanding of why HFR benefits S3D so much.

But they can't. Even if Sony wanted to release it like that (they don't), the standard Hobbit-issue HFR projector can't do 4K 3D at any framerate. Best they can do is 2K@60.

So for the most part as long as most people can see it in 4K 60 fps and 3D you should get the understanding of why HFR benefits S3D so much.

But they can't. Even if Sony wanted to release it like that (they don't), the standard Hobbit-issue HFR projector can't do 4K 3D at any framerate. Best they can do is 2K@60.

True, most projectors have to split the 3D images into two 2K images for each eye if it's a 4K projector. That's the downside to passive 3D glasses. If you find an active shutter glass projector then each eye will get 4K.

One of my favorite demoes was two 4K projectors with linear polarizers used to show the advantage of a two projector system for passive glasses. Too bad it's too expensive for most theaters to implement. So most RealD 3D theaters that have a 4K projector will show you 4K total, but each eye is seeing 2K.

The same thing happens with Passive 3DTVs. If it's 1080 HD, then each eye gets 540... and 2160 UHD then becomes 1080 per eye. That's why 3DTV benefited from going to UHD, but sadly 3DTV still had many other issues.

I haven't given up on 3D completely. I still have hope for more native 3D productions to happen. Sadly, there are only 3 per year if we're lucky, and most others are conversion. Well, all animation is native. And animation hates 4K and HFR because it increases render times. Many animation films are still only 2K renders. Although, I hope Incredibles 2 is 4K because that would be INCREDIBLE!

True, most projectors have to split the 3D images into two 2K images for each eye if it's a 4K projector. That's the downside to passive 3D glasses. If you find an active shutter glass projector then each eye will get 4K.

Sony projectors work that way, but DLP projectors, which make up the vast majority of cinema projectors, do alternating frames. The glasses on your head are passive, but the color wheel or LCD shutter in the projection booth is active. The DLP chip itself is capable of 4K 3D @ 120 (heck it could do much higher, DLP's can do thousands of frames per second). The issue is the media block handling the DCP and the limitations of the DCP format spec itself.

That's one of the amazing things about say, Amazon Prime Video. They make the programming AND the distribution AND the playback devices. It's a completely closed system. They could decide to do films in 8K black and white HDR at 144fps and there's no one to stand in their way.