Coast - awful filmic effect

In message , Marcus Durham
writes
In message , Chris Booth
writes
[snip]
I think the one thing that is missing in the film effect is hop and
weave!

Magic Bullet certainly has weave! May even have hop as well.

Mind you Magic Bullet covers everything from someone wanting a simple
film effect right through to heavy processing if (say) you wanted to
mock up some fake 50 year old footage that looks like it has been
through the wars.

I've just had a great idea.

To get a really convincing "film" effect, use film.

It's one of those ideas that you get that seems so obvious and simple,
that there must be a flaw in it somewhere.
--
Ian

On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 01:07:34 +0000, Ian
wrote:


I've just had a great idea.

To get a really convincing "film" effect, use film.

It's one of those ideas that you get that seems so obvious and simple,
that there must be a flaw in it somewhere.

I think there is. If it was dramatically important for material to
look like film, i.e. if the fact that it had been recorded on film was
an important component of the story (otherwise why do it?), then it
would have to look old, faded and scratched, particularly if it was
supposed to look like home movies because nobody uses film for this
now. If you booked modern film equipment to shoot the material, it
would probably need doctoring to look old anyway, so you might as well
use electronics because that's what the rest of your system will use,
and it's easier.

Rod.

chumpster wrote:
Yes, I spotted it too, either it was a late addition in the avid, and
someone didn't pop the film effect over the clips, or it was dropped in
shortly before it was ingested... Should've failed its tech review for
inconsistency.

Still, no-one complains when The Blue Planet's shot progressive, rather
than interlaced. And it'd just be the flick of a switch on the camera.

I think "The Blue Planet" is shot slightly more sympathetically with
regard to 25fps motion than Coast! There are occasionally fast pans
with almost zero motion blur in Coast that would be dramatic but just
about work at 50fps, but that fall apart into a horrible stutter at
25fps. Also, Coast isn't even "processed to look as film-like as
possible", and certainly not film or HD originated - it's just a very
nasty "stuttery SD video" look.


To answer your point directly, I wouldn't _complain_ about The Blue
Planet. However, the 50fps shots in "the making of" look both better
and worse than the 25fps shots in the main programme: better for the
accurate motion portrayal and colours; worse for the lower resolution
and increased digital artefacts.

If the main content was shot 50fps HD (unthinkable at the time I
suspect), you'd have accurate motion portrayal, accurate colours, and
high resolution. The only downside would be that MPEG-2 broadcasts of
the SD downconversion would have more visible artefacts with 50fps than
25fps, both because the resulting interlaced content suffers from more
artefacts, and the nice smooth motion (i.e. lack of strobing) make
artefacts easier to see.


Personally, and I don't know why, I like that slightly 'distanced' from
reality look that interpolating two fields together gives you... I feel
a little too 'close' to the material when I see it interlaced and...
Real.

As others have said, that might work for certain fiction*, but not for
news or documentary. The thing about Planet Earth is that the pictures
are _so_ good - having 1080p50 on a suitable display would simply
enhance the experience further.

* though I think a film-like effect at 50p would be nice to try for
such a purpose.

Many's the time, as I'm finishing an edit, the client will wince at the
1:1 interlaced footage I've digitised material, rather than the 4:1
single field footage I've been playing to them for the past six weeks.

I can filmise my camcorder footage and think how wonderful the effect
looks - but that's because it superficially stops it from looking like
bad camcorder footage! If I apply exactly the same effect to some
_good_ interlaced video, it makes it look worse.

Conversely, I can throw motion perfect or Philips pixel plus DNN at a
25p source and see how much _better_ it looks at 50p or 100p. You can
also see occasional examples of where film or filmised sources get
re-timed in Avid and smooth motion accidentally comes backs - that
looks much better too.


Shields up for incoming fire. Brace brace brace.

Do you think it (25p) will be a passing trend? I reckon if/when we get
really high quality 50p video that at least some people will resist the
urge to frame double it to 25p. However, if we still face the same bit
staving that broadcasts face today, the 25p will still display fewer
artefacts (and hide them better), so will be preferred by some.

Cheers,
David.

Alan Pemberton wrote:
Michael Rozdoba wrote:

In that case I'd like to ask one question. For material shot interlaced
intended to be played back on a device which handles interlaced material
(such as a CRT), I can see why you'd want to keep the material that way
in many if not all cases. Rendering it on the display, due to the
temporal blurring of the phosphors, will effectively merge the fields.

NO! Nothing to do with phosphors. A crt produces a bright spot of light
moving very quickly which the eye and brain interpret as a dim two
dimensional moving picture. No (or very little) storage or integration
gets done on the screen.

....as you can see very clearly if you point a video camera at a CRT and
set the shutter speed faster than 1/50th of a second!

There is a great explanation showing why this is a great way of
reproducing moving pictures. If your eye tracks the motion on-screen, a
single clear image hits the back of your eye. Compare this with LCD
technology, where the "always on" nature of the image means any eye
movement simply smears the image on the back of your eye.

Found the link I was looking for...
http://www.poynton.com/papers/Motion...yal/index.html
or
http://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Motion_portrayal.pdf
(same content in both links - relevant section near the end)

Cheers,
David.

wrote in message
ups.com...
Alan Pemberton wrote:
Michael Rozdoba wrote:

In that case I'd like to ask one question. For material shot interlaced
intended to be played back on a device which handles interlaced
material
(such as a CRT), I can see why you'd want to keep the material that way
in many if not all cases. Rendering it on the display, due to the
temporal blurring of the phosphors, will effectively merge the fields.

