TV motion smoothing algorithms

In article , Kennedy McEwen wrote:
I've never seen a rational explanation for doing this. My understanding of
photography is that the primary aim is to achieve the most convincing
depiction of the scene being photographed, not to imitate the technical
failings of another photographic system.

The "rational" explanation for doing this was given by Steven Speilberg
himself in interviews covering the making of "Saving Private Ryan". Both
he and cinematographer Kaminski wanted the opening sequence to more
closely resemble original WWII newsreel footage than a "Technicolor
spectacular", thus improving viewer immersion in the overall story.
Their "filmic effect" was far more than just shooting with a narrow
shutter, and included the veiling glare of uncoated optics and low
saturation film development. In that context it was an original and
novel means of achieving the "convincing depiction" that you refer to
above, applied with all the skill of world leading director and
cinematographers.

What you have described is just an attempt to depict the technical properties
of a photographic medium, not the subject matter. Surviving film from the war
years may have particular characteristics because of the limits of the
technology available at the time, but that doesn't mean that real objects
looked different or moved differently then - so why depict them with today's
technology as if they did? Is a war movie supposed to be a movie about the
war, or about wartime photography?

On a related subject, how would you record a piece of music that was written
around the beginning of the last century? Would you use a wax cylinder on the
grounds that that's what they would have used to record it at the time? Or
would you take the view (which thankfully recording companies generally do)
that a recording of a piece of music is about the music, not the technology,
and it should be recorded to the best technical standards we can manage now?

There doesn't seem anything rational to me in deliberately recording
something badly with today's technology because that's the best we could
manage many years ago.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

In article en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart writes
In article , Kennedy McEwen wrote:
I've never seen a rational explanation for doing this. My understanding of
photography is that the primary aim is to achieve the most convincing
depiction of the scene being photographed, not to imitate the technical
failings of another photographic system.

The "rational" explanation for doing this was given by Steven Speilberg
himself in interviews covering the making of "Saving Private Ryan". Both
he and cinematographer Kaminski wanted the opening sequence to more
closely resemble original WWII newsreel footage than a "Technicolor
spectacular", thus improving viewer immersion in the overall story.
Their "filmic effect" was far more than just shooting with a narrow
shutter, and included the veiling glare of uncoated optics and low
saturation film development. In that context it was an original and
novel means of achieving the "convincing depiction" that you refer to
above, applied with all the skill of world leading director and
cinematographers.

What you have described is just an attempt to depict the technical properties
of a photographic medium, not the subject matter.

Yes, and a very successful one.

Surviving film from the war
years may have particular characteristics because of the limits of the
technology available at the time, but that doesn't mean that real objects
looked different or moved differently then - so why depict them with today's
technology as if they did? Is a war movie supposed to be a movie about the
war, or about wartime photography?

In that particular scene, both.

That's the primary difference between its use there and since - most
arty farty directors don't understand why it worked for Spielberg &
Kaminski and just deploy it because it looks different.

Notably, it wasn't used throughout the movie - just when they wanted to
depict wartime footage.
--
Kennedy
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's ****ed.
Python Philosophers (replace 'nospam' with 'kennedym' when replying)

In article , Kennedy McEwen wrote:
Surviving film from the war
years may have particular characteristics because of the limits of the
technology available at the time, but that doesn't mean that real objects
looked different or moved differently then - so why depict them with today's
technology as if they did? Is a war movie supposed to be a movie about the
war, or about wartime photography?

In that particular scene, both.

That's the primary difference between its use there and since - most
arty farty directors don't understand why it worked for Spielberg &
Kaminski and just deploy it because it looks different.

Notably, it wasn't used throughout the movie - just when they wanted to
depict wartime footage.

There can't be very much wartime footage that is widescreen, in colour and with
six channel synchronous stereo sound. Maybe that's why I didn't realise it
wasn't intended as a depiction of the actual events, but was supposed to be
imitating newsreel film of the time.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I've always thought a story, no matter how it
is told, should be about the characters and what happens to them, allowing for
the inclusion of anything that would naturally be a part of the world they
inhabit, but not the storyteller's technology. The camera usually isn't one of
the characters in a movie and spoils the suspension of disbelief when it
intrudes. For me, this is a fairly clear dividing line, but as you say, some
directors just don't get it, and are besotted with the "look" of their precious
pictures, as if that had anything to do with the story they are telling.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

In article [email protected], Johny B Good
wrote:


Unfortunately, the flicker effect with the now obsolescent analogue
50i system was further aggravated by the need to use phosphors with
fast decay times in order to avoid motion smearing in CRT based
displays.


