James Cameron Demands 60 FPS Minimum!

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piscian18

piscian18

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James Cameron Wants Game-Like Frame Rates for Film


The director of Avatar wants movies to abandon the 24 frames per second standard and go up to 60.


Setting the Wabac Machine to the 1920s when talkies - or motion pictures with an audio track - first became popular across America, I found that the standard frame rate of 24 per second was only chosen because it was the cheapest speed to provide adequate sound quality. Now, a decade shy of a century later, the standard still exists even though digital cameras and projectors are in use, often with the audio track coming from a separate medium. James Cameron, who broke standards with his 3D film Avatar, said to a group of his colleagues that it's time to abolish the standard 24 fps to increase a filmmaker's ability to showcase accurate motion and technique in films.

Cameron gave a presentation in Las Vegas for the movie-business convention Cinemacon in which he showed footage at 24 fps compared directly with sequences shot in 48 and 60 fps. He pointed out the strobing and visual artifacts the 24 fps footage revealed and extolled that the higher frame rate would allow "potential to improve showmanship."

The Titanic director pledged that he would fight for this change, and that other directors like Peter Jackson and George Lucas were interested in increasing the frame rate standard. "I'm going to try to be as active as possible - until we figure out what the best answer," Cameron told the attendees. "I hope this opens the door to testing that needs to be done. I'm making the content [shown here] available to anyone who wants to test it."

While most projectors at movie houses around the world are built for the 24 fps standard, Cameron noted that most digital projectors would be able to handle 60 fps without buying new hardware. "The generation two projectors are capable of doing what I show you with a software upgrade," he said.

As a PC gamer, I'm always struggling to get the best frame rate with my games and frequently push 50 to 60 fps. I really notice it when the display drops below 30 fps. To think that movies have been stuck at 24 fps, especially with the digital revolution of cameras and projectors now taking place, is kind of ridiculous.

Detractors might argue that 24 fps looks just fine, and what a director does with it his or her responsibility. I didn't see Cameron's presentation, but I imagine that the difference between the 24 fps and 60 fps was a little like the jump from standard TVs to HD. I didn't think the picture was bad on my old standard TV until I saw what a fancy high definition TV looked like. Now, I can't imagine going back.

Say what you want about Cameron's movies, but the man has a point.
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http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108902-James-Cameron-Wants-Game-Like-Frame-Rates-for-Film
 
I can see Peter Jackson, but Lucas? WTH? Does he even want to make movies anymore?

Sounds pretty neat. If anyone could push the studios, it would be him with his avatar sequels...
 
60 fps is going to take away from the experience and feeling of watching a movie. I'm not sure yet if that is going to be a detriment or reduce film from something more artful into something that is no more than a realistic reflection of life.
 
Movies at anything other than 24fps just seems wrong for some reason.

I think it's the so-called "soap opera effect". Same reason I hate the "true motion" features on newer TVs.
 
SonicTron said:
60 fps is going to take away from the experience and feeling of watching a movie. I'm not sure yet if that is going to be a detriment or reduce film from something more artful into something that is no more than a realistic reflection of life.
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It will probably need to depend on the film. Similar to how different aspect ratios suit different films better.

The funny thing about this is gaming seems to be moving more to heavy post processing and motion blur, mimicking film techniques, and moving away from the smoother high fps clean motion look (Quake 3).
 
Interesting article, I am all for 60fps!

I'm pretty sure James Cameron has enough backing already for him to move forward at this point, his influence runs pretty deep in the industry.

A big change I think would have to be the quality of the acting. 24 fps can hide a lot of defects and inadequacies, similar to 360 rez. vs. 1080 rez.

Also the 60FPS will enable better CGI animation.
 
Special effects look like absolute shiyte with the tru-motion stuff enabled. If upping it to 60fps standard does the same thing, i hate it. They look flat out cheesy.
 
meatfestival said:
Movies at anything other than 24fps just seems wrong for some reason.

I think it's the so-called "soap opera effect". Same reason I hate the "true motion" features on newer TVs.
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I agree with this. Sometimes I even feel weird watching game cut-scenes render at native resolution @ 60+fps, after I've seen the same scenes in trailers/videos/etc. Though gaming in 60fps is fine.

I'm sure they kept the 24fps standard for a reason.
 
He is forgetting one big thing that will stop many movies from doing 60fps, cost.

With movies using more and more CG and in many cases being completely or near complete CG, a very large portion of a movies budget goes towards that. Now having to have the render farms render another 36 frames of video for each second will increase production time a lot. Rendering is a big time sink already. Oh, and if the movie is true 3D and not the tacked on BS, you have to double the frames rendered as well.

Render times can vary drastically from frame to frame, but say for instance with Toy Story 3, from what I remember reading awhile back, a frame to render on their rendering farm took between 7 and 39 hours to completely render. A single frame..
 
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For me a lot of 3D movies at 24 fps seem to have a lot of blending and generally look bad. Upping the framerate would probably help for action movies.
 
It's way easier to downsample to 24 FPS than it is to upsample to 60. If you like the 24 FPS look then just have your hardware downsample the source. There is nothing but benefits to a higher temporal resolution.
 
I agree with him 100%. Resolution is going to get us so far. This century-old 24 FPS is getting really annoying, especially since we've had TVs capable of 60 FPS for more than half that time.

Some people are turned off by the 120hz/240hz effect on TVs, but that's simply because they're not used to it. Their brain has been conditioned to think "jerky 24 FPS = what a movie should look like".