NO! Nothing to do with phosphors. A crt produces a bright spot of light
moving very quickly which the eye and brain interpret as a dim two
dimensional moving picture. No (or very little) storage or integration
gets done on the screen.

...as you can see very clearly if you point a video camera at a CRT and
set the shutter speed faster than 1/50th of a second!

There is a great explanation showing why this is a great way of
reproducing moving pictures. If your eye tracks the motion on-screen, a
single clear image hits the back of your eye. Compare this with LCD
technology, where the "always on" nature of the image means any eye
movement simply smears the image on the back of your eye.

Found the link I was looking for...
http://www.poynton.com/papers/Motion...yal/index.html
or
http://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Motion_portrayal.pdf
(same content in both links - relevant section near the end)

Cheers,
David.

That explains my disappointment with my new LCD. With my previous Panasonic
CRT movement was fluid, now everything jumps. It's as if the CRT triggers an
expectation in the brain that it's seeing fluid movement and the brain
perceives it as such.

Will they now spend years trying to "create" the same effect which came
naturally though the CRT technology?

Have we thrown out the baby with the bath water?

Alan Pemberton wrote:
Michael Rozdoba wrote:

In that case I'd like to ask one question. For material shot interlaced
intended to be played back on a device which handles interlaced material
(such as a CRT), I can see why you'd want to keep the material that way
in many if not all cases. Rendering it on the display, due to the
temporal blurring of the phosphors, will effectively merge the fields.

NO! Nothing to do with phosphors. A crt produces a bright spot of light
moving very quickly which the eye and brain interpret as a dim two
dimensional moving picture. No (or very little) storage or integration
gets done on the screen.

Okay, I stand corrected.

So, is it the fact the fields don't overlap anywhere other than in the
viewer's brain & in fact are never uniformly (in time) displayed but
rather pulse as the beam scans the display, that interlaced video looks
better on a CRT?

Do lcds/plasmas all display progressive only & hence have to deinterlace
50i before rendering?

Why couldn't an lcd say display a 50i source as one field followed by
the next?

If it can & does, why do I get the impression this looks worse than on a
CRT? Is it simply as with an lcd each field would be fully illuminated
for a whole field's duration & then abruptly switch to the next?

Thanks for putting me straight.

--
Michael
m r o z a t u k g a t e w a y d o t n e t

Roger Hunt wrote:

It's easily done. This morning my brain said 'We'd be grateful if you could
settle the account as soon as possible' and my fingers typed 'Look, pay up
you little scrote or I'm come round and kick the **** out of you'.


I guess every roof aerial could be equipped with a weeny wireless device
that you could make go "Clik ... bzzzz ...." if the buggers don't cough
up.


Or just stick pins in the feeder.


--

rgds
LAurence

....This tagline censored by the Moderator.
---*TagZilla 0.059* http://tagzilla.mozdev.org

John Russell wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Found the link I was looking for...
http://www.poynton.com/papers/Motion...yal/index.html
or
http://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Motion_portrayal.pdf
(same content in both links - relevant section near the end)

That explains my disappointment with my new LCD. With my previous Panasonic
CRT movement was fluid, now everything jumps. It's as if the CRT triggers an
expectation in the brain that it's seeing fluid movement and the brain
perceives it as such.

If it's jumping, then the frame rate is wrong. Many flat panels
apparently use 60fps (only) internally - useless for our 50fps sources.

Will they now spend years trying to "create" the same effect which came
naturally though the CRT technology?

Philips already have a scanning LCD backlight (according to a promo
video running in our local Tesco!).

Have we thrown out the baby with the bath water?

You might have done :-) but I haven't. Our 50Hz CRT TV is just fine. My
only complaints are MPEG artefacts (Freeview) and imperfect geometry.
Nothing I can do about the artefacts in the signal itself, and little I
can do about the geometry without spending serious money on something
far better.

Cheers,
David.

wrote in message
ups.com...
John Russell wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...

Found the link I was looking for...
http://www.poynton.com/papers/Motion...yal/index.html
or
http://www.poynton.com/PDFs/Motion_portrayal.pdf
(same content in both links - relevant section near the end)

That explains my disappointment with my new LCD. With my previous
Panasonic
CRT movement was fluid, now everything jumps. It's as if the CRT triggers
an
expectation in the brain that it's seeing fluid movement and the brain
perceives it as such.

If it's jumping, then the frame rate is wrong. Many flat panels
apparently use 60fps (only) internally - useless for our 50fps sources.

Will they now spend years trying to "create" the same effect which came
naturally though the CRT technology?

Philips already have a scanning LCD backlight (according to a promo
video running in our local Tesco!).

Have we thrown out the baby with the bath water?

You might have done :-) but I haven't. Our 50Hz CRT TV is just fine. My
only complaints are MPEG artefacts (Freeview) and imperfect geometry.

My last two CRT's (the only two to be used with DVB) only showed "mosaic"
artefacts with contrast enhancement enabled. It's as if in the normal
setting the small changes in contrast between MPEG blocks where just too
small to produce a noticeable effect.
It's as if the "deficiencies" in the CRT contrast performance acted as
simple filter.

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Laurence Taylor typed this :
Roger Hunt wrote:

It's easily done. This morning my brain said 'We'd be grateful if you could
settle the account as soon as possible' and my fingers typed 'Look, pay up
you little scrote or I'm come round and kick the **** out of you'.

I guess every roof aerial could be equipped with a weeny wireless device
that you could make go "Clik ... bzzzz ...." if the buggers don't cough
up.

Or just stick pins in the feeder.

I suppose you're not allowed to stick pins in the customer?
--
Roger Hunt