Frame rate question.

xel

Hey 

So I'm still a student and seem to be getting a bit mixed up on which is the best frame rate for showing my animations. I have some animations created at 30fps and some at 24fps. Some even at 29.97. However when it comes to collating all these animations into one showreel, I am going to have some artefacts or just incorrectly timed animations? 

Would I be best re-timing them all to a same standard in Maya or Premier? Would it even make that much of a difference? 

How do you guys go about it? Even with some animations being uploaded at 60fps, how would you put these in your showreel? 

Any advice would be great, thanks! 

AnthonyAnimation

Premier can handle different frame rates. Going forward I would normalize what frame rate you animate at. 60 fps looks very smooth. It's my opinion, but 24 fps is a bit archaic. I personally animate at 30 fps nowadays. 

Hito

30, or some multiple of 30, up to 120.

29.97 is hold over from VHS/NTSC standard that doesn't really apply any more. You might deal with it if you're digitizing/converting old video. For practical purposes it's close enough to be considered 30.

Reel wise, 30 is fine for most cases, cycles, normal actions, acting shots. etc. 60 is good if your reel is super actiony (Nier Automata, DMC style stuff) with a lot of pose changes in the 0.1~0.15 sec range.

90 and 120 is for VR to mitigate motion sickness from to visual lag when people whip their head around. really overkill if you're just presenting in video.

xel

AnthonyAnimation - It can handle these framerates all in the one reel? I'll go for 30fps I think. Thanks.

Hito - thanks for the info. I'm sure going forward this will be more common but my work isn't really that fast or in VR so I think 30 should be fine. 

When I work in Premier and I change the output framerate from the input framerate,  it always causes 'ghosting' in my output (quicktime format). Hopefully moving forward sticking to 30fps should negate these issues. 

Hito

check the render fields, or fields setting in Premier and turn that off for output. that's another old NTSC standard that no longer applies. with fields on, every other scan line is updated each frame, on LCDs it looks like ghosting since you're essentially looking at two frames simultaneously. Premier's been around for a long time as video editor, could be a old default setting they never changed.

AGoodFella

If you have shots that have been animated/rendered at 24fps, then it might look different when exported at 30fps. You might have duplicate frames and/or ghosting.

The only solution I've found is to change the fps in Maya which will automatically scale your keys. You can then make your own timing changes if you need to and re-render it at 30fps.

xel

I'll try these things next Hito and AGoodFella when I'm next going in for a render and see if this helps any. Although to save headache in future I think I will just animate at 30fps. 

Thanks everyone for the replies. 

Hito

another way to change your FPS without ending up with keys on odd fractions is create a camera, drop the camera into camera sequencer, then adjust the start/end frame of the shot by 30/24 ratio, playblast the shot from sequencer instead of timeline and you'll have 30FPS output.
If you're animating for games, then 30FPS is the way to go. if you're doing Film, you might be using 24FPS. TV is probably 30, I don't know for sure.

MamoruK

Think of it this way.

30 fps should be used for game style animations. Your walk/run/attack/death etc. cycle animations. 

24fps should be used for cinematic/film type animations. 

Honestly for making your reels these two should not mix unless you don't have enough content to even make for a 1 minute reel.

Hope this helps