I'll address the concerns of people who still want and enjoy jerky motion, frame judder, unnatural blur, and hideous pulldown measures:
"It looks like a documentary or a soap opera"
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Good! Documentaries and soap operas are using a higher standard in filming methods than films have been clinging to for the last hundred years or so. If you hadn't been raised on people shoehorning 24 FPS into a non-divisible 30 or 60 FPS, you would be asking "why is this movie so unnatural and jerky? This is just hard to watch."

"The special effects don't look right"
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Merely a post-process frame interpolation issue. When they're filmed at 60 FPS, the directors will make it look right. When you watch your old movies, you can set your TV to play those as they have been played.

"The jerky motion makes the movie more artistic; I don't want too much realism"
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Again, mental training you were brought up with. The TVs of the future could still be able to reduce it to 24 FPS if you really want them to. Heck, let's shoot for 12 FPS. Even more artistic!
 
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Keep in mind the frame interpolation post processing technique used in TVs for instance is not same as having an actual 60fps source.

I honestly would rather see 4k resolutions first though before 60 fps. I believe 4k resolutions at typical viewing distances for a screen size essentially approaches the PPI limit for human eyesight.
 
Like Limitedaccess mentioned, some of you seem to be confusing interpolation and true 60 frames per seconds - the "soap opera" effect comes from the former.

As for the actual idea of pushing higher frame rates on film... If it's just going to be another excuse to make going to the movies more expensive like this 3D trend, then no thank you. If it actually adds something to the experience, then why not.
 
And in other news James Cameron wants entire planets created for use in Avatar sequels and he wants to divorce his current wife so he can spend time fucking the hottest Na'vi he can slip his deep sea sausage into.

How about writing a decent script Cameron , technology can't make your shitty scripts any better.
 
60fps/true motion makes movies look fake and as though upon a stage.
 
What the market wants in a movie is what will determine what new format will be used. Obviously, high resolution is here to stay. It looks gorgeous, and only improves on an already existing experience. When you begin changing the framerate from 24 to something else however, you're changing the experience of the movie.

Secondly, filming at a higher framerate will increase cost. I don't see this as a viable option for film. Film is expensive to record with, and some directors and their audience prefer movies in film over digital. Digital, obviously, is much cheaper to film with, so 120fps is definitely an option. But consider the post-processing cost of adding CGI to a movie, as now there are many more frames to render to. It'd be one thing if your movie had no CGI, but any action film is going to skyrocket in product cost when you quintuple the amount of frames the CGI needs to be rendered in.

So in the end, 24fps might be here to stay simply on the basis that it's the only format that's economical to produce movies and television shows with. Increasing the resolution is simple, as well as always advantageous. But increasing the framerate is another. I just don't see it being economically viable.
 
how is this general gaming???

i have wondered this for a long time. why do they stay with 24p? sdtv is 30p, dvd is 60p, blu-ray is 60p and most hdtv sold today are 60p. but film hasnt changed if 100 years!!! time to upgrade.
 
Krenum said:
Yes Lucas is making a new Indiana Jones movie.
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what would you think about star wars pre prequels? yoda was 800 years old when he died, he must of had some great adventures you could make into a trilogy?

24p? what a joke. 120p ftw!!!
 
Funny you mention that since he also has a new Star Wars project that he wants to put into production after the 3D issue of the current movies...

(Yoda was older when he died - he was 900 years old :) )
 
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Cerulean said:
60fps/true motion makes movies look fake and as though upon a stage.
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That's only because that's what your mind has been trained.

Had films always been at 60 FPS, you'd think that movies filmed at 24 FPS looked like cheap shit, much the same as you'd look at a low-framerate flash animation or 15 FPS webcam video.
 
This is a good thing, this is why to me, cgi movies like transformers look like shit on newer tv's, Or try watching that Monsters vs aliens movie, with all the fast pace fighting and camera flying around on a plasma or something, it looks like crap when the sceen is clear enough for you to focus on it!
 
tricky0502 said:
i have wondered this for a long time. why do they stay with 24p? sdtv is 30p, dvd is 60p, blu-ray is 60p and most hdtv sold today are 60p. but film hasnt changed if 100 years!!! time to upgrade.
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Even if you correct all of your "p"s to "fps", you are still wrong. SDTV's FPS, at least in the US when using NTSC, is 29.97 FPS. DVDs are also 29.97 FPS, again when using NTSC (PAL may be 25 FPS). 1920p Blu-Ray is limited to 24 FPS; Blu-Ray 3D does 24 FPS per eye for a total of 48 FPS.
 
tricky0502 said:
how is this general gaming???

i have wondered this for a long time. why do they stay with 24p? sdtv is 30p, dvd is 60p, blu-ray is 60p and most hdtv sold today are 60p. but film hasnt changed if 100 years!!! time to upgrade.
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Change your p's to hz and you're still wrong.
 
Cerulean said:
60fps/true motion makes movies look fake and as though upon a stage.
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It makes the motion look real, like a real person on a stage, instead of the choppy blurry fake looking motion you see in movies.

I'm all for higher frame rates. It's much better than 3d.
 
watch an HD movie on your 1080 LCD at 60Mhz
watch an HD movie on your old CRT TV at 50Mhz or less.. or more?

i know movies use the "blurring" affect, why the whole "people cant see past 60 FPS" is BS myth....
 
With information being digital I'm not sure if bandwidth would be an issue. I think it might since a lot of people stream shows and don't have the greatest connections.
 
What on earth does this have to do with gaming?
 
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