Movies are at 24 fps, but when shown in theaters, they're shuttered to 48 Hz (each frame doubled), in a few esoteric theaters, they're shuttered to 96 Hz.
Without that, that frame rate falls below our flicker fusion threshold and things separate into jerky, 8-mm film look, instead of smooth motion.
30 fps is a huge improvement over 24 fps because that, together with video playback flicker management (on LCDs, plasmas, phone screens, you name it) gets above that critical threshold.
At 10 fps, there's nothing you can do.
Another issue is the fact that the Evo is using the MPEG-4 Part 2 codec as opposed to the much better looking and motion optimized MPEG-4 Part 10, aka H.264.
That's due to the actual video library engine embedded in Android and is not HTC's fault per se. Another company specializing in codecs has been working on the across-the-board video library (codec set) upgrade to Android since at least April 2009 and seem now to be confident that they may succeed with integration with Froyo (more flexible architecture).
FWIW, I've verified near-30 fps when video recording on my Evo at VGA resolution, but only near-10 fps when shooting at 720p.
As for the frame rate issue being tied to games - yes - both problems exist, but until the fix is out, we can't know with 100% certainty if that's two problems or two problems stemming from one problem or just one problem.
With the xda magicians already beginning to break the 30 fps/720p barrier on the Evo, it confirms that HTC took a more conservative approach when integrating the two cameras and HD recording.
Other than that, I'm content to be patient on this.
The problem is multi-dimensional and I'd rather give them time to have everything fixed PROPERLY rather than a thing here, a thing there.
lol.
