Don't get rid of your Hero2 just yet! Interesting comparison

[robbcayman]

I paid $175 for a brand new hero 2 outdoor edition on sale at Academy. The black hero 3 was like $399. It wasn't a really hard decision, because I knew the hero 2 was fairly close to the 3 for less than half the price. I took the extra cash and dumped it on a tray, filter, sd cards, lcd back etc..

 

[Marty Cerven]

I think the 48p comes from wanting a double frame rate for people doing production in 24p at 1440x1080 with rectangular pixels
They seem quite keen to offer 24/25/30 and 48/50/60 nothing wrong there

I know the purpose of 48p but if your comparing modes you want to match frame rates or at least have a rate that will work well for both in your final encode at its chosen frame rate.

Mixing 30p and 48p just doesn't work, if the final output is in 30p the 48p footage is going to have some skipped frames and the same if using 24p the 30p footage won't go into that footage too well.

If slowing footage down you can mix any rates easy enough but playing back at 100% you want to shoot all your video in modes that will be divisible by the final output. So for 24p youd shoot in 24/48/120/240p 25p in 25/50/100p and for 30p 30/60/120/240p but using modes that don't fit into each other is never a good idea if you want smooth playback at 100% speed. Then if someone tries to fix the issue by using frame blending its going to create new frames in the missing ones which isn't really comparing the camera image quality anymore.

Just thought it was a very odd choice for that comparison that's all.

 

[Dauntless]

Anyone noticed that the new Hobbitt movie is in 48 fps? 'The Hobbit' at 48fps: Frame Rates Explained | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

 

[yarik83]

Back in the days of camera reels directors of photography toyed around with idea of framerates and figured out cheapest possible way to manufacture, tape and produce movies and tv shows. At the time it was determined that 24fps was a decent alternative to having to pay for reel after reel after reel. As a result for over 90 years 24fps became the industry standard. In recent years movie producers started using digital formats such as red eye technology which shoots a bunch of images... some huge number like a 1000fps. Human eye will not really notice the difference at certain point but shooting at higher frame rate has a lot of benefits.

If action happens too fast on camera... footage comes out to be a blur. In other words when an object on the screen moves from somewhere to somewhere he, she or it generates motion blur. Shooting at higher frame rate reduces that blur. For normal moving things (ie a person walking or running) higher frame rate is of little significance. For fast moving things (ie a car crash test, mountain biking, car racing etc) it becomes paramount to capture stuff in higher frame rate. Reverse comes out to be quite awkward. If you use high frame rate on a slow moving target it will appear that target is moving too fast and that is why many people reported seeing Hobbit as it was on steroids especially first 15 minutes.

Best real life example of how high frame rate works is as follows:

If you were to take 1 picture per second for 60 seconds and export that to a video at 30fps while coding each picture to appear at predetermined time interval... you would barely get 2 seconds of video as your result.

120fps effectively captures almost 4 times amount of images per second than traditional 29.9fps format. You can slow down footage by 50% or by 75% to show objects in slow motion. Hypothetically you can keep slowing it down and down but at some point it will be redundant and video will appear pixelated and of crappy. There are software packages like Twixter which multiply framerate slowing it down to like 1000fps in super slow mo (check out many youtube videos on that topic).

For scuba diving coming from personal experience... I winded and complained about 30fps video capture and was thrilled when 60fps came out a few years ago. Now that 120fps is here I have yet to test it in scuba environment but I know for mountain biking it works wonders by reducing blur by about 50% as it appears to naked eye. Huge improvement if you ask me.

 

[Gombessa]

Anyone noticed that the new Hobbitt movie is in 48 fps? 'The Hobbit' at 48fps: Frame Rates Explained | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

Yep, that was a pretty big deal in the film world. What's more, Avatar 2 will be shot at 60fps.

I think this is long-overdue progress. It's about time we collectively pulled our heads out our ****s (as modern society goes) about 24fps being "authentic" or "natural" in film.

Maybe once master footage is shot at 120-240+fps, we'll finally get LCD monitors that accept an input greater than 60hz (and start to catch up to the CRT days).

 

[Interceptor121]

Back in the days of camera reels directors of photography toyed around with idea of framerates and figured out cheapest possible way to manufacture, tape and produce movies and tv shows. At the time it was determined that 24fps was a decent alternative to having to pay for reel after reel after reel. As a result for over 90 years 24fps became the industry standard. In recent years movie producers started using digital formats such as red eye technology which shoots a bunch of images... some huge number like a 1000fps. Human eye will not really notice the difference at certain point but shooting at higher frame rate has a lot of benefits.