As things stand with the current DVB-T standard, getting a TV receiver
to reduce motion artefacts in a reasonably competent way is like
asking someone to turn a pig's ear into a silk purse. IOW, with the
current bit rate limits being used, the DVB-T standard is pretty well
a pig's ear proposition.

Alas, as seems common in video and audio comms, there is a tendency to
overlook some of the basic implications and lessons of Information Theory.

Here, the (slowly moving) elephant in the room is not providing a suitable
time constant to changes in the *input* to the system. What would come out
as 'motion blur' in a single static frame or image. Instead, people taking
video may well do so with image (frame) integration times *shorter* than a
single image display time.

The point here is that the human eye is more accustomed to motion blur than
flicker, so it would be less obvious and less distracting. So it
isn't/wasn't just a matter of having a suitable decay time in the display.
It was ensuring an equivalent in the *camera*. Without that, the effects
discussed become the natural consequences of undersampling and violating
the Nyquist requirements. But, hey, who cares about that in 'TV' if they
can get pretty effects that show how good they are as 'directors', etc? :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article en.co.uk,
Roderick Stewart wrote:


Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I've always thought a story, no matter
how it is told, should be about the characters and what happens to
them, allowing for the inclusion of anything that would naturally be a
part of the world they inhabit, but not the storyteller's technology.

We both seem to be 'old fashioned'. Ditto for the effects gratuituously
added to a host of TV documentaries. Horizon being the glaring (literally)
example. Think of it as the TV/film equivalent of giving someone a Mac and
them assuming that instantly makes them a skilled graphic designer. 8-]

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:36:44 +0100, Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article [email protected], Johny B Good
wrote:


Unfortunately, the flicker effect with the now obsolescent analogue
50i system was further aggravated by the need to use phosphors with
fast decay times in order to avoid motion smearing in CRT based
displays.


As things stand with the current DVB-T standard, getting a TV receiver
to reduce motion artefacts in a reasonably competent way is like
asking someone to turn a pig's ear into a silk purse. IOW, with the
current bit rate limits being used, the DVB-T standard is pretty well
a pig's ear proposition.

Alas, as seems common in video and audio comms, there is a tendency to
overlook some of the basic implications and lessons of Information
Theory.

Here, the (slowly moving) elephant in the room is not providing a
suitable
time constant to changes in the *input* to the system. What would come
out
as 'motion blur' in a single static frame or image. Instead, people
taking
video may well do so with image (frame) integration times *shorter* than
a
single image display time.

The point here is that the human eye is more accustomed to motion blur
than
flicker, so it would be less obvious and less distracting. So it
isn't/wasn't just a matter of having a suitable decay time in the
display.
It was ensuring an equivalent in the *camera*. Without that, the effects
discussed become the natural consequences of undersampling and violating
the Nyquist requirements. But, hey, who cares about that in 'TV' if they
can get pretty effects that show how good they are as 'directors', etc?
:-)

The thing with mammalian vision is that there is absolutely no
'shuttering' / strobe capture effect within the system. The information
supplied by the eye through the optic nerve bundle is fed as a continuous
stream to the visual cortex which applies whatever processing strategies
(including integration) that allows the individual to best interpret the
surrounding terrain and any objects and events of interest within.

Effectively, nothing in the visual field of view is missed by the eye
(however, what the visual cortex does with this information is another
issue but at least it has a complete set of semi-processed data to work
with). This, for a very good example, is why the anti-collision strobe
lights used by aircraft _are_ so damned effective compared to the low
averaged light output of these lamps[1]. If you had to rely on a modern
shuttered TV camera to detect the flashing of such strobe lamps, you'd be
courting disaster.

Motion blur, when initiated by the viewer is actually blanked out by the
brain. Motion blur due to rapid changes in the viewed scene is still
processed by the visual cortex since such 'degraded imagery' is still
providing valuable data for the viewer's well being.

