Originally published at: See the difference between animation at 8fps, 12fps and 24fps | Boing Boing
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Is it me? I didn’t notice any difference at all!
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I did notice it, but I’m used to looking for framerate differences from being a lifelong gamer and working in TV.
It’s a good demonstration of how limiting framerate can achieve much the same results while significantly reducing artistic workload / render time.
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It could be you; but there’s also the possibility that it’s your hardware.
The problem isn’t as fundamentally unsolvable as trying to show the differences between fancy high end expanded color space monitors to someone on a cheapo monitor that can hit maybe 60% of sRGB on a good day; but the attitudes of some video decoders, video drivers, panel drivers(particularly bad in TVs; but monitors are not blameless) to ensuring wide ‘compatibility’ in the ‘a roughly intelligible image rather than an error message will be displayed’ sense could be described as “Procrustean with (bad) patch notes”.
Normally the power of good enough carries us through; but you definitely can’t exclude the possibility that some ‘helpful’ element of the video chain merrily interpolated it for your convenience.
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The difference is there, but it’s fairly subtle in this example. As Mungrul says, animators can use that to strategically decide where it’s going to be worth the extra work.
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You should be able to make it the difference if you know what to look for. It’s subtle but the lower the fps the more jerky the transition from frame to frame is. Outside of this demo, you can see the limitations of 24fps in movies where there’s a lot of movement and action. Things can get really blurry, in some marvel movies there are times when i feel like my eyes are straining.
Outside of movies, i game a lot and when i play first person shooter games i can innately feel when a game’s fps dips below 140fps. Things jump around imperceptibly and i can lose track of what’s going on for a split second
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The 8fps I can easily see. Not so much with the 12 fps.
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Among the above things folks mentioned, it’s also hard to detect if your not viewing the video in full screen or at a high resolution. I couldn’t really see the difference on my desktop screen when I left the video unexpanded, but when I full screened it was obvious. I imagine the difference is also visible on say a 4k phone screen, despite the small size.
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It blows my mind how sensitive I have become to the jerkiness of 24fps now that I’m used to 120fps motion interpolation. Moving the camera or characters across the camera would have made the differences more apparent.
I don’t think my brain even runs at 140 fps.
I’m thankfully of duller senses than that; but my brushes with 30Hz have been instructive experiences in just how much unconscious feedback-looping I’m actually doing to keep track of my mouse pointer.
At 60Hz or above everything is fine; without a thought my mouse pointer is one with my body schema and my intended actions pass smoothly to the machine below the level where I even think of them as mouse movements and clicks rather than just intentions towards UI elements.
And then 30Hz hits and the only way I can keep from losing the cursor and having to locate it by arduously dragging it into a corner and slowly drawing it out is by just crawling and maintaining constant vigil over it like someone whose proprioception is utterly broken.
I don’t know exactly where the dividing line is; and whether it’s a sharp one or a range of degradation; but it was a genuine shock to learn the hard way how much work was being done behind the scenes by feedbacks systems I wasn’t aware of; and how catastrophically their effectiveness degraded as more slack was added to the loop.
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Nearly all uses on my PC don’t need nor require a high frame rate, most games feel perfectly ok with 60fps. But generally speaking games that rely on very fine tuned, quick reactions where there is a lot going on you’d definitely benefit from getting as high FPS as possible. Getting a dip in performance from 140fps to 130-120fps seems laughable that it’d have any negative effects but i do lose track of the action when it happens, but i’m playing for fun and i’m not a pro so i just deal with it.
It’s definitely not something the general person is going to care about, the gist of my post is that different frame rates have tangible benefits depending on the application. I do at times strain my eyes in movies locked at 24fps because i feel its insufficient for scenes where there is a ton of motion and action that happens to be close to the camera. On TV there are sports that do broadcast over 24fps, but there’s quite a bit of hatred towards movies having anything over 24fps because it looks too real or soap opera-y.
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I would say it’s more obvious if you block off parts of the video so you can only see one figure at a time. Watching the 8 fps figure for a while, then switching to the 24 fps figure, you should see a significant jump in fluidity of movement. That said, there’s a reason anime has gotten away with 8 fps for so long. We’re much more able to deal with lack of fluidity in an animated medium.
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I vacillate between using 24fps (a more artsy, film-y look) or 60fps (a smoother, but sometimes cheesier look) for my video feedback stuff. Here’s 24fps and here’s 60fps. Each has it’s own unique feeling (which one is better in this case, still not sure).
I think reduced complexity is key, though, to why the slightly stuttery 24fps film/video looks more artistic (and less cheesy) than the ultra smooth 60FPS (which is a more accurate representation of real-life as seen through the eye). This is the same idea as why B&W photography looks more “artsy” than color - another step removed from reality. And, why TVs with the 60fps mode on make movies look like bad behind-the-scenes versions of movies.
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For me, the effect of framerate is most discernable when comparing their arms when they drop down to their sides. Go back and forth between the 8 and 24 fps image for the easiest comparison.
Now I’ve watched it on full screen, and I still don’t see any difference. Possibly it IS my hardware - I’m running on an Acer that is more than 10 years old. Of course it could be MY hardware (My EYES, my EYES!).
I also noticed it, but I get migraines when the framerate drops too much. Someone showed me a 20fps video once (pirated from somewhere), and I had to leave the room after a few minutes before I vomited.
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