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Author Topic: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?  (Read 2695 times)

ILOVETOFLY

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Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« on: September 15, 2023, 01:40:33 pm »

I currently use SMV 4 (Smooth Video Project) software, which interpolates the lousy 24fps, and artificially upscales the refresh rate, which results in butter smooth video with no jitter or choppiness. It's an absolute pleasure when it works properly, and ALL modern video should be this good, since it's all digital now, and the 24fps standard is a holdover from when film stock was expensive to buy.

When it works, it's great, but it's also highly complex, and has compatibility problems and limits with vlc.

May I ask if JRiver has introduced any schemes to provide this same added quality to videos, or if not, if they have a set of instructions for making your media player work well with SVP.

https://www.svp-team.com/

If not, you might consider making the smoothness of video a high priority to build right into your player--as it is something I don't see any competing company doing with their players, and it is the next best step in video technology.

Kindest thanks! :)

ILOVETOFLY
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murray

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2023, 01:58:09 pm »

I currently use SMV 4 (Smooth Video Project) software, which interpolates the lousy 24fps, and artificially upscales the refresh rate, which results in butter smooth video with no jitter or choppiness. It's an absolute pleasure when it works properly, and ALL modern video should be this good, since it's all digital now, and the 24fps standard is a holdover from when film stock was expensive to buy.

When it works, it's great, but it's also highly complex, and has compatibility problems and limits with vlc.

May I ask if JRiver has introduced any schemes to provide this same added quality to videos, or if not, if they have a set of instructions for making your media player work well with SVP.

https://www.svp-team.com/

If not, you might consider making the smoothness of video a high priority to build right into your player--as it is something I don't see any competing company doing with their players, and it is the next best step in video technology.

Kindest thanks! :)

ILOVETOFLY

Only the "new" Envy has this and way better than SVP, but its out of the range of most sadly, it would be great to see JRVR develop something similar one day ;)
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JimH

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2023, 02:12:29 pm »

Only the "new" Envy has this and way better than SVP, but its out of the range of most sadly, it would be great to see JRVR develop something similar one day ;)
What would that look like?
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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2023, 02:16:12 pm »

What would that look like?

You're looking at real time frame interpolation essentially.
It's *getting* there but implementations that look good still require very capable graphics hardware. Offline with manual work is my current go to since the few real time ones I've played with are... less than great. A big difference with the offline methods is 'shot detection' is more reliable and cuts down on some of the distracting artifact that can happen.

If you want to mess with the possibilities, RIFE is a good starting place.

There's some real time implementations of it that I may play with when I get curious about it again and have a use case.
https://github.com/megvii-research/ECCV2022-RIFE

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murray

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2023, 02:44:27 pm »

What would that look like?
It was recently displayed at Cedia and they all said on medium it was very nice to look at and smooth. There are reports of it online.
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blgentry

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2023, 02:55:29 pm »

I have not seen this in action.  So keep that in mind...

Frame interpolation that I've seen, mostly in TVs that are going it to match their native rate and to "make it smoother" is disgustingly awful.  Everything becomes unwatchable.  Not only are there artifacts, but it all just looks "wrong".

This "wrongness" is well documented, even in material that has been shot natively at higher frame rates.  Read that again.  Audiences do NOT like high frame rate native material.  That seems wrong doesn't it?  According to the articles I've read on the subject, it's because high frame rate material does not have the sense of being a fantasy version of something.  Meaning that the 24 fps film rate is something that tells our brains "this is a story", as opposed to "this is reality".

Of course part of this is the psychology of what you are used to.  Since we've all seen 24 fps as the standard for video storytelling, we expect all video storytelling to look that way.  When something does not look that way, we don't like it because it isn't what we expect.

As I said at the top, I have not experienced this "newer" smoothing technology.  But I suspect I wouldn't like it for the reasons stated above.

Long live 24 fps!

Brian.
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JimH

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2023, 03:22:09 pm »

It was recently displayed at Cedia and they all said on medium it was very nice to look at and smooth. There are reports of it online.
What is "it"?
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murray

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #7 on: September 15, 2023, 03:38:06 pm »

What is "it"?
The "new" Frame Interpolation on the "new" Envy (madvr)
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Bob Sorel

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #8 on: September 15, 2023, 04:51:16 pm »

I have not seen this in action.  So keep that in mind...

Frame interpolation that I've seen, mostly in TVs that are going it to match their native rate and to "make it smoother" is disgustingly awful.  Everything becomes unwatchable.  Not only are there artifacts, but it all just looks "wrong".

This "wrongness" is well documented, even in material that has been shot natively at higher frame rates.  Read that again.  Audiences do NOT like high frame rate native material.  That seems wrong doesn't it?  According to the articles I've read on the subject, it's because high frame rate material does not have the sense of being a fantasy version of something.  Meaning that the 24 fps film rate is something that tells our brains "this is a story", as opposed to "this is reality".

