smooth move
Guess this explains why lord of the rings looked like a public access production when I saw it on a high def tv.
I'm okay with 60p production. It's cinematography decision IMHO. It's the only widely available frame rate suitable for sports. But motion interpolation sucks ass. Almost every "enhancement" feature on late model TV's sucks ass. I always go in and turn off noise reduction, edge enhancement and whatever else they do to fuck with the picture. It's all bad.
There was some work to make 24p show up on HD TV as 24p, but I don't think it ever caught on. The 3:2 pull down used to get 24p to 60i also sucks ass, but people have been doing that (out of necessity) since the dawn of TV.
My list of video things that suck:
-fucked up aspect ratios, fucked up letter+pillar boxing, and other fucked up shit from people who can't figure out how to make 4:3 and 16:9 work together.
-interlace. fuck interlace. it was an excellent compromise between spatial and temporal resolution in 19-fucking-30. how the fuck did that shit survive into the 21st century? (okay, that was a rhetorical question, I know how, but that rant is too long)
-30-motherfucking-p. jesus on a fucking popsicle stick, who the fuck thinks 30p is adequate for video? that goddamn shit is all over the fucking internet. fuck that shit. "But tv is thirty frames." bull-fucking-shit! if I hear that goddamn, ignorant, pathetic, shit-eating drivel one more motherfucking time ... tv is sixty fucking fields, which (as mentioned before) sucks ass, but is far superior to that scumsucking dreck known as 30p
-jello-vision. who in god's name thought it was a good idea to take an image sensor out of a fucking still camera and use it to make a video camera? how fucking moronic are people? jesus fucking christ, why not just use a fucking potato? how is it so fucking hard for people to grasp the concept of taking an exposure of the whole motherfucking image all at once?
-yeah, and that motion interpolation stuff is crappy.
I like watching stuff on my laptop, most everything looks pretty good.
Frame Rates: In a quick google search, I can't find good clips of 30p vs. 60p. But as a thought experiment, think about how interpolating 24p to 60p makes stuff look weird. Film makers talk about 60p making stuff "too real". The cinematographer in the linked editorial uses the phrase "I know too much".
Perhaps this is tied to the concept of the uncanny valley. This is supposed to be art, not reality, and moving it closer to reality (but not all the way there) makes it kind of creepy.
Let's look at it from the other side. Consider high motion content. This could be "high motion" due to camera movement, or movement of subjects/objects within the scene, or both. Taking high motion content and down-converting it from 60p to 30p also makes it look weird. Smooth motion is no longer smooth. I find this very distracting in sports. It's supposed to be as real as possible.
Consider the difference between NFL TV coverage and NFL Films (do they still exist?). They have very different looks. One is the real deal. The other is historical commentary on past events. Dropping the frame rate removes immediacy and puts events in a curio box.
Beyond the aesthetics, I just find low frame rate images of sports to be visually distracting. 24p is insufficient to convey smooth motion, and my eyes are bothered by the "slide show" aspect of low frame rates.
Another aspect of frame rate is video gamers. Gamers spend vast sums of money to acheive high frame rates. 60p really isn't quite enough, and they will pay to render at higher rates. Part of this is "lag". They don't want to waste tens of milliseconds for the next image to appear. But also they get used to the look. I think this will be a motivator for improvement of rates.
Youtube is finally bucking. Fuck yeah!
I think I understand why motion Interpolation would cheapen the look of 24fps procuctions, and not that I disagree but I don't understand how the frame rate can make the lighting and production look poor. Slow motion cinematography doesn't have the cheap look of soap operas from the 1970s (whereas my viewing of Lord of the Rings on a high def set did) Is this because slow motion footage is typically played back at 24 or 30 fps?
Motion interpolation shouldn't screw up lighting, etc. However, TV's that have motion interpolation often have noise reduction. Film grain looks like noise to a noise reduction circuit. So there could be that visual aspect. Also, TV's tend to be set too bright and have the saturation cranked up. This crap sells TV. For critical viewing, it's important to get to know all the menus and submenus and advanced menus, etc. on the TV set.
Slo-mo is a whole different deal. Suppose you capture at 240 fps and playback at 24 fps. Another camera captures at 600 fps and plays back at 60 fps. They will both have the same apparent slo-mo effect (10x). One will have video-like smoothness, and the other will look like film.
I read an article that Ray Harryhausen's films didn't look "real" because of the lack of motion blur.
Yes. Lack of motion blur is a problem. There was a zombie movie (28 days later) that used a fast shutter speed (which reduces motion blur) on purpose. They wanted it to look weird.
