Did The Hobbit unexpectedly journey into something bad?

A

admin

Audioholics Robot
Staff member
Did you see The Hobbit? What was your take on the new 48Hz frame rate? Here's Wayde Robson's opinion on it...and it's not good!



Discuss "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey...into Bad HT Video Technology" here. Read the article.
 
The Chukker

The Chukker

Full Audioholic
Never saw it in the theaters as I was waiting for it to come out on BD.
Did hear some rumblings about it; glad I waited for it to come home.
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
I saw it in HFR 3D to see how it worked out. I think it helped the 3d a lot, there seemed to be more depth, more in focus and more seamless of an effect. That's really where the positives end though.

The most obvious downfall to me was in the CG. Any CG items in motion stuck out like a sore thumb on a non CG background. For those who have seen the movie in non HFR: the scene where they are in Bilbo's hobbit hole juggling dishes around, the dishes looked ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE as they were flying around. Very sharp and clear and not very well animated.

Overall the motion was just really distracting, it's really difficult to describe. I was really hopeful that something recorded in real high frame rate instead of a junky upconverstion done by a Tv would look good, but it had the same effect.
 
Rowdy S13

Rowdy S13

Audioholic Chief
The wife and I saw it in HFR 3D, and I had high hopes. It was a let down to us, and I don't think I will bother again. It's hard to describe, but it seemed sped up. Anytime the camera was slowly panning it seemed jumpy and sped up. During the action I would guess it was better, but not something I was defiantly noticing. The last 3D movie I saw was Avitar, so I cant really compare the 3D of that to this one. It seemed well done for the most part, but again nothing that really stood out. Overall I didn't like it, it seemed either WAY too noticeable in a bad way, or not noticeable at all. JMO

Sean
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
I saw it in 2D at a theater in L.A. The PQ looked great to me. I hate 3D so I never watch anything in 3D. I actually saw the movie with a friend who sells professional movie projectors for a living. He thought it looked great too. :D
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
I saw it in 2D at a theater in L.A. The PQ looked great to me. I hate 3D so I never watch anything in 3D. :D
This reminds me of something I forgot to mention, and answered a question I had.

Though I pretty much hated every aspect of this film I felt that the image quality was by far the best I had ever seen. Everything was very clear and sharp and detailed. I was wondering if it was partially because of the HFR, or just because the theaters I normally go to suck. I guess it was in fact just actually filmed and produced well.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
This reminds me of something I forgot to mention, and answered a question I had.

Though I pretty much hated every aspect of this film I felt that the image quality was by far the best I had ever seen. Everything was very clear and sharp and detailed. I was wondering if it was partially because of the HFR, or just because the theaters I normally go to suck. I guess it was in fact just actually filmed and produced well.
Yeah, PQ was great. No complaints from me. The story sucked, though. :D
 
J

jotham

Audioholic
In my opinion, this is just yet another complaint about how the old tech is better than the first iteration of the new tech.

I'm not saying that a higher frame rate doesn't look different and might be unsettling to folks used to a 24 FPS but I think the younger generations that are used to a diet of high-res, high framerate video games will probably adapt to this new approach quite readily.

Other than nostalgia, there is nothing special about 24 FPS that makes it desirable. 3D and higher frame rates are both an effort to try and make movies look more and more lifelike. So is 100 channel sound systems like DTS-SHHD Overlord Audio 92.8 . I'm all for that even knowing that each bump in tech will result in some initial crap as the content creation people work out the bugs.

I applaud Peter Jackson and James Cameron for striving to make movies more realistic even if they seem to focus on the fantastical side of storytelling :)
 
G

Grador

Audioholic Field Marshall
In my opinion, this is just yet another complaint about how the old tech is better than the first iteration of the new tech.

I'm not saying that a higher frame rate doesn't look different and might be unsettling to folks used to a 24 FPS but I think the younger generations that are used to a diet of high-res, high framerate video games will probably adapt to this new approach quite readily.
Sorry, I would put myself on the front end of this generation you speak and I thought it was really mediocre. It looked far less realistic, and I do find truthfully find that rather odd. I do applaud the effort, but it really did not work out. Truthfully though even if it did, any and all of the CG really did look far far worse for the use of HFR, so it would still have trouble looking realistic there.
 