If action happens too fast on camera... footage comes out to be a blur. In other words when an object on the screen moves from somewhere to somewhere he, she or it generates motion blur. Shooting at higher frame rate reduces that blur. For normal moving things (ie a person walking or running) higher frame rate is of little significance. For fast moving things (ie a car crash test, mountain biking, car racing etc) it becomes paramount to capture stuff in higher frame rate. Reverse comes out to be quite awkward. If you use high frame rate on a slow moving target it will appear that target is moving too fast and that is why many people reported seeing Hobbit as it was on steroids especially first 15 minutes.

Best real life example of how high frame rate works is as follows:

If you were to take 1 picture per second for 60 seconds and export that to a video at 30fps while coding each picture to appear at predetermined time interval... you would barely get 2 seconds of video as your result.

120fps effectively captures almost 4 times amount of images per second than traditional 29.9fps format. You can slow down footage by 50% or by 75% to show objects in slow motion. Hypothetically you can keep slowing it down and down but at some point it will be redundant and video will appear pixelated and of crappy. There are software packages like Twixter which multiply framerate slowing it down to like 1000fps in super slow mo (check out many youtube videos on that topic).

For scuba diving coming from personal experience... I winded and complained about 30fps video capture and was thrilled when 60fps came out a few years ago. Now that 120fps is here I have yet to test it in scuba environment but I know for mountain biking it works wonders by reducing blur by about 50% as it appears to naked eye. Huge improvement if you ask me.

The hobbit on steroids is funny. The issue is the 180 degree shutter rule, I shoot at 60fps but then you need 1/125 shutter speed and underwater you really only have that when you shoot close up with ligths
So after the excitement in practice 25 or 30 fps is good for wide angle and 50/60 is good for macro with lights
The rest needs more light to be effective and not look weird
For the gopro unless you are on an underwater scooter or similar you are looking at 30 fps max for wide angle as a good compromise between quality and noise especially if you shoot with filters 60fps is really difficult to do without blur

 

[Dauntless]

For the gopro unless you are on an underwater scooter or similar you are looking at 30 fps max for wide angle as a good compromise between quality and noise especially if you shoot with filters 60fps is really difficult to do without blur

I do think my video with my scuba mask mounted GoPro look better at 60 fps and 48fps. I can post links if anyone is interested.

2nd Ever wonder why they call movies "Flicks"

 

[Interceptor121]

Youtube vimeo or other sites as of now don't support 60fps so it gets converted anyway
If you shoot at say 60fps the shutter speed should be 1/125 however this in low light generates a lot of noise as the camera ups the gain eventually the camera drops to 1/60 and at that point there is no perceived difference between 60 or 30 fps
Considering you end up converting it to 30fps anyway to share it there is a benefit only if there is good light or you slow it down.
I personally find wide angle slowed down half speed clips really weird and not worth looking at but I know many people do that, it is a matter of preference for me it is more important the image quality than than frames per second

 

[Dauntless]

Youtube vimeo or other sites as of now don't support 60fps so it gets converted anyway

Mine gets converted to 30 fps in software rendering, never tried uploading "as is" video to Youtube. The frame rate is the CMOS sampling rate and would be analogous to shutter speed, I think. So faster shutter speed gives less image blur in each frame so when software selects every other frame to render, it is taking a sharper image to process. When you have an absolutely stable camera, it is less noticible but the compounding of camera and subject movement is very noticible. Back to the original theme, if the HP3 Black shoots higher frame rates, there will be less blur with higher frame rates.

I can post some 960 48 fps video and it is very clear that as my mask mounted GoPro2 moves, there is image blur that seems to "snap" into sharpness as my head stops moving and I fix my gaze on the target. I don't realize the "snap" into sharpness at lower frame rates.

Like the original post title and your observation of web upload sites, the GoPro2 is still a great camera and remember the adminition of the Eye-o-mine video that the difference could be best seen only in HD.

Lastly, thank you for your post, really cleared up some thoughts

 

[Gombessa]

So faster shutter speed gives less image blur in each frame so when software selects every other frame to render, it is taking a sharper image to process. When you have an absolutely stable camera, it is less noticible but the compounding of camera and subject movement is very noticible.

It would be good to know if YT/Vimeo are frame dropping or frame blending to get from 60fps to 30fps. One will be "sharper," the other will possibly be "smoother."

I can post some 960 48 fps video and it is very clear that as my mask mounted GoPro2 moves, there is image blur that seems to "snap" into sharpness as my head stops moving and I fix my gaze on the target. I don't realize the "snap" into sharpness at lower frame rates.

Don't forget that there is not just shutter speed that comes into play with the framerate calculation. Without extremely well-lit conditions, faster framerates have lower maximum shutter speeds, but they also push gain to maintain exposure, so there's a multi-factor back and forth that affects brightness, sharpness, and noise all at once.