Back to video games. In computer generated imagery, motion blur is hard. Spatial blur (to soften out jaggy edges) is hard. So they endeavor to crank up frame rate and resolution as a brute force way to address those two issues. In CGI for cinema, they take the time to do the proper spatial and temporal filtering.
I don't know if NFL films still exist but I think they were beautiful. Shot on film at high frame rates, I always wished the games could look as good.
Interlace:
Part of the problem with low frame rate is interlace. There's still a lot of 60 field per second content out there, and more is being generated every day. Computers don't have the image processing tools to handle 60 fields per second. (Long story.) So it *must* be converted to progressive at the server. Since 60p is a rarity, that means 30p. Sixty field content has the temporal resolution to convey motion well, but 30p doesn't.
In a world increasingly dominated by computer displays, interlace should die. 60p should be used instead. Unfortunately, HDTV supports a 60 field format (i.e. 1080i). Broadcast standards change on a multi-decade time-scale, so we're kinda fucked on this one.
Jello vision:
GoPro (and a few others) picked CMOS sensors for their video cameras rather than CCD sensors. CCD sensors can capture the entire image at one moment (global shutter). CMOS sensors progressively capture portions of the image over time (rolling shutter).
For high motion video, or video in which the camera or subject is vibrating, the rolling shutter can create very significant visual distortion.
You might want to drink some ginger ale before watching this demo video.
The person who made this video made content choices that highlight the deficiencies of CMOS. (People in the video equipment business are quite adept at finding ways to highlight flaws in other people's shit.) But this distortion is *always* present in CMOS-based cameras. The distortion is below the visual threshold in scenes with very little motion or vibration. But in anything with significant movement it's an ugly, shitty artifact that could be easily avoided with the right equipment.
The fact that many of the people who make sports cameras chose the wrong sensor technology pisses me off to no end. I hate having to watch video that is fucked up by their ineptitude.
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smooth move
- steve 11-02-2014 1:18 am
Guess this explains why lord of the rings looked like a public access production when I saw it on a high def tv.
- steve 11-02-2014 1:21 am [add a comment]
I'm okay with 60p production. It's cinematography decision IMHO. It's the only widely available frame rate suitable for sports. But motion interpolation sucks ass. Almost every "enhancement" feature on late model TV's sucks ass. I always go in and turn off noise reduction, edge enhancement and whatever else they do to fuck with the picture. It's all bad.
There was some work to make 24p show up on HD TV as 24p, but I don't think it ever caught on. The 3:2 pull down used to get 24p to 60i also sucks ass, but people have been doing that (out of necessity) since the dawn of TV.
My list of video things that suck:
-fucked up aspect ratios, fucked up letter+pillar boxing, and other fucked up shit from people who can't figure out how to make 4:3 and 16:9 work together.
-interlace. fuck interlace. it was an excellent compromise between spatial and temporal resolution in 19-fucking-30. how the fuck did that shit survive into the 21st century? (okay, that was a rhetorical question, I know how, but that rant is too long)
-30-motherfucking-p. jesus on a fucking popsicle stick, who the fuck thinks 30p is adequate for video? that goddamn shit is all over the fucking internet. fuck that shit. "But tv is thirty frames." bull-fucking-shit! if I hear that goddamn, ignorant, pathetic, shit-eating drivel one more motherfucking time ... tv is sixty fucking fields, which (as mentioned before) sucks ass, but is far superior to that scumsucking dreck known as 30p
-jello-vision. who in god's name thought it was a good idea to take an image sensor out of a fucking still camera and use it to make a video camera? how fucking moronic are people? jesus fucking christ, why not just use a fucking potato? how is it so fucking hard for people to grasp the concept of taking an exposure of the whole motherfucking image all at once?
-yeah, and that motion interpolation stuff is crappy.
- mark 11-02-2014 3:21 am [add a comment]
I like watching stuff on my laptop, most everything looks pretty good.
- steve 11-02-2014 2:13 pm [add a comment]
Frame Rates: In a quick google search, I can't find good clips of 30p vs. 60p. But as a thought experiment, think about how interpolating 24p to 60p makes stuff look weird. Film makers talk about 60p making stuff "too real". The cinematographer in the linked editorial uses the phrase "I know too much".
Perhaps this is tied to the concept of the uncanny valley. This is supposed to be art, not reality, and moving it closer to reality (but not all the way there) makes it kind of creepy.
