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Comment by cwilson | Hacker News Reader

According to the article, the outdoor scenes were awesome in 48FPS. It was the indoor scenes that looked fake and weird, due to the fact that 48FPS made it very apparent there was lots of makeup being used, because they had unnatural light blasting on the actors (where as there was no extra light added to outdoor scenes, obviously).

Shouldn't he have just toned down the extra lighting indoors, knowing 48FPS was going to pick up more detail?

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> due to the fact that 48FPS made it very apparent there was lots of makeup being used

How does better temporal resolution (higher frame rate) enable better spacial resolution (see makeup detail)? In no or low motion, there can be no difference.

The HFR camera uses a notably different lens, I believe as a result of the faster shutter rate. When you double the fps, you halve the exposure time, which calls for a different lens.

There is never no motion, unless you're in hard vacuum or a clean room. If you doubt this, shoot some video of a static scene, then take on frame out of it and repeat it for the same length of time. People's pulse makes the color of their skin change subtly. Lights flicker in phase with alternating current. Outside, the air moves and the color temperature of the sun changes subtly with it, even if the sky is perfectly clear.

More updates per second to each pixel means each pixel is more faithfully tracking the real-life image, which in turn allows the eye to more accurately interpolate spatial details in the displayed picture.

As you say, for a truly static scene there is no difference. In practise there is always noise in the picture, so even in static scenes a higher frame rate will tend to reduce noise by averaging.

> How does better temporal resolution (higher frame rate) enable better spacial resolution (see makeup detail)? In no or low motion, there can be no difference.

Because you're not watching a single still frame - it's more like your brain is taking in an integral of visual information over time. You don't need much motion to be able to perceive a visual difference (even if it's just a 'feeling'). Eg. http://iwdrm.tumblr.com/

Why would 48FPS have any particular effect on lighting or any other detail other than movement? Why would makeup stand out more?

[I've only seen the Hobbit in 24FPS (unfortunately the 48FPS is only available in conjuction with 3D which I won't watch).]

I'm not an expert so someone please correct me, but I believe the answer is roughly: if the frame rate is lower than the "rate that your eye sees", then your brain replaces the frames that are missing with a blur so that the motion still looks fluid (hence why video at 24 fps still looks kinda fine to us, even though the frame rate is less than reality). This blur that your brain adds in would probably also cause your brain to have difficulty following details, since the details -- of the makeup, for example -- are constantly moving. However, if the frame rate is 48 fps, then your brain does not add the blur between frames since all the necessary data is available and it can more easily perceive details (like makeup).

I liked the goblin and Orc battles (indoor or dark, and thus probably sets or lighted) in HFR. I didn't get much benefit during the walking around New Zealand scenes.

By far the best part of the movie was New Zealand, though. I would have been happier with a 3h IMAX of NZ nature. Maybe with LOTR music.

Agreed. That explanation seemed a bit glib. It's not like adjusting the color balance to reduce sensitivity to light and color is difficult with digital video.

The points about the resolution of details on props make more sense to me.

Yeah I think the lighting in the scenes that take place in Bilbo's home tends to look bad even in the 2D standard-def 24fps trailers you can find online. It really doesn't have anything to do with HFR.

But the scenes they pick out in particular are in the hobbit hole.. this all happens within the first 10-20 minutes of the film, perhaps before you have adjusted to the high FPS.

And shoot every indoor scene twice?

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