Regarding Steve's comment about 24 fps being "good enough" to capture motion. I think 24 is okay for most people, so long as the motion isn't very fast. For sports, the 60 (or 50) fields per second of standard def. video makes a big difference is the smoothness of the motion.
Back in the early nineties I worked on a digital broadcast system that dropped video frames when the video became to difficult to compress easily. (An old video conferencing trick.) I tuned the rate control in the broadcast system, and in the process trained my eye to detect even one repeated frame of video. After that experience, the inherent judder (judder = lack of smoothness in motion) of 24 fps film is never transparent to me. And when a camera pans, I cringe.
I recently did an HD demo in which 24 fps film content was displayed at 30 fps without the normal 3:2 process. My reaction was "The Horror!", while others said "What are you talking about, it looks fine." That motivates my question about 48 fps film. It's hard to get that to HD video without problems. One could 3:2 this to 720p, but then it wouldn't progressive. So it would really be 720 @ 120i rather than 720 @ 60p. Sacre bleu, not another format!
But back on topic, what role will digital and or video play in film? Other than Indy production, an actual film camera will remain the norm for quite some time. There are some many aspects to the "look" of film that are deeply ingrained.
However, I've heard that digital intermediate is becoming very common. Can digital distribution and projection be far behind? The numbers I heard long ago are $10,000 per print and 10,000 screens. That works out to $100 M in print cost to do a major release. Compare the cost of a distribution print to the cost of a stack of DVD-ROMs to carry 4k resolution lightly compressed ... umm ... moving images. And satellite distribution to servers could even eliminate the shipping.
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Back in the early nineties I worked on a digital broadcast system that dropped video frames when the video became to difficult to compress easily. (An old video conferencing trick.) I tuned the rate control in the broadcast system, and in the process trained my eye to detect even one repeated frame of video. After that experience, the inherent judder (judder = lack of smoothness in motion) of 24 fps film is never transparent to me. And when a camera pans, I cringe.
I recently did an HD demo in which 24 fps film content was displayed at 30 fps without the normal 3:2 process. My reaction was "The Horror!", while others said "What are you talking about, it looks fine." That motivates my question about 48 fps film. It's hard to get that to HD video without problems. One could 3:2 this to 720p, but then it wouldn't progressive. So it would really be 720 @ 120i rather than 720 @ 60p. Sacre bleu, not another format!
But back on topic, what role will digital and or video play in film? Other than Indy production, an actual film camera will remain the norm for quite some time. There are some many aspects to the "look" of film that are deeply ingrained.
However, I've heard that digital intermediate is becoming very common. Can digital distribution and projection be far behind? The numbers I heard long ago are $10,000 per print and 10,000 screens. That works out to $100 M in print cost to do a major release. Compare the cost of a distribution print to the cost of a stack of DVD-ROMs to carry 4k resolution lightly compressed ... umm ... moving images. And satellite distribution to servers could even eliminate the shipping.
- mark 5-05-2004 11:16 am