Let's look at it from the other side. Consider high motion content. This could be "high motion" due to camera movement, or movement of subjects/objects within the scene, or both. Taking high motion content and down-converting it from 60p to 30p also makes it look weird. Smooth motion is no longer smooth. I find this very distracting in sports. It's supposed to be as real as possible.
Consider the difference between NFL TV coverage and NFL Films (do they still exist?). They have very different looks. One is the real deal. The other is historical commentary on past events. Dropping the frame rate removes immediacy and puts events in a curio box.
Beyond the aesthetics, I just find low frame rate images of sports to be visually distracting. 24p is insufficient to convey smooth motion, and my eyes are bothered by the "slide show" aspect of low frame rates.
Another aspect of frame rate is video gamers. Gamers spend vast sums of money to acheive high frame rates. 60p really isn't quite enough, and they will pay to render at higher rates. Part of this is "lag". They don't want to waste tens of milliseconds for the next image to appear. But also they get used to the look. I think this will be a motivator for improvement of rates.
Youtube is finally bucking. Fuck yeah!
- mark 11-03-2014 2:47 am [add a comment]
I think I understand why motion Interpolation would cheapen the look of 24fps procuctions, and not that I disagree but I don't understand how the frame rate can make the lighting and production look poor. Slow motion cinematography doesn't have the cheap look of soap operas from the 1970s (whereas my viewing of Lord of the Rings on a high def set did) Is this because slow motion footage is typically played back at 24 or 30 fps?
- steve 11-03-2014 9:05 am [add a comment]
Motion interpolation shouldn't screw up lighting, etc. However, TV's that have motion interpolation often have noise reduction. Film grain looks like noise to a noise reduction circuit. So there could be that visual aspect. Also, TV's tend to be set too bright and have the saturation cranked up. This crap sells TV. For critical viewing, it's important to get to know all the menus and submenus and advanced menus, etc. on the TV set.
Slo-mo is a whole different deal. Suppose you capture at 240 fps and playback at 24 fps. Another camera captures at 600 fps and plays back at 60 fps. They will both have the same apparent slo-mo effect (10x). One will have video-like smoothness, and the other will look like film.
- mark 11-03-2014 7:55 pm [add a comment]
I read an article that Ray Harryhausen's films didn't look "real" because of the lack of motion blur.
- steve 11-03-2014 9:24 am [add a comment]
Yes. Lack of motion blur is a problem. There was a zombie movie (28 days later) that used a fast shutter speed (which reduces motion blur) on purpose. They wanted it to look weird.
Back to video games. In computer generated imagery, motion blur is hard. Spatial blur (to soften out jaggy edges) is hard. So they endeavor to crank up frame rate and resolution as a brute force way to address those two issues. In CGI for cinema, they take the time to do the proper spatial and temporal filtering.
- mark 11-03-2014 8:04 pm [add a comment]
I don't know if NFL films still exist but I think they were beautiful. Shot on film at high frame rates, I always wished the games could look as good.
- steve 11-03-2014 9:28 am [add a comment]
Interlace: Part of the problem with low frame rate is interlace. There's still a lot of 60 field per second content out there, and more is being generated every day. Computers don't have the image processing tools to handle 60 fields per second. (Long story.) So it *must* be converted to progressive at the server. Since 60p is a rarity, that means 30p. Sixty field content has the temporal resolution to convey motion well, but 30p doesn't.
In a world increasingly dominated by computer displays, interlace should die. 60p should be used instead. Unfortunately, HDTV supports a 60 field format (i.e. 1080i). Broadcast standards change on a multi-decade time-scale, so we're kinda fucked on this one.
- mark 11-03-2014 2:54 am [add a comment]
Jello vision:
GoPro (and a few others) picked CMOS sensors for their video cameras rather than CCD sensors. CCD sensors can capture the entire image at one moment (global shutter). CMOS sensors progressively capture portions of the image over time (rolling shutter).
For high motion video, or video in which the camera or subject is vibrating, the rolling shutter can create very significant visual distortion.
You might want to drink some ginger ale before watching this demo video.
The person who made this video made content choices that highlight the deficiencies of CMOS. (People in the video equipment business are quite adept at finding ways to highlight flaws in other people's shit.) But this distortion is *always* present in CMOS-based cameras. The distortion is below the visual threshold in scenes with very little motion or vibration. But in anything with significant movement it's an ugly, shitty artifact that could be easily avoided with the right equipment.
The fact that many of the people who make sports cameras chose the wrong sensor technology pisses me off to no end. I hate having to watch video that is fucked up by their ineptitude.
- mark 11-03-2014 3:07 am [add a comment]