About Frame Rate

Hei!
Which frame rate is best to use for fanfilm? I know 30 fps is good but for fanfilm what is normal... 30fps is quite much to rotoscope ecpesialy when i will have around 10 minutes of fight total... what are used in the star wars movies? 25fps?


Kristian

 

24fps is the industry standard, and there are conversion methods if you do a search.
Typically, if you're using DV, you'll import your footage at 29.97fps, and then you can have fun with it from there.
Also, some of the better cameras have fps settings so you can get the rate you want.


24fps looks better IMO, but 29.97 will have more detail but most likely look more home movie-ish.
The higher the FPS, the sharper the image.




Ha, sharper image. Anyhoo.

 

I may be wrong, but thats why it takes ILM so long to rotoscope Star Wars Movies.

Isn't some film actually shot at 60f/s?

Imagine how fun that would be...

Its my experience that 30 is pretty standard, and dropping the framerate will take away from the "fluid"
motion of the swings and what not.

Its gonna take a while, but thats why rotoscoping is such a time consuming process, really no shortcuts.

 

Actually film, Episode I, IV, V, VI and the two new digital Episodes are shot at a 24 frames per second rate.
of course, you have to rotoscope more when you use 30 frames instead of 25 (pal system) or even 24 (film). But keep in mind that with the less frames you´ve got the more the lightsaber images are going to be blended together and will be more blurred and faded all over the place. The key word is motion blur. So if you have 25 frames you will have more motion blur and thus more work, since you can´t see the saber that well if it moves fast.

So, if I were you I would do it 25 frames instead of 30. The ammount of work is about the same, but if you´re unexperienced you might have more trouble finding the shape of the saber... I´d still start off with 25 frames, it looks more like FILM.

 

Which frame rate is best to use for fanfilm

The one your video camera shoots.

If it shoots more than one, then 24, 25 or 30 fps will all make the job easier.

-Spiff

 

60f/s?

Well, perhaps.
But that would be interlaced if it is.


Example:
Your television produces images at about 60fps.
However, if you were to take a DVD of the show you watched on TV and analyze it, you'll probably find it to be somewhere between 24-30fps.
For TV and some cameras, the images are interlaced in order to produce a better "illusion of motion". By showing you half of one frame and half of the next frame (weaved together every few pixels) you will be able to have more images showing up faster and reducing the possibility of the screen flicker that was so evident in the early days of motion pictures.

Now, by adjusting your settings in your editor or effects program, you can get rid of the interlace because it's quite evident and even glitchy-looking on a computer monitor.


//taking intro to media/telecomm & film comm in the same semester.
::mental flex::

 

that what i tought also that i would use 24 or 25 instead of 30... i will have to do 5 or 6 frames less per second ok thats not much but still and the effect is not big deal between 24 and 30 and as u sayd 30 is more like home movie than 24 so i will use 24 ...thanks for suggestions

I would want to get my film finish before Episode III anything after that would seem boring i am afraid ... but i guess i cant get the movie done before summer

 

Please don't use 25fps, aka "PAL".


It's not your pal.
It'll never be your pal.


British standards? British standards are no good here, I need something more real.




EDIT: Also, "5-6 less frames" won't really matter in the long run. Make your decision based on quality of the image, not size of the workload.

 

I prefer 25 fps over 30 fps because there are "no Imperial entanglements" [/ObiWanKenobi]

In all seriousness, I don't think most people would notice much of a difference between 24, 25 and 30 fps. Use whatever your camera can support. If it has 24 fps, go for it. If you're going for the proffessional look, then proper lighting and acting will be more beneficial than the fps.

 

And if you're defecting, use 25fps, you cheeky fellow.

 

Isn't some film actually shot at 60f/s?

If film is shot at 60fps, it's for slow motion effects, as it will be projected at 24fps.

Your television produces images at about 60fps.
However, if you were to take a DVD of the show you watched on TV and analyze it, you'll probably find it to be somewhere between 24-30fps.
For TV and some cameras, the images are interlaced in order to produce a better "illusion of motion". By showing you half of one frame and half of the next frame (weaved together every few pixels) you will be able to have more images showing up faster and reducing the possibility of the screen flicker that was so evident in the early days of motion pictures.

Now, by adjusting your settings in your editor or effects program, you can get rid of the interlace because it's quite evident and even glitchy-looking on a computer monitor.

//taking intro to media/telecomm & film comm in the same semester.
::mental flex::

The television produces images at 30 frames per second, with two interlaced fields per frame, often referred to as 60i. Each field is half the vertical resolution of the screen, and displays in alternating "scan lines," so the horizontal lines of pixels 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. all have the same image, and lines 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. also share an image, but a different one from the one the odd lines share. One set of scan lines is displayed in the first 1/60th of a second, and then the other. This goes so quickly that the eye can't see it, but if you ever pause a VHS, that's why it jitters the way it does, it's displaying the fields back and forth on the screen.

