# Hate for high frame rate. Why, again?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [December 15, 2014, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277 "2014-12-15T11:40:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2014, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/21 "2014-12-15T20:19:57Z")
> [@John\_Bredin](#):
>
> Requisite [xkcd](http://xkcd.com/732/).(Read the mouseover.)
Mouseover text on this comic: “We’re also stuck with blurry, juddery, slow-panning 24fps movies forever because (thanks to 60fps home video) people associate high framerates with camcorders and cheap sitcoms, and thus think good framerates look ‘fake’.”
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2014, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/22 "2014-12-15T21:02:39Z")
> [@LawMonkey](#):
>
> I’m not sure what you’re talking about, having never seen Three Kings and not having seen SPR in years, but I think you’re confused about what HFR is. So far as I know, The Hobbit movies have been the first to be released in HFR (which is just 48 FPS rather than 24).
I think what he’s referring to is that “stutter” effect in films like Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator (don’t remember if I recall it from Three Kings, which is an excellent Gulf War / heist film staring Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney).
[Here’s an example of someone testing out the effect with different camera settings. It would be a lot easier to see if this idiot could actually throw a ball.](http://vimeo.com/groups/af100/videos/42336539)
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### Author:  [@Airk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airk)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2014, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/23 "2014-12-15T21:28:18Z")
> [@msmith537](#):
>
> I think what he’s referring to is that “stutter” effect in films like Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator (don’t remember if I recall it from Three Kings, which is an excellent Gulf War / heist film staring Ice Cube, Mark Wahlberg and George Clooney).
>
> [Here’s an example of someone testing out the effect with different camera settings. It would be a lot easier to see if this idiot could actually throw a ball.](http://vimeo.com/groups/af100/videos/42336539)
Private video?
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2014, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/24 "2014-12-15T23:20:33Z")
One of my complaints is that 48fps is just stupid. Nearly everything we own now uses 60hz or a multiple of that. You have to move up to 240hz before you’ll avoid stuttering problems.
The other is that the non-jerky part of 48fps is why I hate it. It makes the car sick feeling I get with fast pans much worse. And movies are just way too obsessed with all these fancy camera moves anyways. They’re largely unnecessary. I realize they add this visual “wow” factor to some people, but they don’t help tell the story. Motion blurred pans are enough if you really need a pan.
Because, real life doesn’t have those pans. Your brain cuts out that part when you move. If it didn’t, you’d feel motion sick all the time.
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### Author:  [@magnusblitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magnusblitz)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2014, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/25 "2014-12-16T01:20:57Z")
> [@obfusciatrist](#):
>
> Personally, I think it looks awful.
>
> Whether that’s because it looks awful or I’ve just been conditioned by a lifetime to think of something else looking better I can’t say for sure.
Agreed… I hate it, but I’m also aware that it might just be years of conditioning. After all, real life isn’t 24 fps.
That said, I’m more likely to accept movies like The Hobbit, which are filmed in 48 FPS, than the ‘upscaling’ effect on newer TVs which (as far as I know) creates the additional frames by splitting the frames on either side. This creates a really weird ‘smoothing’ effect that immediately takes me out of it. Inherently 48 FPS movies like The Hobbit actually don’t look that bad to me (what looks bad is the horribly fake-y CGI, such as during the ‘barrels down the river’ scene).
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### Author:  [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2014, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/26 "2014-12-16T02:03:12Z")
Apparently they don’t even want you to see it in HFR, or else the site to find an HFR theater near you [http://www.thehobbit.com/hfr3d/index.html](http://www.thehobbit.com/hfr3d/index.html) wouldn’t redirect to the front page before you can even read the list. (Tried in chrome & firefox, fuck IE, I’m not trying in that)
Good goin, guys.
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### Author:  [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2014, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/27 "2014-12-16T07:54:02Z")
I loved seeing the first two films in HFR and I’ll be doing in again for the 3rd. I can actually \*see \*all of the detail in the shots when the camera is panning and during fast action scenes, it’s not just a blur. It did take a few minutes to get used to it at first, because it looks so real that it looks fake. But after about ten minutes or so I thought it was great.
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### Author:  [@Stealth\_Bragg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Bragg)
#### Post date: [December 16, 2014, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/28 "2014-12-16T12:36:46Z")
It just looked to me like things were happening in fast-forward, eg. a hand rummaging about in a chest looked sped up. Mostly, like the poster above, there was little or no difference.
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### Author:  [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2014, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/29 "2014-12-17T23:33:48Z")
> [@magnusblitz](#):
>
> Agreed… I hate it, but I’m also aware that it might just be years of conditioning. After all, real life isn’t 24 fps.