F

FirstReflection

AV Rant Co-Host
I saw it in HFR 3D, and...I kinda loved it :)

Honestly, I went in expecting to hate it. I loathe interpolation on televisions (aka. "soap opera effect"), so I expected to hate the 48fps presentation just as much. But, to my surprise, even though I had a lot of caveats, I saw a number of scenes where I felt the HFR look was extremely pleasing.

It IS difficult to explain in words. To begin, when the movie first started, I honestly thought that something was wrong. Not just an "oh, that looks different and strange". I truly thought that there was something wrong with the projector, and that the file was being played incorrectly! The best way I can describe it is that it looked like when you play a movie at 1.5x speed. It didn't look sped up to the point of being on fast forward, but it definitely looked like it was being played faster than it should have been. Like I say, the closest experience is watching a movie at 1.5x on a disc player or computer.

But then we got to the Shire, and that's the scene where the HFR look put a great big smile on my face. Everything just looked very realistic - like watching a live play rather than a movie. I went into the movie with worries about this very effect. I had heard that it sometimes looked like a play, rather than a movie, and I was worried that it would take me out of the fantasy setting, and just remind me that I was watching something fake and made up. But, to my delight, the realism of the HFR look during the bright, colourful outdoor scenes in the Shire really just gave me the feeling that this was a real place. A place that I could go and visit in real life. And I personally found that to be more engaging and engrossing, vs. the regular movie look we're all used to, which sort of keeps us at a distance, and makes everything just a bit "otherworldly". In HFR, I believed I was seeing a real place in the Shire. When I watched the movie again in regular 24fps, it had the normal movie look, which gave me the feeling that the Shire was someplace else - a place that didn't really exist. Again, tough to put into words, but the HFR look was definitely more realistic.

Then I noticed that 1.5x look again when Bilbo (the older version) was on screen and quickly moving around. Everything about his movements looked sped up and very unnatural. But then Frodo walked into the scene and his movement (which was slower) looked phenomenally real - again, much like watching a play.

So one of the things I realized is that actors will have to adjust to the new HFR look, just as lighting, makeup and effects must all adjust as well. It's a bit like when television went from SD to HD. The old ways of doing makeup and lighting just didn't look right in HD. Changes had to be made. And similar sorts of changes will be necessary for HFR as well, IMO. This being the first major release in HFR, the adjustments have not yet been discovered and made, so some images look very strange. But I fully believe that things could be adjusted.

This contrast between things that looked sped up and unnatural and things that looked amazingly real and lifelike continued throughout the movie for me. I never fully grew accustomed to the HFR look. I was always rather aware of it. But there was a definite back and forth as to the way in which I was aware of the HFR. One scene, it was looking really fantastic and real - giving me that sense that these were real people in a real place that I could physically go and visit myself - and then the next scene, it was looking oddly sped up and entirely unnatural. It was a very strange back and forth.

And the CGI effects fell into that back and forth as well. Certain effects looked much more fake because of the HFR look, while other CGI creatures - like the Trolls - had a great new sense of realism that I really enjoyed!

So the term, "mixed bag" has never been more appropriate. Peter Jackson used a lot of sweeping camera movements to show off the smooth, judder-free pans. And they looked fantastic when it was a wide-angle shot outdoors. Being The Hobbit, there are no shortage of scenes with people taking long walks outside :p Those looked great as the camera swooped by. But indoors and up close, those camera movements were distracting and looked sped up. I found that wide shots and close ups both looked better in HFR, but medium-distance shots seemed to be what suffered the most from that odd 1.5x speed look.

