30fps vs. 60fps videos

[Moonfane]

The 360fps downsampled to 60fps is by far the best looking of the three. Although, I've always intensely hated motion blur. I'm interested in what Freeman's Mind would look like without it, but I know you like motion blur a lot. Besides, even with your objectively terrible taste in video production, Freeman's Mind is just too good to not watch.

[ThatGuyWhoMakesThoseThings]

The 360fps downsampled to 60fps is by far the best looking of the three. Although, I've always intensely hated motion blur. I'm interested in what Freeman's Mind would look like without it, but I know you like motion blur a lot. Besides, even with your objectively terrible taste in video production, Freeman's Mind is just too good to not watch.

 

You can take a look at Barney's Mind and Shepard's Mind series if you'd like to see how it would look without motion blur. I personally like the effect, as it makes everything less choppy/videogame-y and I can get more immersed. But I guess I just have objectively terrible taste.

[cwnmamau]

I get motion sick very badly when watching some video games, so yes, I'm quite happy it's staying at 30 fps. I find it odd, actually, because I'm not known for getting carsick.

 

I've got a friend who insists on showing me the crap he made in Minecraft, and every time I try to watch, I get horribly horribly sick. I have to be the one "driving" in Minecraft.

[Benito]

I prefer 60fps over 30fps, but for Freeman's Mind I don't think it matters much. I do strongly suggest using 60fps for everything else though.

[Artlav]

In movies, it really depends. Moving to high framerates makes things seem more real, but the "cinematic effect" people talk about really isn't bullshit. For instance, for The Hobbit, at 24fps, I thought "that's Gandalf telling a story, this is interesting" at 48fps "that's Ian McKellen wearing a robe putting on a performance for the camera." You lose that "larger than life" aspect to some cinema if the framerate is very high. It stops feeling like a movie and starts feeling more like watching actors perform live.

With that i vehemently disagree.

On a big screen movies are often painful to watch in 24FPS - you can see individual frames when there is much motion (i.e. camera is panned), a flicker that scraps on the nerves and destroys immersion.

Multiply that by 10 if the screen is IMAX (and the movie shown isn't at IMAX's 100FPS).

While the "live video" impression fades away an hour into the movie and never comes back (in my case).

[Bugthing]

First of all, I feel I should say something because I am a person that actually does gets motion sick in real life in cars and such, almost never behind a computer screen. I feel there is an important difference? If you've got the other variation, I think there isn't a lot you can do with FPS tricks. People expect to get motion sick, they will get motion suck. I swear to got, I can just talk about motion sickness to my girlfriend, and she will claim to get motion sick. That's not motion sickness.

 

First video looks fine, bit more choppy I guess.

Second video looks gorgeous.

The third video weirds me out somehow. I can't really explain it. It looks good, I'm not nauseous, but something about it just bothers me.

[VeryShyPerson]

First of all, I feel I should say something because I am a person that actually does gets motion sick in real life in cars and such, almost never behind a computer screen. I feel there is an important difference? If you've got the other variation, I think there isn't a lot you can do with FPS tricks. People expect to get motion sick, they will get motion suck. I swear to got, I can just talk about motion sickness to my girlfriend, and she will claim to get motion sick. That's not motion sickness.

 

To be fair, it's pretty similar - you get motion sick when your eyes tell you you're moving, but your body isn't, so your inner ear and brain sort of get mixed up. Look up "simulator sickness" if you want to read more about motion sickness in video games and such.

[Moonfane]

You can take a look at Barney's Mind and Shepard's Mind series if you'd like to see how it would look without motion blur. I personally like the effect, as it makes everything less choppy/videogame-y and I can get more immersed. But I guess I just have objectively terrible taste.

I should have been clearer and said I wonder how 60fps Freeman's Mind looks without motion blur.

[Bizargh]

In my humblest opinion, 60fps for Freeman's Mind is not what I'd call a necessary upgrade.

 

At the end of the day, we're not watching gameplay in the same respect as a game review, critique, showcase, montage, etc. We're watching a machinimation, albeit from the first-person perspective. Some may present the statement that "Freeman needs a bioware upgrade if his eyes can only capture at a 30fps rate", but I think with YouTube's currently limited availability of 60fps output and pretty much dealing with 2x everything you're working with already, I don't think there's really that much benefit or practicality to justify the extra effort.

 

Like you, there are few games in this world I would ever want to be playing below 60fps (Games like Journey are certainly among the exceptions), but although a video game is involved in it's production, we're not really here to watch a game in action. We're here to listen to the thoughts of Freeman and see what crazed shenanigans his journey through Black Mesa.

 

As for the Game Dungeon, I'd say that's something that would benefit better from the 60fps output if the game in question performs at it. But this is something I'd leave to your discretion.

 

I'm thoroughly enjoying what you're doing, regardless of what frame-rate I get to enjoy it in!

[MastG]

60fps videos don't really make me sick, the framerate just distracts me. I stop watching the video's content and just watch the video, if that makes any sense. It's something that should only be used on gameplay videos made to display how good a game looks or how well a GPU performs, definitely not for things like Freeman's Mind or even Game Dungeon.