>
> That said, I’m more likely to accept movies like The Hobbit, which are filmed in 48 FPS, than the ‘upscaling’ effect on newer TVs which (as far as I know) creates the additional frames by splitting the frames on either side. This creates a really weird ‘smoothing’ effect that immediately takes me out of it. Inherently 48 FPS movies like The Hobbit actually don’t look that bad to me (what looks bad is the horribly fake-y CGI, such as during the ‘barrels down the river’ scene).
I was in a Best Buy today and they had all these super high dev TVs with the high frame rates. I feel like they make everything, including real life footage, look like fake-y CGI. Literally everything felt like I was watching a weirdly smooth PlayStation game cut scene.
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### Author:  [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2014, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/30 "2014-12-17T23:59:06Z")
Does actual real life look weirdly smooth?
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/31 "2014-12-18T00:04:06Z")
I can’t wait until all films are done in HFR. I got used to the effect pretty quickly in the previous films and found it quite pleasing by the end.
The trouble is that my brain “resets” from all the other films not shown in HFR, so each time I have to get used to it again. If all films were HFR, things would just look really nice all the time. It’s just like what happened when digital cameras took over and all the imagery looked super-clean and a bit odd. Now that virtually all films are both recorded and projected digitally, no one thinks it looks out of place.
I agree that sets, camerawork, etc. need to catch up a bit, but also that the Hobbit movies already looked really fake and that HFR isn’t really to blame here. No different than HDTV.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2014, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/32 "2014-12-18T00:09:29Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#):
>
> Does actual real life look weirdly smooth?
Our brains are highly contextual. We’re used to real-life looking smooth and films looking jerky because that’s the way it’s always been. So when films just _start_ to look a tad smoother, this violates our expectations for a “cinematic experience” and it looks weird.
We certainly saw that with the HDTV transition, but no one complains anymore. I’m sure that people complained back in the day when hand-cranked cameras were replaced with motorized ones and you actually got an even frame rate. Eventually these people got used to it, or shut up, or died off, so it’s a self-correcting problem (though it might take a while).
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2014, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/33 "2014-12-18T00:24:09Z")
> [@BigT](#):
>
> Because, real life doesn’t have those pans. Your brain cuts out that part when you move. If it didn’t, you’d feel motion sick all the time.
But this is exactly why low frame rates suck so much on pans. Your eyes don’t just point straight forward when you rotate your head; they fix on different new points as things come into view.
When you fix on a point in a filmed pan, that point jitters back and forth at the frame rate. Your eyeball wants to rotate smoothly to follow the object, but instead the object slides in one direction for 1/24 sec, and then instantly snaps to a new position, and then starts sliding again. It’s straining and unpleasant. Double the frame rate and your halve the distance the object snaps to.
I agree that 48 fps isn’t enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than 24.
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### Author:  [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2014, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/34 "2014-12-18T01:06:41Z")
Everyone knows the only true cinematic experience is filmed on nitrocellulose film stock.
Harumph!
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2014, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/35 "2014-12-18T01:23:40Z")
> [@Chimera](#):
>
> Everyone knows the only true cinematic experience is filmed on nitrocellulose film stock.
The special effects in this new Michael Bay film are so realistic. You can almost smell the burning. Wait, no, the film is on fire.
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### Author:  [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2014, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/36 "2014-12-18T05:42:14Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#):
>
> Mouseover text on this comic: “We’re also stuck with blurry, juddery, slow-panning 24fps movies forever because (thanks to 60fps home video) people associate high framerates with camcorders and cheap sitcoms, and thus think good framerates look ‘fake’.”
Yep, this is exactly my problem and one of the reasons I went plasma instead of LCD back in the day. But yes, it is certainly a conditioned response. One I so far am having a little trouble shaking.
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### Author:  [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2014, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hate-for-high-frame-rate-why-again/707277/37 "2014-12-18T14:16:28Z")
For me not liking HFR (at least as so far experienced) I don’t think it is just that it is a departure from a lifetime of what has been a cinematic look.
I have no problem with HD picture compared to SD when watching on TV. I don’t mourn the loss of grain and dust and projector jitter with digital projection. I have no problem with 3D as a concept (though find the glasses frequently uncomfortable) though many movies aren’t particularly improved by its use.
But if HFR is making things look more like real life it is in the bad way that movies aren’t supposed to be real life and making it look like I’m seeing a bunch of people on a soundstage is not a good thing. Now, maybe that is an issue for set and makeup design but I don’t see many defenders of HFR saying “HFR is great, Peter Jackson just did a horrible job with it on The Hobbit” so that appears to not be the case in that example. Instead most seem to say “HFR is great and you’re just to old and entrenched to love new things.”
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