I had a different experience. At first, I found things unnatural like you did. After a few minutes, I figured out that it was actually the opposite - it had a bit of a theatrical thing going on, i.e. live action vs. recorded and played back.

At that point I figured out that it was just because I've been so used to crappy frame rates that the more natural movements feel out of place.

I wonder what the first pass, with less motion blur, would have felt like. Maybe better, maybe worse. I kind of feel it would make it worse, in the same way that the transitional from analog to high definition digital made it look worse to me since I could notice the transitions between frames. That is, at least at first. I'm used to it now.

I firmly believe most people complaining about the Hobbit in 48 FPS just don’t like change.

It’s not worse. In fact it’s so vastly better. Watching a 3 hour movie in 3D without getting a headache from 24 FPS judder (“magic”) was a revelation.

But different bad.

Back in the day, I watched The Hobbit first in 3D 48 fps, and I hated it. Sure, it got less bad throughout the movie, but I just couldn't get used to it at all.

I then rewatched the movie (also in theaters) in 2D 24 fps and it was infinitely better.

I have the same with YouTube videos. I can't stand 60 fps videos (except for gaming content); it causes headaches for me. If it's something I really want to watch, I'll download the 24 fps version and watch it offline (YouTube has it on their servers, but only serves it to certain clients or something).

I know other people who just can't see a difference, or rather, they don't notice it much. I feel like I can spot a 60 fps YouTube video in about 2-3 seconds (usually I pause then to check and reconsider whether I really want to watch it). I also tend to notice 30 fps videos (compared to 24), although they don't really bother me.

Considering that I've always been the only one at movie nights to notice when the TV's frame interpolation setting is on, I guess I'm an outlier.

> If it's something I really want to watch, I'll download the 24 fps version and watch it offline (YouTube has it on their servers, but only serves it to certain clients or something).

This is going to be interpolated from 60 FPS. At least get a 30 FPS version that can just drop frames from 60.

I was really looking forward to 48 fps - the juddering in wide panning shots on 24 fps always takes me out of the immersion so I was hoping the cinema world could move forward.

There was just something very wrong with it. It kept feeling like suddenly parts of the movie were sped up and going at 2x speed. To the point where I wonder if the cinematographer was just not experienced with the technology to make it work right (like, maybe there are collaries to the 180 rule that need to be experimented with)

I watched it in 2D, I'm sure for 3D it makes a whole different experience.

I didn't like it either. I think it looks too real and takes you out of the fantasy. Something about the way 24fps looks is different from reality and lets your imagination take you away a bit easier. I can't really explain it.

Like I can watch an animated show, and I have no expectations of it looking real. I can still get lost in the story and enjoy it. I don't need it to look like I'm actually there.

Also saw the first film in 2d in the theater at 48fps, also very excited going in, also felt like everything looked sped-up.

What it reminded me of was silent era film that’s been slightly sped up on purpose for comic effect. All the walking looked kinda jerky, like it does when you speed up footage of someone walking, for instance. Or very early manual-timing film that was cranked a bit inconsistently. It was so distracting I could hardly focus in anything else the entire movie. If it’d been a better film, I’d say that gimmick ruined it, but… well.

Yeah it was very strange. Like, you don't get that effect from 60fps TV or video shot on your smartphone, so I wonder what went wrong to cause it.

Yeah, I’d seen higher-frame rate video before, and since (though maybe not again in a movie theater?) but that’s the only time I’ve noticed that particular problem. I spent a little time searching around after I saw it, trying to figure out what happened, but the chatter over 48fps in general drowned out any signal about what might have caused that specific issue (though many others did report experiencing a similar sped-up effect, at the time—never found an explanation, though, aside from just blaming the high frame rate, but I suspect there’s more to it)

Maybe they should try dynamic frame rates, or even dynamic rates for different parts of the screen, since 24 is usually fine for most shots.

This is common in drawn animation, where some elements are effectively 12fps while others are 24fps or 8fps. This can even be occurring simultaneously. (This is known as “on twos” and “on threes” etc.)

I watched it in 3D HFR and it was terrible terrible terrible to me. I felt like I was watching a play. The special effects looked weird/bad, the acting felt worse, the makeup more obvious, everything yuck yuck.

I think people blamed the frame rate, but for me it was the rest of the effects that put me off, faces were too softened, lots of scenes had weird color saturation, as others mentioned there was a lot of motion blur, compared to LOTR the VFX really pulled me out of lots of scenes.

I did not notice anything that I would attribute to the frame rate. Frankly I think the visuals of the movie were fine.

It was the writing that was the problem.

Peter Jackson added more motion blur in those because he said that it played better with a focus group. I think sticking to a normal 180-degree shutter angle would not feel so weird.

There was weird motion blur, but to me it looked far more normal than most films. I realise it’s a minority opinion.