60 frames per second video (venting mostly)

[maverick_starstrider]

I understand that I don't "get" the whole HD video thing but regardless, what the HELL is up with video files with 60 fps? One needs an expensive computer to adequately display such a film and for what? Is there really some dumb *** who has tricked himself into thinking he can even SEE the difference between 60 frames per second versus 32 FPS? Human eyes can't tell the difference. It's a fact. How could someone possible desire such a thing? Is there someone here who swears they have preternatural eyes and that this standard has remotely any justification? Otherwise there is no excuse for trying to force me to shell out an extra $2000 so that my laptop is fricking HUMMINGBIRD compliant.

 

[chiro]

I understand what you're saying since people have found that if you do it the right way (like using interlacing for example), then people won't know the difference.

Ultimately one suggestion is that you just convert the video to a 24-30 FPS video in MPEG format with the right interlacing and other encoding options. Most modern computers should be able to do it overnight (or even quicker), so maybe you could look into that.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

I understand what you're saying since people have found that if you do it the right way (like using interlacing for example), then people won't know the difference.

Ultimately one suggestion is that you just convert the video to a 24-30 FPS video in MPEG format with the right interlacing and other encoding options. Most modern computers should be able to do it overnight (or even quicker), so maybe you could look into that.

That's what I do. I re-encode it as a 28 FPS AVI but I just don't get it. In what corner of a meaningless number's geek's mind could that possible be meaningful? Human eyes CAN'T see it and yet it requires TWICE as much space! I'm just curious as to what is going on in these peoples minds.

 

[chiro]

That's what I do. I re-encode it as a 28 FPS AVI but I just don't get it. In what corner of a meaningless number's geek's mind could that possible be meaningful? Human eyes CAN'T see it and yet it requires TWICE as much space! I'm just curious as to what is going on in these peoples minds.

I think that if someone didn't know better, the automatic logical thought process would be higher resolution = better.

It's like someone saying uncompressed data is better with higher resolution. But then you get somebody to do some research and they come up with the psycho-acoustic model and they find out that after a given resolution using some decomposition of waves (like say Fourier analysis), that after a certain point, higher resolution doesn't add that much extra in sensory perception.

Its just a conjecture, but my guess is, that some-one just took the natural guess to say "higher resolution is better and now with an increase in computing power, we can afford it".

It happens more than you think though. Think of the people who store completely uncompressed images that are like 50 to 100 megabytes in size. Some industries (like the medical industry) require data to be non-lossy, but yet people who don't need to have 50 or 100 megabyte BMP files do so.

 

[Newai]

I understand that I don't "get" the whole HD video thing but regardless, what the HELL is up with video files with 60 fps? One needs an expensive computer to adequately display such a film and for what? Is there really some dumb *** who has tricked himself into thinking he can even SEE the difference between 60 frames per second versus 32 FPS? Human eyes can't tell the difference. It's a fact. How could someone possible desire such a thing? Is there someone here who swears they have preternatural eyes and that this standard has remotely any justification? Otherwise there is no excuse for trying to force me to shell out an extra $2000 so that my laptop is fricking HUMMINGBIRD compliant.

bold mine-

Oh really? I tried to verify this, but it doesn't look that simple after all. As for the rest of your complaint, different story.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Human eyes can detect the flicker of a computer monitor (one of the reasons why focusing on a screen is different to a static object) so it wouldn't surprise me if the difference was noticed, whether or not one can consciously notice other than saying "this picture is better" is another story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold

 

[russ_watters]

Is there really some dumb *** who has tricked himself into thinking he can even SEE the difference between 60 frames per second versus 32 FPS? Human eyes can't tell the difference. It's a fact. How could someone possible desire such a thing? Is there someone here who swears they have preternatural eyes and that this standard has remotely any justification?

Back when 3dfx and Nvidia were in their video card wars, 3dfx put out a demo that shows clearly that you most certainly CAN see stuttering in 30fps digital video. At low res and with motion blur, its not noticeable, but with higher resolution comes clarity.

I'll see if that demo is still online.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

Back when 3dfx and Nvidia were in their video card wars, 3dfx put out a demo that shows clearly that you most certainly CAN see stuttering in 30fps digital video. At low res and with motion blur, its not noticeable, but with higher resolution comes clarity.

