Has anyone else noticed this? It feels like any old film from the past, everyone is walking just a little too quick, things are moving just a bit too fast. Is there a reason for this?
In: Technology
I transfer old films professionally, and there’s a bunch of wrong-ish answers. Old non-professional films were shot at typically either 16 or 18 frames per second. When they were originally played back they would have been played back at those speeds and looked normal
But you’re not watching the actual films. You’re watching modern TV. And modern TV can’t run at different speeds. Modern TV is 30 frames per second. So, when they wanted to show those films on modern TV they needed to sync it up. The problem is that 16 and 18 (and the occasional other odd speed) don’t divide very well into 30. If you point a 30fps camera at something running at 18fps you’re going to get a lot of frames that don’t match up well. There’s ways to may it work, but historically it was very expensive
However! It’s pretty easy to sync up 20fps to 30fps. Just show every second frame twice. The match is easy and its mechanically easy to set up. So it became standard to play the 16fps and 18fps films at 20fps for broadcast on modern TVs. It was cheap and easy so they just ignored that everything ran a little fast.
For modern productions there’s no excuse for doing it that way
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