So, to me, HFR holds a lot of promise. When it looks good, it looks really good! I was surprised how much I liked it! I just really loved the sensation I had of seeing an actual, real live place and people. But when it looks bad, it looks very strange. So, like I say, I just think adjustments need to be made. It's a learning process, and this really is just the first major feature to use HFR for a wide public release - so growing pains are to be expected. But once it gets nailed down, I'd very much enjoy watching movies this way. Not ALL movies, mind you. But I see HFR as being just another option and choice for a director to utilize if he or she wishes to do so. It's not the right choice for everything, but it's far from all bad, either. :)
 
I

itlnstln

Enthusiast
I have not seen the Hobbit; however, I have seen other HFR videos and agree with others that, at first, the video does look a bit "sped up." That said, I think a lot of the lack of realism is that film has been 24 fps for so long now, directors, set designers, etc. consciously or subconsciously know the tricks and shortcuts they can take at frame rate (due to motion blur, etc.) and that those tricks and shortcuts are exposed in the faster frame rate. I think over the next several years as film producers become more comfortable with 48 fps, we'll see much better, more realistic films.
 
E

en sabur nur

Audioholic Intern
Physiologically-speaking, if you can’t see the effect you’re probably not genetically descended from a hunter class of stone-age man.

Bull***t.

If you can’t see flicker or were never able to spot motion imperfections in older LCD panels, then maybe your ancestors were just people who were gastronomically content picking berries or scraping exotic fungi from inside the bark of trees...just a theory

More bull***t...the rest of the article I agree with.
 
Wayde Robson

Wayde Robson

Audioholics Anchorman
It was a joke, not meant to be scientifically provable, no citations were provided.
 
J

jeffca

Junior Audioholic
A couple thoughts

About 15 or so years ago, Siskel & Ebert attended a tech demo using 48fps film. The developers explained that half the area of a standard frame went unused at that time so they truncated the frame height to fit only the used image area which allowed twice the rate while running the film at the same speed (Cinemascope and Panavision required special lenses to distort a wide image onto a 4:3 frame at full frame height - the video equivalent of pre and post-emphasis, but the advent of film with a much smaller grain made those expensive-to-rent, anamorphic lenses unnecessary).

Both of those famous reviewers loved the result and hoped that system might get some traction, but it never did. They found the smooth motion, greater detail and reduced motion blur quite appealing. I doubt anyone posting here is a bigger movie fan than them or has seen as many movies.

My thought on the new digital HFR is that 3D may not be the best tech to work in concert with it. 3D seems to be a tricky thing to get right at 24fps and running it a double speed my only exacerbate it's problems.

I'd like to see a none-3D, HFR film and judge it on it's own merits. Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing what can be done with it.

jeff
 
GranteedEV

GranteedEV

Audioholic Ninja
I like HFR, but I will certainly have to adjust to it.
When it comes to video games, I have never preferred 30fps over 60fps.
For movies, I've never known anything but 24fps, so anything "different" is a distraction. Who knows though, someday going back to 24fps will be akin to going back to black and white.

3D on the other hand, gives me headaches and requires special glasses, so there's more to it than just being "different".
 
mtrycrafts

mtrycrafts

Seriously, I have no life.
I like HFR, but I will certainly have to adjust to it.
When it comes to video games, I have never preferred 30fps over 60fps.
For movies, I've never known anything but 24fps, so anything "different" is a distraction. Who knows though, someday going back to 24fps will be akin to going back to black and white.

3D on the other hand, gives me headaches and requires special glasses, so there's more to it than just being "different".
What frame rates are used for live sport broadcast? No one seems to complain about them. ;)
 
cpp

cpp

Audioholic Ninja
What frame rates are used for live sport broadcast? No one seems to complain about them. ;)
I found this,

There are two different HDTV formats used by networks broadcasting in the United States. NBC, CBS, and the NFL Network broadcast in 1080i30, which is an interlaced format of 29.97 frames per second, with each frame rendered at 1920 by 1080 pixels. Fox and ESPN, meanwhile, use 720p60, a progressive format delivering 59.94 frames per second, at a resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Latest posts

newsletter

  • RBHsound.com
  • BlueJeansCable.com
  • SVS Sound Subwoofers
  • Experience the Martin Logan Montis
Top