I'll see if that demo is still online.

Well let's be clear here. We're talking about 60 fps VIDEO. I could see how a 30 fps graphic rendering could stutter if the frames actually came inconsistently and thus you could have the occassional large gap between frames. What I'm concerned with is if you are playing a movie (either SD or HD) with 30 fps where each frame is always evenly spaced, and you're playing the same movie with 60 fps. Weren't the first video cameras hand cranked? So I feel like we ARRIVED at 30 fps (or 32 fps) BECAUSE it seemed optimal, all those years ago.

 

[QuarkCharmer]

I think the average human stops detecting a difference after about 70 fps. As far as I understand, you can still achieve fluid motion at frames/second in the 30+'s using motion blurring (which happens naturally during filming anyway), because our brains sort of do the same thing anyway when we don't quite catch the details on something. Ideally though, I would think that 60+ fps would be best.

 

[Nikitin]

Well, I'd assume it depends on the brightness of your monitor and such in general.

The eye, after all, just releases chemicals when various photons hit it. If the eyes get hit with too much information they wouldn't be able to keep up and send accurate info so I'd reckon they (and the brain) wouldn't be able to detect any serious difference between say 30 or 50 fps under the right conditions as they would get overloaded with information.

I think. I am just guessing really so I *might* be wrong

 

[Filip Larsen]

I'm not sure if its the gear or a particular recording you are "venting" about, but if it is gear or technology, then the ability to perform 60 fps in the whole chain from camera to screen makes perfect sense if you want to be able to render 3D.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

I'm not sure if its the gear or a particular recording you are "venting" about, but if it is gear or technology, then the ability to perform 60 fps in the whole chain from camera to screen makes perfect sense if you want to be able to render 3D.

I'm referring to the growing trend in video files to put everything in 60 fps. This makes the files take twice as much space and causes ugly tearing/stutter which makes things unwatchable unless you have a brand new computer. It's not even "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". It's "if it ain't broke, don't break it for no good reason". I'm particularly hitting this wall with downloading old NFL games (yes, yes, I download old games, it's not like there's any way to purchase old games legally, they're pretty much just lost after broadcast). They're always in 60 fps which means I have to wait like 3 hours to re-encode them into a sensible format.

 

[Pythagorean]

yeah, if there's an abrupt change with 30 fps (no blurring) and your eyes happen to be sampling at the transition, you're going to detect "something".

 

[Nikitin]

well you really shouldn't admit to pirating anything anywhere..
anyway
can somebody comment on this? basically I think that if, say, you have a small monitor which doesn't shine brightly you should be able to distinguish fps between 30 and 60. BUT, if you have a very large and bright monitor you'd have quite a hard time distinguishing between em'

Well, I'd assume it depends on the brightness of your monitor and such in general.

The eye, after all, just releases chemicals when various photons hit it. If the eyes get hit with too much information they wouldn't be able to keep up and send accurate info so I'd reckon they (and the brain) wouldn't be able to detect any serious difference between say 30 or 50 fps under the right conditions as they would get overloaded with information.

I think. I am just guessing really so I *might* be wrong

 

[fluidistic]

can somebody comment on this? basically I think that if, say, you have a small monitor which doesn't shine brightly you should be able to distinguish fps between 30 and 60. BUT, if you have a very large and bright monitor you'd have quite a hard time distinguishing between em'

I don't think so. I had a CRT monitor with refresh 60 Hz. I could clearly see it was refreshing lots of time per second and my eyes were getting annoyed after... 5 s of viewing the screen. Over 80 Hz however my eyes couldn't see the refresh AT ALL (even looking outside the screen). So I was running on 85 Hz.
Now I have a LED monitor. The refresh rate is 60 Hz but the brightness doesn't change 60 times per second. In other words my eyes are NOT getting tired like they would have been with a CRT 60 Hz.
I can also see that neon tubes "ticks" 60 times per second, especially when looking not directly at them, and it's annoying to me.