[BTGBullseye]

60fps videos don't really make me sick, the framerate just distracts me. I stop watching the video's content and just watch the video, if that makes any sense.

That's the 'novelty effect'... Give it an hour, and don't go back to 30FPS and you won't even notice the 'video' side.

[Ap2000]

 

Ironically, when I first saw the youtube announcement, the first thing that came to mind was, "I'll bet some people are now going to start pestering Ross to get everything in 60fps". I guess I was right. Full disclosure, as a child of the 90s, the content means more to me than the presentation quality. When I think back on some of the best movies of the decade, I don't think about how they were in fuzzy, standard VHS quality - the stories more than made up for it. Keep up the good work.

 

Man, that's such a shallow thing to say...

Technology advances and of course that does not make content itself from previous generations worse. Just because you grew up in the 90s does not mean people that are younger than you automatically "graphics whores" or whatever the equivalent in video editing might be.

 

And guess what, back in the 90s and 80s people were all about VHS being the new thing, CDs being the new thing, Betamax not making it, (S)NES games running at 50/60fps etc.

 

Although, I've always intensely hated motion blur. I'm interested in what Freeman's Mind would look like without it, but I know you like motion blur a lot. Besides, even with your objectively terrible taste in video production, Freeman's Mind is just too good to not watch.

 

I too am a person that even goes through ini tweaks just to disable that crap in games.

However, Ross uses a much higher quality processing for his motion blur, so it's not very sudden like in basically every game.

I probably wouldn't mind not having it, but I also don't mind having this kind of motion blur.

[BTGBullseye]

Yeah, the FM motion blur is actually quite nice, though it's still more blur than clear picture when he's moving. (hence why I prefer 60FPS)

[kingkolton9]

Although, I've always intensely hated motion blur. I'm interested in what Freeman's Mind would look like without it, but I know you like motion blur a lot. Besides, even with your objectively terrible taste in video production, Freeman's Mind is just too good to not watch.

 

Wait, how is his taste in video production *objectively* terrible?

[skysamfreeman]

I actually like the 60 fps. But for the series I'd say stick to 30 for sure. That way it's not so jarring when you watch the series in it's entirety. And because a lot of people would be turned off by it.

[HLPrincess]

I'll just say that 1st 60FPS verion made me sick and the second one made me turn away my eyes from the screen when Freeman started looking around abruptly. That's too intense for not being in control of the movement. And I don't get car sick as easy as Ross

[Bjossi]

Would have been more interesting to present the comparison as file A and file B without saying which is which and ask people which they prefer, both to eliminate expectation bias (although you could easily check the file details if you wanted) and to bring the focus away from the number itself and more to the effect the number actually has on the video.

 

I don't care either way myself, for my bad eyes the effect is subtle enough that I can't really tell it from my enemy; the placebo effect.

[Ross Scott]

The 360fps downsampled to 60fps is by far the best looking of the three. Although, I've always intensely hated motion blur. I'm interested in what Freeman's Mind would look like without it, but I know you like motion blur a lot. Besides, even with your objectively terrible taste in video production, Freeman's Mind is just too good to not watch.

I actually don't like motion blur in many games when I'm actually playing (with racing ones being an exception), but for video watching, I definitely prefer it. And yeah, as others have suggested, I think you mean "subjectively." Again, we see motion blur in REALITY because of how our eyes process things. I'm trying to aim for what looks more real without causing motion sickness. Having a high framerate with no motion blur is good for a lot of games, though it also creates a sort of "hyper real" effect since you're looking at something that doesn't exist in the real world.

 

Would have been more interesting to present the comparison as file A and file B without saying which is which and ask people which they prefer, both to eliminate expectation bias (although you could easily check the file details if you wanted) and to bring the focus away from the number itself and more to the effect the number actually has on the video.

It's too obvious which one is 30 v 60fps, I don't think that would have accomplished much.

 

With that i vehemently disagree.

On a big screen movies are often painful to watch in 24FPS - you can see individual frames when there is much motion (i.e. camera is panned), a flicker that scraps on the nerves and destroys immersion.

Multiply that by 10 if the screen is IMAX (and the movie shown isn't at IMAX's 100FPS).

While the "live video" impression fades away an hour into the movie and never comes back (in my case).

I do hear you in that 24fps is a little too low. When I make my movie, I was intending on aiming for 30fps. For me the "live actor" thing never really fades, though for wide panning shots / action sequences, I agree that there a lot of situations that can benefit from a high framerate.

[Vapymid]

Please, please stay with 30fps (or 29.97 - even better). Higher framerate is not looking any better but will only require a higher bitrate to retain quality during compression...

 

Regards

[Povilas]

For me experimental mode (180/60) was best. It's very smooth and frames not so "chopy" in compare to 360/60. Also blur in 60fps videos, to me personally, feels more natural, fluid, less of stroboscope effect in compare to 30fps video. So my vote is for 60fps and using second (180/60) down-sampling method.