As you say, letting the camera integrate the whole frame's worth (as in
the classic plumbicon tubed TV camera[2]) rather than just a tiny time
slice provides the better 'motion picture experience'.

One of the best examples of the worst excesses of strobed frame capture
is often seen in Moto GP broadcasts (and, to a lesser extent, in Formula
One) when they broadcast the live mini-cam feeds from the bikes,
especially so for the low mounted cams. This effect is at its strongest on
bright sunny days, dark overcast weather mitigates the effect somewhat due
to the longer shutter times and wider apertures (lower depth of field)used
to maintain the effective exposure level on the sensor array. What you get
to see is a rapid succession of crystal clear (and random) snapshots of
the track surface which distract from the main event several metres and
more ahead of the bike.


[1] Plus, of course, the extra sensitivity to changes in illumination at
the periphery of the eye's visual field which are normally interpreted by
the visual cortex as movement by potential prey or predators (either way,
an effective low resolution visual 'tripwire' alarm system).

[2] Using this type of camera to monitor the sky for other aircraft's
anti-collision lights would offer much better reliability in capturing
such brief flash events than a modern shuttered camera, The flash won't be
as bright in the displayed image due to integration over the whole frame
interval but at least such events won't be able to 'slip through the
cracks' inherent in a shuttered video frame capturing process.


--
Regards JB Good

On 19/09/2011 23:40, Johny B Good wrote:

The movie industry has been as equally afflicted by "Bean Counteritis"
as the TV broadcasting industry. AFAIAA, there was no obvious incentive
to "Up The Bit Rate" and produce 48 fps movies where each frame would
only need to be shown once on its trip through the projector as opposed
to the current practice of showing each frame twice in order to up the
flicker rate to a less objectionable 48 Hz.

Peter Jackson is shooting the Hobbit films at 48 fps, James Cameron
wants to shoot at 60 (or 48). There's other people who want higher fps too.

--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ---

On Sep 19, 2:16*am, "Johny B Good" wrote:
On Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:12:44 +0100, Mark Myers wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:23:36 +0100, Steve Thackery said...

The [Top Gear] pans and general movements showed really clear judder. *
It's almost
as if the TV had no motion smoothing at all. *But, every other clip in
the preview sequence was as smooth as silk.

I thought they occasionally used effects on Top Gear, to make it look
like Saving Private Ryan. I forget the name of the technique, but it
introduces a deliberate juddering effect.

* The effect is called "Filmic". I can't believe that no one else has *
answered your question.

* And, to save a separate post. For the same bandwidth costs, 50i (50 *
interlaced fields per second) gives superior motion rendering over what *
you get with 25p (25 progressive frames per second - a slightly faster *
version of the 24fps cinema film standard) provided the camera _and_ the *
TV receiver both use interlaced scanning in real time as per the purely *
analogue system that was extant prior to flat panel display technology *
displacing CRT based TV sets.

* The big downside of the 50i standard, even in a totally analogue system *
with CRT based TV sets, is the horrendous flicker of horizontal edge *
detail on static (or almost static) images since such edge detail is only *
refreshed at an effective rate of 25 fps.

Good 50i is vertically pre-filtered and exhibits little or no such
flicker, twitter, etc.

Some early 1980s computers (e.g. the BBC Micro in mode 0 IIRC) would
output video without such filtering, and fine detail would flicker
horribly on interlaced displays - a screen full of fine patterns would
give horrendous large area flicker. Such fine vertical detail is
almost never broadcast these days, for this very reason.

* For a given bit rate limit, the choice lies between 50i where detail is *
sacrificed for the sake of better motion fidelity or 25p where detail is *
improved at the cost of motion fidelity.

If you anticipate the 25p-in-50i content being displayed on a CRT (as
most broadcasters do), it requires exactly the same vertical filtering
to prevent flicker, so any potential resolution advantage is lost.

Interlacing, displayed on an interlaced display, or with an excellent
deinterlacer, only reduces resolution wrt vertical moving objects.
Good look finding a flat panel with an excellent deinterlacer. With
bob deinterlacing, the vertical resolution is about half.

Cheers,
David.