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Motion Impossible: Tom Cruise Declares War on TV Frame Interpolation (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: At 9:46 last night, Tom tweeted an 87-second video in which he and his go-to director Christopher McQuarrie explained the concept of video interpolation and why it is the death of all good things. Video interpolation, they explained, is a digital video effect used to improve the quality of high-definition sport. "The unfortunate effect is that it makes most movies look like they were shot on high-speed video rather than film," said Cruise. "This is sometimes referred to as the 'soap-opera effect'." They explained that most HD televisions come with video interpolation switched on by default, they explained how to switch it off, and then they both nodded with total sincerity.
Now, it's worth noting that Tom Cruise is by no means the first film-maker to rail against motion smoothing. Back when he was still the Guardians of the Galaxy director, James Gunn tweeted that he, Edgar Wright, Rian Johnson and Matt Reeves were also peeved about the default nature of video interpolation, to which Reed Morano replied that she started a petition to fix the issue a number of years ago, to little avail.
Why did it fail? Possibly because none of these people are Tom Cruise. Because Tom Cruise has made a career of total commitment. Take him to a premiere and he'll spend hours on the red carpet, shaking every single hand until everyone's happy. Put him in a movie with helicopters in it and he'll teach himself to fly a helicopter to the level of a veteran stunt coordinator. Break his ankle on the side of a building, and he'll stagger out of frame on his ruined legs rather than blow a shot.
Now, it's worth noting that Tom Cruise is by no means the first film-maker to rail against motion smoothing. Back when he was still the Guardians of the Galaxy director, James Gunn tweeted that he, Edgar Wright, Rian Johnson and Matt Reeves were also peeved about the default nature of video interpolation, to which Reed Morano replied that she started a petition to fix the issue a number of years ago, to little avail.
Why did it fail? Possibly because none of these people are Tom Cruise. Because Tom Cruise has made a career of total commitment. Take him to a premiere and he'll spend hours on the red carpet, shaking every single hand until everyone's happy. Put him in a movie with helicopters in it and he'll teach himself to fly a helicopter to the level of a veteran stunt coordinator. Break his ankle on the side of a building, and he'll stagger out of frame on his ruined legs rather than blow a shot.
If you buy a decent TV then motion interpolation works well and looks good. In fact you wouldn't even know it was turned on.
CRTs just happened to produce really good motion. LCDs had problems with slow transition times (the time it takes a pixel to change colour) and smearing. That was partially solved by turning the backlight on and off to imitate the slight flicker of CRTs and to make the intermediate stages of pixel transition less noticeable.
Motion interpolation helps further resolve detail when there is movement on screen. Without it details become smeared and blurred when moving. When overdone it looks like cheap video tape, but when done well it looks like a CRT.
Try turning it down to the lowest setting. For movies you might want to turn it off to imitate the juddery picture you see at the cinema.
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I recently got a new LG 65" OLED.
First thing after turning it on, was to go into the menu system and turn OFF all the stupid auto-correct stuff, including the motion smoothing stuff.
I then turned off factory "torch mode"...and began adjusting the colors to be a bit more realistic and cinematic.
ON thing I was a little concerned about, was it was a little dimmer than my plasma it replaced. I had read about this.
But then, I found an "ECONO" mode and turned that off and WHAM...the screen got way brighter than I needed and I had to turn it down.
So, if someone is telling you that OLED can't be as bright as the QLED (Closest competitor)....they may have not discovered turning off the econo-mode.
But yes, it is sad that you pay this much $$$$ for a good televisions and by default, it look like shit out of the box and you have to manually fix things.
Even sadder...most people do not do this and they look at a very expensive crappy picture.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
HERE is a really great explanation of frame rates starting with movies and spreading and co-existing with TV.
It actually had to do with when silent films went with sound....and budgets and $$.
Many changes over the years, but once a standard sticks, well, it is hard to change.
HERE is another video by the same guy, of "in defense of 24fps"....as to why it likely will be around to stay for a long time.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What I think is happening is that the CRT is producing a kind of impulse sampling of the moving image whereas the LCD is producing zero-order hold (square-step, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) output. The human visual centers appear to perceive the "strobed" image of the CRT as smooth motion, the "change-and-hold" image of the LCD as blurred, even at high frame rates and with rapid pixel response.
Right idea, wrong conclusion. Phosphor glows for a few seconds after the electrons hit it. If you've ever looked at an incandescent light bulb after turning it off, you'd see it glows for several seconds before going completely dark. The actual effect is ghosting, but the perceived effect is smoother motion transition.
So why not just record the movies at 120 frames per second? Then there's nothing to interpolate
It's too fast at 120 FPS. Just drives up costs for no real benefit. You cannot see much more than about 50 FPS at reasonable distances.
Movies to film where traditionally shot at 24 FPS, even IMAX film is shot at that rate. Standard definition TV was 30 FPS interlaced. The biggest issue here is that FILM has way better resolution than Video, but runs as 24 FPS instead of 30 FPS. Translating from 24 to 30 is not an easy bit of math, so there are a number of schemes to deal with it.. Usually you just duplicate film frames every so often to bring 24 FPS up to 30, some just run the film at 30 FPS but it looks weird (think Charlie Chaplin walking in black and white, it's too fast and looks strange because old silent films where shot at even lower FPS.)
I actually find that old "film" based movies don't display well in HD or 4K, even if shot in 70mm. Most of these feature films did not have the production quality to support higher resolutions and I find myself being distracted by the in appropriate set detail or costumes and special effect artifacts that wouldn't be visible on a DVD. I remember the first time I saw the first "Pirates" move in HD from Blu-ray, it was horrible.
Frame rates of 120 FPS are about 3 times what you actually need as a frame rate. You cannot see much more than 40, though eye strain may be an issue. The way to avoid that, is to use 40 FPS frame rate, but scan it at 120 FPS (i.e. show the same frame 3 times). They actually did this with film projectors, where they'd flash the same frame multiple times.
Recording at 120 FPS may sound neat, but the problem is it simply isn't worth going above 40 or 50 regardless of the material. Higher frame rates simply drive streaming bandwidth up, storage sizes up and production costs up, but add no perceived value to the end customer. Resolution though, IS worth it, if not now in the future.
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