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Blu-Ray movies look like they are fast forwarding

25K views 23 replies 13 participants last post by  mostafa hamouda 
#1 ·
I'm not sure of the terminology here but when I go into some stores to check out the TVs, Some sets that are playing Blu Rays look like they are moving too fast. Almost like the movie is fast forwarding.


Most of the time the picture quality is amazing, the colors are rich and everything looks crisp and clear, beautiful! But the fast moving play back really annoys me.


Why is this?
 
#4 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by electric turd /forum/post/18979457


Wrong. Watch a blu-ray with motion enhancement on and it will solve the problem.

Wrong. This is a common complaint with LCDs with motion enhancements ON. With Samsung it is AMP, with Sony it is Motionflow. Those setting will need to be turn down or off completely to get rid of the effect (most commonly known as the "Soap Opera" effect).


I've never heard of someone complaining about motion on a plasma. That's what plasmas do best...among other things.
 
#5 ·
I second LaoChe's comments, although I would add that the feature is not exclusive to LCD panels, and is found on plasma TVs as well. It can be turned off to remove the effect completely.


The basic idea of the feature (if i'm not wrong) is frame interpolation. The TV adds additional frames to what is available (24fps, for example) and guesses what they would look like in between the actual frames, taking the observed motion to 100+hz, even if it is "fake".


It works to some extent, but can result in people looking like they're walking really fast, in addition to the "soap opera" film quality effect as mentioned... ugh.
 
#7 ·
Any Plasma TV that doesn't have a frame interpolation option is not worth buying. Lets hope OLED TVs get this option too.


Have any tests been done on different TVs/other things that have this frame interpolation option to say which is the most accurate/which makes 24p/25p look the most like it was shot at 50i/60i/50p/60p/100p or higher?
 
#8 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Bloggs /forum/post/18982300


Any Plasma TV that doesn't have a frame interpolation option is not worth buying. Lets hope OLED TVs get this option too.

Why? I've seen this on my Sony XBR8, and I was not pleased with it. It's been off since. I've seen the equivalent on Samsung LCDs and Panasonic plasmas; I have yet to see the results be anything worthwhile. The motion always looks weird and unnatural, and odd breakup/macroblocking on title graphics (throw in Wall-E on Blu-Ray and watch the title sequence to see a very egregious example) is pretty common. If people really want the option, I guess whatever, but really it's not necessary - straight-up frame repeat mode is all I personally care about, and that's implied in any TV where the panel refreshes at a higher speed than the native frame rate of the content. I would mind it less if they could refine the algorithms to take care of my issues, but it's complicated creating something that isn't actually there.
 
#9 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by demonfoo /forum/post/18983569


Why? I've seen this on my Sony XBR8, and I was not pleased with it. It's been off since. I've seen the equivalent on Samsung LCDs and Panasonic plasmas; I have yet to see the results be anything worthwhile. The motion always looks weird and unnatural, and odd breakup/macroblocking on title graphics (throw in Wall-E on Blu-Ray and watch the title sequence to see a very egregious example) is pretty common. If people really want the option, I guess whatever, but really it's not necessary - straight-up frame repeat mode is all I personally care about, and that's implied in any TV where the panel refreshes at a higher speed than the native frame rate of the content. I would mind it less if they could refine the algorithms to take care of my issues, but it's complicated creating something that isn't actually there.

Because it's a good option to have. It's main reason was to try to solve the judder problem with lower frame rates displayed on newer TVs (also added blur effect added by the TV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDTV_blur ). Some LCD TVs with this option get their highest motion resolution figures with this option set to low. My latest LCD TV has this option, even though it's usually off. If content wasn't made at/converted to the lowest possible frame rates (including music titles) there'd be little or no reason for this option. For for movies this might change when Avatar 2 comes out - though if it comes out in S3D on Blu-ray at >24 fps it will only be 720p resolution.


I agree there are problems with the algorithms (though I don't think I've seen added macroblocking - I don't have the Wall-E disc), which is why most of the time I have it turned off, which is why I asked:
Quote:
Have any tests been done on different TVs/other things that have this frame interpolation option to say which is the most accurate/which makes 24p/25p look the most like it was shot at 50i/60i/50p/60p/100p or higher?

If titles were made and released on Blu-ray at a higher fps (eg. 48/50/60 fps), the players could still output at 24 fps - they could even default to it - but for people who wanted the higher real fps, with much less judder, it could output that too.
 
#11 ·
Have we excluded the possibility that some players can do fast forward and somebody in the shop might have triggered that inadvertently?


I don't recall ever having the impression of seeing fast forward motion in shop demos. Do other people really have that impression with frame interpolation? It still takes the same amount of time for an object to move from A to B on the screen whether frame interpolation is on or not.


Is 'soap opera' effect entirely appropriate to describe frame interpolation? Normally watching an NTSC TV we're watching in only 60Hz but frame interpolation doubles or quadruples that. Is 24fps on Blu-ray displayed as 60Hz (simple 3:2) a 'soap opera' effect then?
 