The interlacing is an artifact from the signal frequency that was originally used to transmit the video signal.

I don't want to get into the 3:2 pulldown, suffice it to say that a film running at 24fps is converted to 60i with some fun mathematics. So ostensibly a VHS of any film will be shown to run at 60i, although there are only 24 unique frames per second.

The interlacing disappears to the eye on a television screen, but not on a computer screen, because the computer displays the entire frame at once instead of the alternating scan lines. For electronic distribution (i.e. the internet), you want to remove the interlacing.

Please don't use 25fps, aka "PAL".

It's not your pal.
It'll never be your pal.

I use PAL. Given the more cinematic shutter speed and frame rate, the higher resolution than NTSC provides, and the better color-sampling model, can you explain to me your problem with it?

EDIT: Also, "5-6 less frames" won't really matter in the long run. Make your decision based on quality of the image, not size of the workload.

Do the math again. In a 2-hour film (which is rare, but you said "in the long run"), a film shot at 30fps has 216,000 frames (30fps * 60sec/min * 120 min). Shot at 24fps, that same film has 172,800 frames, a difference of 43,200 frames. Played back at 24fps, 43,200 is a full THIRTY MINUTES of frames that you drop from the workload.

Not only does that mean less effects work, but that means less space on your hard drives, smaller files when you render it out, and a higher-quality video requiring less compression than a 30fps film of equal length would require for comparable filesize.

I'd say that should be an important consideration, myself.

M. Scott

 

Please don't use 25fps, aka "PAL".

You know you're wrong with both Zap and Dorkman disagree with you (incidentally, I disagree with you too).

Also, "5-6 less frames" won't really matter in the long run.

Yes it will matter in the long run. It is 20% less work than 30 fps, and 60% less work than 60p. This amounts to very significant time savings.

-Spiff

 

reducing the possibility of the screen flicker that was so evident in the early days of motion pictures.

Isn´t it like that humans' eyes (brain) can only catch 24 or 25 or so images per second? So wouldn´t that mean that we are not even able to see the difference between 24 and 30 frames, since we can´t really see more than 24? Wouldn´t we "reduce" the 30 frames to 24, anyway?

 

Actually, the difference is very noticable.

To demonstrate, do some tests in AE, render them out at different speeds: 24, 25, 30, 60, 65, 70, 120, and look at the differences

 

Ahhh hard to say anything against math.

You could always convert your stuff to 24/25 frames if you like the look of it work on it

If not I would leave it at 29.97
Look on the Bright Side you have opinion

 

Sigh.

There is nothing "magical" about 24fps. It wasn't based on studies of the human eyeball or anything. In fact, it was one of the most arbitrary decisions in film history.

From Tom's Sito's history files (Tom Sito directed "Osmosis Jones" and is also a highly respected animator and film historian.):

In 1912 the heads of the major film production companies met to form a Trust. This was a common business tactic in the Gilded Age whereby several companies collaborate to "corner the market". This kept out competitors and kept prices high. Sugar, Steel, Coal and other commodities were monopolized by trusts, so now the leading film producers of the time -Thomas Edison, Leon Gaumont and Charles Pathe' wished to form the same. Meeting at the Old Waldorf Astoria on 5th Avenue, they pledged to cooperate with each other and drive out all newcomers by strict enforcement of their patents. Celluloid film stock, sprocket holes, projectors, even the way the film looped past the lense (The Freeman Loop)  was subject to patent enforcement.
 One last piece of business was to set standards for motion picture technology. Like all new technologies, the multitude of inventors set the standards all over the place. 28 Milimeter film running at 12 frames a second, 32 milimeter film running at 50 frames and so on. The Mitchell Camera Company was developing the first motorized film cameras to replace the hand-crank models, but they needed to know what speed to set it at? The camera, film and projector all had to be set at the same speed for it all to work. Theater owners complained they couldn't buy a seperate projector for every film system then in use.
So the film titans with their staffs set to the task of declaring the standard for film would be 35 mm for professional film, 16mm for home use. When trying to ascertain the proper film speed, after much debate they finally settled on the number of people in the room-24. So it would be 35 mm film at 24 frames a second. The standardization would be enforced by their patents and backed up with strongarm gangsters.
Independent film producers like DeMille and Jesse Lasky responded to the Patents Trust by escaping across the country to a little set of orange groves called Hollywood. Which is why the film capitol of the world is not Fort Lee, New Jersey.

 

You can shoot in 30fps (29.97 NTSC), then later do a 3:2 pulldown or whatever to give it more of a 'film' feel, butthere's a bit more to it than that. The 24P HD cams used for feature films shoot a true 24 fps, but most of us here do not have access to that sort of equipment.