Of course part of this is the psychology of what you are used to.  Since we've all seen 24 fps as the standard for video storytelling, we expect all video storytelling to look that way.  When something does not look that way, we don't like it because it isn't what we expect.

As I said at the top, I have not experienced this "newer" smoothing technology.  But I suspect I wouldn't like it for the reasons stated above.

Long live 24 fps!

Brian.
SOE???  (Soap Opera Effect)  ....unless you are talking about some other kind of "wrongness" with standard frame insertion.

If so, I agree...SOE is awful for the most part, though FI set to "low" on the Epson LS12000 is actually quite watchable depending on your SOE tolerance level. ALL other implementations I have seen are horrible.
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Bob Sorel

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #9 on: September 15, 2023, 05:01:11 pm »

The "new" Frame Interpolation on the "new" Envy (madvr)
Yes, the new Envy's FI is rumored to be free from SOE, but I have never seen it myself, so I cannot comment. I will have to see it to believe it.
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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #10 on: September 15, 2023, 05:10:28 pm »

I've come around to HFR content. I think there IS a place for it.
The SOE is horrible and very distracting. Having said that, when the right material is shot with HFR in mind, some interesting things are possible. There's an excellent action sequence in Billy Lynn's Long Half Time Walk that is jarring but somehow works? Similarly some of the stuff in Gemini Man is quite compelling visually. It's different.

I look at it this way, back when Collateral came out, Mann's use of digital cinematography was weirdly off-putting (do you know how much time has been spent making digital cinematography NOT look digital? especially back then ) yet it grew on me and I actually kind of love it now. It was phenomenally unique and trend setting for the time, it evolved really nicely for Miami Vice and I think Mann's work here somewhat opened the door for other productions to have the confidence to not 'hide' the nature of the camera tech they were using.
There's a place where these kinds of things work, and others... not so much.

I had great luck with some choice pieces from TRON Legacy and in my experiments recent animation can *really* benefit from HFR, with both interpolated content as well as rendered sequences at 120fps (120 for native stuff, 100 for 24fps source material). I'd be seriously interested in a high budget HFR animated film out of curiosity. It's absurd on the render times (you're pushing out like 5x the frames of what you'd typically be doing if you were doing something 'cinematic') and so I do sort of see even at the professional end, interpolation being used. I know some houses have done interpolation on expensive renders before (bringing like 12-16 fps up to film rates).


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blgentry

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #11 on: September 16, 2023, 10:45:20 am »

SOE???  (Soap Opera Effect)  ....unless you are talking about some other kind of "wrongness" with standard frame insertion.

The so called Soap Opera Effect is part of what I'm talking about.  Plastic looking textures that regularly dissolve into normal looking ones.  Artifacts.  Motion that is not smooth, but rather sometimes smooth and other times very jerky.  All manner of screw ups that are caused by manipulating the time base artificially.  If we can group all of that into "SOE" then I can agree that's what I'm describing.

Now what if there were no artifacts at all?  What if the frame rate change was perfect?  That's the second point I'm addressing.  A film or two has been made using a native rate of 60Hz or higher.  The film I'm thinking of was panned by audiences because, even though there were no artifacts, it looked "wrong" to them.  Because it was not 24 fps.  Because the higher frame rate broke the fantasy illusion of story telling in video form.  Because most audiences are so experienced with 24 fps, that anything else is not the same.

Part of this is technology (can we do perfect frame rate changes).  The other part is psychology (what audiences might accept something higher than 24 fps and be happy with it?).

I suffer from both:  I hate the artifacts and I don't think I'd like high frame rate movies at all.  I've been watching 24 fps for too long.

Brian.
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Drybonz

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #12 on: September 16, 2023, 10:49:45 am »

They have it working well in video games, so I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they have it working well for movies.

I tried to check out SVP to see what I thought, but their instructions for running it were based on a version of jriver from about 10 years ago, so I couldn't figure out how to get it running. 
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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #13 on: September 17, 2023, 08:06:56 am »

They have it working well in video games, so I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they have it working well for movies.


While it's not that simple, in some respects it is. Essentially, I feel as though some of the early forays into HFR cinematography have been poorly chosen. The Hobbit was doomed to fail for example. For every scene that has a gorgeous establishing shot or real NZ scenery (that looks AMAZING in HFR, even if it was only 48fps), it's almost immediately broken by a 'fake' looking costume or set. It's a fantasy world, you have to *build* so much of it, and arguably, it's a highly cinematic endeavor, the 48fps was not the right choice.

Have a look at Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, it's not a stellar movie by any stretch but its *VERY* interesting in terms of this HFR stuff. First off, a majority of it takes place within a sports stadium during a game, that's a good fit for HFR, we're not thrown off by that. The battle stuff, is a little jarring but I'd argue it works relatively well.