#12 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilian.ca /forum/post/18987032


I don't recall ever having the impression of seeing fast forward motion in shop demos. Do other people really have that impression with frame interpolation? It still takes the same amount of time for an object to move from A to B on the screen whether frame interpolation is on or not.

I've noticed this particularly with Samsung's "Auto Motion Plus". I'm not sure what about the algorithm does it, but it really does seem like (even though it's definitely playing at 1:1 real-time speed) the motion is moving unnaturally fast. It seems less the case with other manufacturers' implementations, at least to my eyes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilian.ca /forum/post/18987032


Is 'soap opera' effect entirely appropriate to describe frame interpolation? Normally watching an NTSC TV we're watching in only 60Hz but frame interpolation doubles or quadruples that. Is 24fps on Blu-ray displayed as 60Hz (simple 3:2) a 'soap opera' effect then?

It is as appropriate as one can get, I suppose. 3:2 pulldown doesn't have the same effect, as the in-between fields do not attempt to create motion effects that weren't there - they just persist the image data across the intermediate refresh period. These modes, on the other hand, use algorithms to generate intermediate frames to estimate what the motion "should" be in between (and not too rarely butchering the motion, especially noticeably on many movie title scenes). The "soap opera effect" is specifically from that processing.


Edit: If a 60 Hz TV were doing such motion estimation, then yes, it would cause a similar effect; however, this sort of processing only became popular when 120 Hz and faster native panels began to appear.
 
#13 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilian.ca /forum/post/18987032


I don't recall ever having the impression of seeing fast forward motion in shop demos. Do other people really have that impression with frame interpolation? It still takes the same amount of time for an object to move from A to B on the screen whether frame interpolation is on or not.

Yes, but if the position of the object in the interpolated frame is not the same as what it would have been in reality, it's speed of movement from A to B will be wrong.


eg. a cartoon object moving at constant speed between A and B, if you wanted interpolation, and were going to add 1 interpolated frame it would be right to add the object half way between A and B.


But if an object started at A (eg. where it was stationary), then constantly accelerated to point B, then adding the interpolated object half way between point A and B would be wrong (since it would be moving too fast to start with, then too slow later on, compared to what it should have been).


------

Another thing is if people have been watching a lot of 24p content (without interpolation), when they see content (or that content) with higher frames/fields per second, it could seem wrong, even if it isn't - ie. even if that would be the motion that would be produced at the higher fps (though frame interpolation is mostly going to get it wrong - though I think, the more frames/fields that were analysed before generating an interpolated frame, the better it should be since it should better be able to determine whether an object was accelerating/decelerating/moving at constant speed etc. to better position the interpolated frame.
Quote:
Is 'soap opera' effect entirely appropriate to describe frame interpolation?

No, it's just some people's way of trying to make this option, or higher fps in general, sound bad.


Though, like I said, there are problems with interpolation (and not just in the algorithms that decide where objects should be in the interpolated frame (where it's really impossible to know where the objects should be positioned in reality), but in how they make the interpolated frames, eg. they're basically warping/moving things from different frames together, trying to separate objects from the background, and even if the motion of objects was correct, you still can nd up with strange artefacts around the moving things in the frame, which is why real higher frame/field rates would be better, since it would be easy to skip frames for people who didn't like the more realistic motion, the higher motion resolution and the reduced judder). Though we could also do with better interpolation methods than are used in current TVs (eg. Phase Correlation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televis...rds_conversion or interpolation based on every pixel?).
 
#14 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Bloggs /forum/post/18988632


which is why real higher frame/field rates would be better, since it would be easy to skip frames for people who didn't like the more realistic motion, the higher motion resolution and the reduced judder).

I don't think that's true. If you magically had one camera recording 60 fps in the same point in space as another recording 30 fps, decimating half the frames of the 60 fps source isn't going to give you identical footage to the true 30 fps footage, is it? The exposure/motion blur must be different.
 
#15 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by msgohan /forum/post/18990291


I don't think that's true. If you magically had one camera recording 60 fps in the same point in space as another recording 30 fps, decimating half the frames of the 60 fps source isn't going to give you identical footage to the true 30 fps footage, is it? The exposure/motion blur must be different.

Well that's how it works for 25p footage for European TV dramas. HD camera 25p shot European dramas usually use a 1/50th of a second shutter. 50i and 50p European live TV will also have the electronic shutter open for 1/50th of a second.


So in the European case, if a drama was shot at 1080p50, it could be shown at either 1080p50 - or 1080p25 by skipping every other frame. The 1080p50 version would have motion blur for the whole of each whole frame (1/50th of a second), and the 1080p25 version would have motion blur for 1/50th of a second too - as is normal for most European TV dramas. So it should make no difference whether it had been shot at 1080p50 with 1/50th of a second electronic shutter or 1080p25 with 1/50th of a second shutter. When the 1080p50 version was converted to 1080p25 (by skipping every other frame) it should look the same as if it was shot 1080p25.