About the OP question I do not know and it's a good question IMO. Simply do the test and if you can distinguish between 30 and 60 FPS and then you have your answer :)

 

[Nikitin]

Hmm well but i don't think CRT's are such good examples because they constantly change brightness when they run at a relatively low refresh-rate. They have a circa constant brightness when they run at a high refresh rate. At least I thin so.. refresh-rate on a CRT is just a measurement of how frequently electrons get thrown at the fluorescent material - right?

Though thing is with the eyes cells inside there can only interpret a finite amount of information and that information is just energy.. Since LCD's run at a constant brightness I would think that maybe if you REALLY increase monitor brightness, room brightness etc while using a very large monitor I think that the eyes would get overloaded.

The eye would basically not be able to send all the data it receives from the monitor, as the cells in the eye would be busy regenerating their chemicals and thus not be able to send more signals to the brain until the chemicals are regenerated.

Then the question is how the brain interprets the nerve signals and creates the images?

 

[russ_watters]

Well let's be clear here. We're talking about 60 fps VIDEO. I could see how a 30 fps graphic rendering could stutter if the frames actually came inconsistently and thus you could have the occassional large gap between frames.

No, I'm talking about even, consistent 30fps rendering. No skips, just stuttering due to your eyes being able to see the motion.

And remember, a pretty big fraction of movies today have graphic rendering in them.

Also, while motion blur will help, motion blur is built-in to the movie (or not!) and doesn't necessarily match what your eyes would generate. I once sat waaay too close to a movie at a theater and the built-in motion blurring was not sufficient to make the video smooth: it just crossed way too much field of view too fast.

Here's a good article with an explanation and a downloadable demo. I tried it: it is virus free and appears to work, though you do need to ensure your video hardware is set up right and capable of running some intense graphics.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_5.html

What I'm concerned with is if you are playing a movie (either SD or HD) with 30 fps where each frame is always evenly spaced, and you're playing the same movie with 60 fps. Weren't the first video cameras hand cranked? So I feel like we ARRIVED at 30 fps (or 32 fps) BECAUSE it seemed optimal, all those years ago.

Well, "optimal, all those years ago" doesn't necessarily imply 'optimal, today'. I can think of a number of other potentail reasons 30 (or 24?) was "optmial" (vs a higher number) that may or may not have anything to do with our eyes or a digital TV for that matter.

-Persistence of vision is different in a dark movie theater than in a bright living room.
-Cost of film.
-Reliability of high speed cameras and projectors.
-Light sensitivity of film.
-Light (and heat) generation of projectors.
-Quality and resolution of the images.

 

[Newai]

I'm referring to the growing trend in video files to put everything in 60 fps. This makes the files take twice as much space and causes ugly tearing/stutter which makes things unwatchable unless you have a brand new computer. It's not even "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". It's "if it ain't broke, don't break it for no good reason". I'm particularly hitting this wall with downloading old NFL games (yes, yes, I download old games, it's not like there's any way to purchase old games legally, they're pretty much just lost after broadcast). They're always in 60 fps which means I have to wait like 3 hours to re-encode them into a sensible format.

Well, I don't think I've come across any 60fps videos anywhere yet, so maybe it's not so much a trend as it is the niche hobby you're into at the moment?

 

[russ_watters]

can somebody comment on this? basically I think that if, say, you have a small monitor which doesn't shine brightly you should be able to distinguish fps between 30 and 60. BUT, if you have a very large and bright monitor you'd have quite a hard time distinguishing between em'

I think you have that backwards. Smaller monitor means less motion across your field of view and should require lower fps.

 

[maverick_starstrider]

Well, I don't think I've come across any 60fps videos anywhere yet, so maybe it's not so much a trend as it is the niche hobby you're into at the moment?

I don't really know to what extent watching professional football can be called a NICHE hobby but I concede the point.

 

[Newai]

I don't really know to what extent watching professional football can be called a NICHE hobby but I concede the point.

The key qualifier for "niche" was "old NFL games."

 

[maverick_starstrider]

The key qualifier for "niche" was "old NFL games."

Well I actually just mean last season. Obviously older games wouldn't have been shot and encoded in high-def

 

[Negatron]

I find the difference between 30 and 60 FPS dramatic, even with frame-blur (film). 30 is especially distressing when the camera pans at a high rate. I do hope 60 FPS becomes a common standard reasonably soon.