Phase out fractional frame rates!

[Jon Pais]

A group of industry professionals led by JayDee Vandenberg, Director of Post Production at Walt Disney Animation Studios, is calling for the electronic display industry to begin to phase out support for fractional frame rates over time so that content can be displayed at its intended frame rate. According to the people behind the request, “this should include displays, recorders, play back devices, and cameras among others.”

https://nomore2398.com

[Phil Rhodes]

It's hard to object in principle, but there are some difficult underlying issues around simultaneously broadcasting standard definition downconversions of HD material which may still require fractional rates. Scaling the image is easy; retiming it, presumably requiring very subtle optical flow processing, is not. I'm not sure how often this would really be a problem but it's worth taking into consideration.

[Jon Pais]

49 minutes ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Did you even bother to read about all the issues with fractional frame rates over at the source? It’s a huge PITA.

Edited August 31, 2021 by Jon Pais

[Phil Rhodes]

39 minutes ago, Jon Pais said:

Did you even bother to read about all the issues with fractional frame rates over at the source? It’s a huge PITA.

Believe me, I'm painfully aware. Ten years ago I was writing code to handle it and I've written effectively that same function in at least three different programming languages.

Various people suggested we should eject fractional frame rates when we went to HD, and nobody objected in principle. The reason it wasn't really practical is that at the time there would be a need to broadcast downconverted versions of stuff shot in HD on then-still-extant standard-def channels. Whether that's a big enough issue anymore to worry about I don't know, given that at least in the USA they shut down the last NTSC-M transmitters recently.

Personally I think there are probably some fairly easy ways to solve the problem. Would anyone object to a converter that just dropped a frame at cuts? It'd only have to find less than one cut every thirty seconds and drop one frame at each cut to keep up. Still, if you want to have a sensible conversation about why  it wasn't done at the HD switchover, that's why. Nobody's contending it isn't a pain to deal with.

P

[Karim D. Ghantous]

We live in a world where camera lenses have filter threads, where TV frame rates were until recently (I think?) determined by the frequency of AC generators, where photographic cameras still have flappy mirrors, where some manufacturers are trying to push curved screens, where some companies are still paying for word processing software, and where IMAX is half of what it's actually supposed to be. Progress? You tell me.

[Jon Pais]

4 hours ago, Karim D. Ghantous said:

We live in a world where camera lenses have filter threads, where TV frame rates were until recently (I think?) determined by the frequency of AC generators, where photographic cameras still have flappy mirrors, where some manufacturers are trying to push curved screens, where some companies are still paying for word processing software, and where IMAX is half of what it's actually supposed to be. Progress? You tell me.

Not only do we not understand a word of what you're talking about, but not sure what it has to do with the topic.