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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.

4 of 347 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Worst! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. Re: quality? Comcast is compressed to shit! by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Yup.

    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.

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    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  3. Re:Always wondered what this was by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Apparently the 24 FPS rate chosen for movies is an important psychological trick. It somehow tells the brain "this is fake", which makes the viewer fine with sets and costumes that would be cringeworthy when seen live. At 48 FPS, you lose that all-important filter, and everything is cringeworthy.

    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.........
  4. Re:Blur problem more than slow LCD transitions by omnichad · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.