Yes...doing rotoscoping or keyframes for 30fps might take longer because of the higher count, but you're better off doing it that way, exporting everything at full res into one combined clip, then trying whatever you want to try to change the overall frame rate. I've seen varying success with that. Avtually, shooting PAL ten transferring to regular NTSC later on isn't such a bad idea...I've seen some pretty good results with that, but you have to be careful in the tranfer stage, and again, this could cause more headaches and time than it's worth.

I'd say go ahead and shoot at the camera's regular 30fps, but pay attention to lighting and exposure to get the clearest image possible (lenses can make the real difference here...but that's another topic). The better your original image quality is , the better it will look after processing and what have you.

 

EDIT: Also, "5-6 less frames" won't really matter in the long run.

Lets see, in a 90 minute film shot at 30fps there would be 162,000 frames. At 24fps there would be 129,600 frames. That's a difference of 32,400 frames. That's a lot... in the long run.

 

24fps generally has a warmer, more picturesque 'feel' to it than 30fps...especially when the 30fps is interlaced/dual field like regular video. Harder to tell on computer screens which are progressive scan to begin with, but very evident on a reference CRT monitor.

When I did a stop-motion animated film back in the 90's, I was ECSTATIC that we were shooting on 16mm at 24fps, because we had to animate each frame by hand...including camera movements which had to be timed out using 24fps as the common denominator. 30fps would have made a HUGE difference in the long run...that's 25% more work when animating..which goes back to the original query of this thread.

 

Just had to butt in here and correct a little misinformation given about film history...

Sigh.

There is nothing "magical" about 24fps. It wasn't based on studies of the human eyeball or anything. In fact, it was one of the most arbitrary decisions in film history.

I agree that the 24fps standardization was arbitrary, but not by your reasoning.

In 1912 the heads of the major film production companies met to form a Trust.

It was actually all Edison's idea. He got all the major players together by either offering them more power than they had or threatening to destroy them. He was THE power behind the MPPC.

The camera, film and projector all had to be set at the same speed for it all to work. Theater owners complained they couldn't buy a seperate projector for every film system then in use.

That's why multi-speed projectors were invented. Just about the same time multi-speed cameras were.

So the film titans with their staffs set to the task of declaring the standard for film would be 35 mm for professional film, 16mm for home use.

"Home" use didn't exist back pre-WWI, and was used for independent film until it became economically viable for the home prosumer to buy a Bolex or like camera after WW2.

When trying to ascertain the proper film speed, after much debate they finally settled on the number of people in the room-24. So it would be 35 mm film at 24 frames a second. The standardization would be enforced by their patents and backed up with strongarm gangsters.

That's not true at all, and for two reasons:
1 - Film was not actually standardized until the late 1920s. I've seen many reprints of movies during the Silent Era that have a variety of film speeds. There was no need for standardization because any viable film projector has multiple speed controls.
2 - Film was standardized at 24fps in the late 1920s because the analog sound strip that was on the reel of film itself couldn't go any slower than 24fps or else the sound couldn't be transferred.

Independent film producers like DeMille and Jesse Lasky responded to the Patents Trust by escaping across the country to a little set of orange groves called Hollywood.

Lasky actually stayed and was quite successful in fighting the Trust in New York for a couple years. DeMille started in film in 1914, in Hollywood, when Lasky and Goldfish asked him to direct the first feature-length American film.

Anyone curious about frame rate should research the "Persistence of Vision," the term used to describe the phenomena of the human eye detecting motion. Motion could be seen by the human eye at as little as 10fps, but anything below 16fps is considered lower than the "critical flicker fusion," where we can tell between the individual frames.

The higher the frame rate, the smoother we see images. Just as films at 10fps show their flicker, some shots at 24fps show their chopiness. Films shot and projected at 60fps (which there are) are closer to the eye's actual rate of vision, resulting in the clearest motion. That's the frame rate IMAX films shoot and project at, by the way, so that's why there's always the amazing rush when the helicopter shot zooms down the waterfall.

I hope I cleared a few things up. My primary source of all this is The Oxford History of World Cinema, which is considered THE source in film history. Of course, a quick Google search can confirm any of the information I've stated.

 

uh, wouldnt dropping the frame rate screw up the audio sync? It will just give your film an old japanese look....

 

... u guys know much... film history and all that stuff

 

so its okei when i shoot all in 30fps as its the standart for most home camcorders (not sure if i can change it in camera to record 24fps) and later compress to 24 fps? ... or may there come some funny effects?

 

I may have not noticed the answer to this, but how did the 29.97 frame rate come about? I assume it's an old standard based on rickety mechanical cameras which couldnt quite keep up with the intended 30fps? Someone mentioned it's from NTSC?

 

Just shoot the normal camcorder mode (30fps). If it has a progressive/deinterlaced mode, then that would be better, but if not, just shoot regular. You can do your deinterlacing later in After Effects or some other program.