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Topic: TV - 24fps or 30 fps?

William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99

posted 08-06-2001 11:43 PM

The BBC's production format *used* to be exteriors on film, interiors on videotape.

There's even a Monty Python bit (one of the few I remember) where some guys walk out of an interior set, cut to street exterior, they look at the camera & say, "Good heavens, we're on FILM!" Then rush back inside.

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Tao Yue
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 209
From: Princeton, NJ
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 08-07-2001 07:08 AM

This thread is wandering a bit, but just wanted to add a bit to what Joe Redifer said about ST:TNG.

The original effects for ST:TNG, including most of the stock effects (flybys, phaser and torpedo firing, saucer separation), were done by Industrial Light & Magic and originated on 35mm like most of their work back in 1987. If you frame advance through the opening credits, you'll see 3:2 pulldown artifacts on all the Enterprise flybys. This continues through the series -- most of the star streaking in warp, for example, was stock, and so even in the last episode these will show 3:2 pulldown artifacts.

A new effects house was brought in sometime later, and that's when the 60 fields per second effects began to be mixed in with the 24 fps action and the older 24 fps effects. There are some really weird artifacts of this that you can see, especially in the later episodes when they did more complex layered effects.

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Tao Yue
MIT '04: Course VI-2, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Projectionist, MIT Lecture Series Committee

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 08-07-2001 12:13 PM

I saw 60 fields per second used in the very first episode. When the Enterprise ejected some sort of light beam from the middle of it's saucer section. Looked really really bad. I didn't know much about frames or fields when the show first aired.... I just knew that it looked incredibly bad, and that the series was kind of pansie-assed.

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John Schulien
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 206
From: Chicago, IL, USA
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 08-07-2001 03:21 PM

I do know that some BBC kinescopes were shot at 25FPS. All of the old black-and-white Dr. Who episodes were filmed that way, and if you single-frame through one of the NTSC videotapes, you'll see that every 4th frame is repeated to bring it up to 30 fps.

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Greg Anderson
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 766
From: Ogden Valley, Utah
Registered: Nov 1999

posted 08-07-2001 04:49 PM

I've worked on many episodes of TV shows, movies of the week and mini-series projects which were originated on film... both 35mm and 16mm. They were all shot at 24 frames per second. The use of 16mm has dwindled as the networks have increased their committment to HDTV. The only times we have filmed at a different frame rate was when we had to worry about stuff like the flicker on a computer screen. In that case, we could adjust the frame rate and the post crew would simply have to deal with the difference when they did the initial video transfer.

Most every 35mm project I've worked on in the last couple of years was done with 3-perf pull-down and Super 35. This gives you an HDTV aspect ratio without "wasting" film. The main action has to take place within the 1.33 aspect ratio in the middle of your 1.78 frame. Then, in theory, the footage will look okay in HDTV or in "pan and scan" NTSC.

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Sean McKinnon
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1712
From: Peabody Massachusetts
Registered: Sep 2000

posted 08-07-2001 11:07 PM

BTW, The NTSC television format is 29.9fps

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Mathias Andersson
Film Handler

Posts: 26
From: Sweden
Registered: Oct 1999

posted 08-08-2001 05:10 AM

It's more 30 fps than it is 29.9 fps, since the actual fram rate is 29.97....

// Mathias

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Tao Yue
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 209
From: Princeton, NJ
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 08-08-2001 07:26 AM

Joe, do you remember at which point in "Encounter at Farpoint" the 60 frame per second effects appeared? I'd like to take a look at it again -- of course, all I have is the butchered episode-format show, rather than the original TV movie format, but it might be in both versions.

I guess even when ILM did the show, shortcuts were taken. Do you think it might have been computer imagery? Of course the technology wasn't good enough yet to render convincing ships, but ILM might've decided to draw in beams digitally after spending too much time rotoscoping them in.

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Tao Yue
MIT '04: Course VI-2, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Projectionist, MIT Lecture Series Committee

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Joe Redifer
You need a beating today

Posts: 12859
From: Denver, Colorado
Registered: May 99

posted 08-08-2001 01:34 PM

It was at a point in the episode where a white beam shoots down to power something (Michael Bell?) up. It's been about 30 years since I've seen it. But it definitely in the second half I think.

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Jonathan Smiles
Film Handler

Posts: 11
From: Devon UK
Registered: Jul 2001

posted 08-08-2001 04:44 PM

Hi all,

Let share my expericence of working in a 50/60Hz world.

1, 35mm shoots of US TV shows are shot at 24fps to save film and have 3:2 applied in post production. TV commercials ans some music videos may shoot at 30fps for quality.

2, For standards conversion the best converters are from Snell and Wilcox (http://www.snellwilcox.com), with a USD 100,000 price tag for the Alchemist Phc.

3, Some US shows which are shot 24fps with 3:2 may be converted back to 24fps then sped up to 25fps - Snell Wilcox called it DEFT.

4, Enterprise I believe is being shot in 1080 24p HD, subject to them being able to complete the shows fast enough in HD with no more time than they had for Voyager in SD.

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Arthur Allen
Film Handler

Posts: 99
From: Renton, WA, USA
Registered: Aug 2001

posted 08-11-2001 05:34 PM

Some television shows, such as “Bill Nye, The Science Guy” shoot on video, but then convert the footage to give it a film look. Mostly they drop and repeat every fourth frame to make it look 24 frames per second. This effect works well enough if there’s enough motion on the screen, but daytime soap operas that have prime-time specials use this effect too, and when there’s no motion on the screen it looks like video again, and is very distracting. NTSC’s best advantage over other systems is the extra frames for more fluid motion, but some productions throw away those extra frames to make us think the show has a slightly higher production budget.

That said, it appears that recent reissues of the Brit-com “Red Dwarf” were enhanced to match a more recent season, which was filmed. Even though the earlier seasons were shot at 25 f.p.s., they somehow managed to cut down the fluid movement to give it a film look. Again, the scenes revert to a video look when there’s no motion. Does anyone know how they managed to do this? Perhaps they only did these enhancements on the NTSC versions of the show, because only cutting out one frame a second from PAL wouldn’t seem to work.

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