> NTSC is 30fps, while PAL is 25fps.

That's not really right. Most NTSC content is either 60 fields per second with independent fields (video camera sourced) or 24 frames per second with 3:2 pulldown (film sourced). It's pretty rare to have content that's actually 30 frames per second broken into even and odd fields. Early video game systems ran essentially 60p @ half the lines; they would put out all even or all odd fields, so there wasn't interlacing.

If you deinterlace 60i content with a lot of motion to 30p by just combining two adjacent fields, it typically looks awful, because each field is an independent sample. Works fine enough with low motion though.

PAL is similar, although 24 fps films were often shown at 25 fps to avoid jitter of showing most frames as two fields but two frames per second as three fields.

I think most people find 24 fps film motion acceptable (although classical film projection generally shows each frame two or three times, so it's 48/72 Hz with updates at 24 fps), but a lot of people can tell a difference between 'film look' and 'tv look' at 50/60 fields (or frames) per second.

▲

cubefox 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Any idea why movies are still mostly at 24 FPS? Is it just because people became used to it?

▲

ndiddy 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I think familiarity is a major factor, but the lower frame-rate and slower shutter speed also creates motion blur, which makes it easier to make the film look realistic since the details get blurred away. I remember when The Hobbit came out at 48 fps and people were complaining about how the increased clarity made it look obviously fake, like watching a filmed play instead of a movie.

▲

toast0 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most (or at least many) people visually recognize 24 fps content as film and higher frame rate content as TV/video.

Filmmakers generally like their films to look like film and high frame rate films are rare and get mixed reviews.

Some TV shows are recorded and presented in 24 fps to appear more cinematic (Stargate: SG1 is an example)

	▲	cubefox 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That association seems to be an unfortunate equilibrium because higher frame rates seem to be "objectively" better, similar to higher resolution and color. (Someone without prior experience with TV/movies would presumably always prefer a version with higher frame rate.)

▲

pwg an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Because movies (in film form) are projected an entire frame at a time instead of scanned a line (well, actually a dot moving in a line) at a time onto the screen. I read somewhere (but no longer have the link) that when projecting the entire frame at once as film projectors do lower frame rates are not as noticeable. I do not know if modern digital projectors continue to project "whole frames at once" on screen.