A similar thing could be done for 60p & 30p.
 
#16 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by demonfoo /forum/post/18988120


I've noticed this particularly with Samsung's "Auto Motion Plus". I'm not sure what about the algorithm does it, but it really does seem like (even though it's definitely playing at 1:1 real-time speed) the motion is moving unnaturally fast. It seems less the case with other manufacturers' implementations, at least to my eyes.

Interesting to know.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Bloggs /forum/post/18988632


Yes, but if the position of the object in the interpolated frame is not the same as what it would have been in reality, it's speed of movement from A to B will be wrong.


eg. a cartoon object moving at constant speed between A and B, if you wanted interpolation, and were going to add 1 interpolated frame it would be right to add the object half way between A and B.


But if an object started at A (eg. where it was stationary), then constantly accelerated to point B, then adding the interpolated object half way between point A and B would be wrong (since it would be moving too fast to start with, then too slow later on, compared to what it should have been).


...

Too fast then too slow would be jerkiness, or at least fast forwarding then slowing down but all the TS said is just fast forwarding. For constant velocity motion then this won't be a problem. We don't know exactly what the TS saw.


I had assumed that with frame interpolation, each of the frame in the source is left alone. In a 120Hz LCD for example, with a 24.00 fps film, every 1/24s is the same as without frame interpolation, only in between the successive native frames are new frames inserted, so every one original is followed by four interpolated frames and so on. If that is really the case then I'd have thought it'd be hard to see any fast forwarding or slowing within each of the 1/24th of a second.


If that isn't what is happening, then what you said would be plausible. Say if an object moves from A to B in three seconds, only the start and finish are the same as original but everything in between, all of most of the 358 (360-2) frames are interpolated.
 
#18 ·
I have a plasma tv and I also notice that people move too fast as if it is playing at .2 percent faster than it should, similar to a Charlie Chaplin movie. I can not enjoy a movie this way, it is so distracting and it's not the way the movie was meant to be seen. People are not supposed to move like they are in a Charlie Chaplin movie. It's so ridiculous to watch a serious drama and seeing the people movie like they are in a 1920's silent slapstick comedy.
 
#21 ·
Even tho I said people seem to move a bit fast on my plasma, I will say this, HANDS DOWN plasma is way better than any lcd or led tv you can buy... the colors on this thing are do rich and deep...Plasma is what you want to get if you want movies to look more like a movie should look and less what a soap opera or the cheap looking live video look. Movies look like movies on a plasma. You may have to put up some light blocking curtains on your windows for watching it during the daytime, coz plasmas do have a reflection when there is lots of light in the room... but once you are in a semi dark room you will have the best looking movie watching tv that you can for how a movie should look, and not like "An Unexpected Soap Opera" when you are trying to watch Lord of the Rings.
 
#22 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilian.ca  /t/1266416/blu-ray-movies-look-like-they-are-fast-forwarding#post_18987032




Is 'soap opera' effect entirely appropriate to describe frame interpolation?

Actually, now that I think about it, a more suiting name for 'The Soap Opera Effect' would be 'The Butchered Horror Effect' because that's essentially what it does to all older movies, it takes them ALL and turns them into these god awful butchered horrors. It's turning out to look like a pretty ugly future..where we want to destroy any and all traces of all of those artist's original visions of a whole century of film art. While we are at it, why not just take a SUPER HD digital pic of the Mona Lisa and digitally remove every tiny flaw in every tiny pixel until it is completely sterile and void of any 'flaws' and then just burn the original... because I mean who needs it if we have this 'new' digitally enhanced SUPER HD 'flawless' and did I mention 'new' version of it... this new version of the Mona Lisa is all anyone from here on out ever needs to see...forget the original and what that version looked like...let all future generations only forever more be able to see this fresh new sterile 'flawless' digitally enhanced version of The Mona Lisa and all other paintings ever painted. Why not just go in a digitally enhance the Sistine Chapel until it is completely flawlessly devoid of any flaws down to a pixel size inspection.


Before long, we and future generations will never have a way to view any film ever made the way it was originally intended to be seen by the people that created them.... we will only be left with these fake false sterile Butchered Horror interpretations of them. Once they take away out choice of how we want to view older movies, they will be lost forever...with no trace of how they once existed, of how they were intended.
 
#23 ·
Cinemasoul, it's just a feature on TVs that you can turn off or turn to lower levels if you want, at least on most or all of the TVs that have it. If you don't like it, leave it switched off. Also, not every director of every one of the thousands of films that have been made will have been happy that the picture juddered/strobed when they panned the camera, but due to film and cinemas at the time, 24p was the only the they could realistically use. But leave the interpolation option(s) on your TV (if it has them) off and it will look how you want it to.
 
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