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It's nice to see a piece on this subject that's friendly, non-technical, and non-judgmental. That said, there are two reasons I never watch movies with frame i

It's nice to see a piece on this subject that's friendly, non-technical, and non-judgmental. That said, there are two reasons I never watch movies with frame interpolation on: One is the old artistry argument, that the movie was shot and cut at 24 fps and anything else is a distortion of how it was intended to be seen, but the other is one I don't see much: Most interpolation algorithms are highly inconsistent. I think I would be considerably less distracted by frame interpolation if it didn't tend to fail completely on fast motion. It's less noticeable in dialog-heavy films than in thrillers, for sure, but even a character gesticulating as they speak can trip up the most advanced 240hz interpolators, throwing a few immersion-breaking frames of judder into the otherwise silky-smooth movement. I don't think this is really a solvable problem (outside of exotic computer vision systems, at least) – at 24 frames per second, there's often simply not enough visual information to go on. For now, only the unmatched power of your own visual cortex can fill in those gaps. On the flip side, I quite enjoyed the aesthetic of The Hobbit in 48fps. Produced and mastered at that frame rate, it looked great.

function_seven 11y ago
> I think I would be considerably less distracted by frame interpolation if it didn't tend to fail completely on fast motion. I just got a new (to me) TV and realized it was interpolating. I'm not too bothered by the soap-opera effect in general. But the first football‡ game I watched on it made me turn it off in a hurry. The ball seemed to disappear when it was passed. The motion smoothing algorithm somehow ghosted it right out of the picture, so that it appeared to leave the QB's hands and magically teleport to the receiver. ‡ Gridiron Football
- to3m 11y ago
  For anybody else that might otherwise have to look it up: Gridiron Football is American Football. The name comes from the layout of the pitch, which looks nothing like a gridiron (which appears to be a type of portable grill). There's probably a joke in there somewhere.
  - function_seven 11y ago
    It looked like a gridiron 100 years ago. Field changes, name stays the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridiron_football#/media/File:Football_Diagram_1904.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridiron_football#/media/File:...
mrob 11y ago
I also dislike unreliable image processing algorithms. Consistent minor artifacts are less distracting than occasional major artifacts. It's not only interpolation which has this problem, but also deinterlacing. Fancy motion-aware deinterlacers fail in the same situations interpolators fail. For this reason my favorite deinterlacing filter is the Weston 3 Field Deinterlacing Filter (w3fdif in ffmpeg). It doesn't try anything too clever so it never seriously fails.
mseebach 11y ago
> One is the old artistry argument, that the movie was shot and cut at 24 fps But (and correct me if I'm wrong) -- as I understand the article, the judder is an artefact of how 24fps is re-sampled to 60fps. The article didn't touch on it, but what does this look like in a cinema-presentation? The article seems to strive towards "60fps truth" (i.e. keep the judder), where "cinema truth" seems to be the relevant standard? Which display mode is more cinema-like?

function_seven 11y ago

> I think I would be considerably less distracted by frame interpolation if it didn't tend to fail completely on fast motion. I just got a new (to me) TV and realized it was interpolating. I'm not too bothered by the soap-opera effect in general. But the first football‡ game I watched on it made me turn it off in a hurry. The ball seemed to disappear when it was passed. The motion smoothing algorithm somehow ghosted it right out of the picture, so that it appeared to leave the QB's hands and magically teleport to the receiver. ‡ Gridiron Football

to3m 11y ago
For anybody else that might otherwise have to look it up: Gridiron Football is American Football. The name comes from the layout of the pitch, which looks nothing like a gridiron (which appears to be a type of portable grill). There's probably a joke in there somewhere.
- function_seven 11y ago
  It looked like a gridiron 100 years ago. Field changes, name stays the same. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridiron_football#/media/File:Football_Diagram_1904.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridiron_football#/media/File:...

mrob 11y ago

I also dislike unreliable image processing algorithms. Consistent minor artifacts are less distracting than occasional major artifacts. It's not only interpolation which has this problem, but also deinterlacing. Fancy motion-aware deinterlacers fail in the same situations interpolators fail. For this reason my favorite deinterlacing filter is the Weston 3 Field Deinterlacing Filter (w3fdif in ffmpeg). It doesn't try anything too clever so it never seriously fails.

mseebach 11y ago

> One is the old artistry argument, that the movie was shot and cut at 24 fps But (and correct me if I'm wrong) -- as I understand the article, the judder is an artefact of how 24fps is re-sampled to 60fps. The article didn't touch on it, but what does this look like in a cinema-presentation? The article seems to strive towards "60fps truth" (i.e. keep the judder), where "cinema truth" seems to be the relevant standard? Which display mode is more cinema-like?