My honest bet is on something like a Marvel movie being able to split the difference and get people to 'consider' HFR. I find them relatively incomprehensible and the super extended cg guys fight climaxes are a snooze fest for ME personally. Having said that, I actually think you could get away with 2 CG guys fighting at 60FPS. I really do. A majority of the composition, shot to shot is entirely CG, I think it would be less jarring. The audience itself is also somewhat used to 60fps content (Surely most play video games).



I'd kill to see Michael Mann do something like HFR for Heat 2. It would be as divisive and off-putting (even to me personally) as Collateral back in the early aughts and I'm all for that lmao. That unabashed 'hey I'm using digital' feel he went with really grew on me and I think in many respects, it holds up quite well compared to other 100% shot on digital, big budget productions of the era because it wasn't trying to hide what it was?




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haasn

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #14 on: September 20, 2023, 10:53:54 am »

I plan on writing code to integrate nvidia's optical flow SDK into libplacebo, and maybe also doing some custom motion vector searching. But, this is low on my TODO list, because it is a lot of work and I'm not hugely motivated as I personally watch movies on a Sony TV anyway which offers good enough motion interpolation (motionflow).

blgentry

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #15 on: September 20, 2023, 03:16:59 pm »

@eve:  You make some interesting observations.  But your analysis seems to be missing something key:  nothing you've discussed has enough artistic merit for you to say you liked it or that it has any kind of wide audience appeal.

Movies and TV shows are storytelling.  The story is king.  All of the presentation details are just a bonus.  Has anyone here seen the original BBC mini series of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"?  It tells the story wonderfully.  The actors and the presentation get the mood just right.  The video quality is very poor.  I think it's converted PAL or something; it's soft and motion isn't exactly perfect.  The costumes and sets are almost laughable (due to their poor quality).  But the mood and the acting tells the story very well.  The somewhat recent movie of the same name has GREAT technical qualities.  Very sharp with good special effects and modern production techniques.  The movie is kind of bad.  I would watch the series any day over the movie. 

...and this example is most the same story!

I guess I just see high frame rate as a solution searching for a problem.  New production techniques should enhance the story in some way.  I see high frame rates much like CGI:  It's often bad and detracts from the story.  In fact, the presence of too much tells you that the story is very lacking.  I sometimes hear people say "the movie is terrible but it has great special effects".  That drives me insane.  Special effects are not a story, nor are they a reason to watch a movie.  If you find yourself doing this, you should seek out some of the thousands of amazing stories in video form instead.

...and I think I'm finally done ranting about high frame rates.  To all that have read what I've written here, I thank you for your attention and patience.  I hope a tiny bit of this resonates with some of you.

Brian.
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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #16 on: September 20, 2023, 07:57:56 pm »

@eve:  You make some interesting observations.  But your analysis seems to be missing something key:  nothing you've discussed has enough artistic merit for you to say you liked it or that it has any kind of wide audience appeal.

Movies and TV shows are storytelling.  The story is king.  All of the presentation details are just a bonus.  Has anyone here seen the original BBC mini series of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"?  It tells the story wonderfully.  The actors and the presentation get the mood just right.  The video quality is very poor.  I think it's converted PAL or something; it's soft and motion isn't exactly perfect.  The costumes and sets are almost laughable (due to their poor quality).  But the mood and the acting tells the story very well.  The somewhat recent movie of the same name has GREAT technical qualities.  Very sharp with good special effects and modern production techniques.  The movie is kind of bad.  I would watch the series any day over the movie. 

...and this example is most the same story!

I guess I just see high frame rate as a solution searching for a problem.  New production techniques should enhance the story in some way.  I see high frame rates much like CGI:  It's often bad and detracts from the story.  In fact, the presence of too much tells you that the story is very lacking.  I sometimes hear people say "the movie is terrible but it has great special effects".  That drives me insane.  Special effects are not a story, nor are they a reason to watch a movie.  If you find yourself doing this, you should seek out some of the thousands of amazing stories in video form instead.

...and I think I'm finally done ranting about high frame rates.  To all that have read what I've written here, I thank you for your attention and patience.  I hope a tiny bit of this resonates with some of you.

Brian.

Artistically, I'm still waiting to have my socks knocked off by HFR. I haven't seen it used in a film I was heavily invested in story wise, nor have I seen it used in a way that artistically suits the film it's in. I 100% think that will change. I don't think it's exactly searching for a problem, 24 frames a second does have legitimate technical issues when it comes to panning and motion.
Any director / cinematographer worth his salt, instinctively attempts to work around that but it definitely restricts certain things you can do without the audience wondering what is going on. You ever seen b-roll of action sequences / setups at 60fps? Over the years I've seen the odd snippet of stuff and honestly? There's something compelling there. It's oddly surreal at times though, it like straddles some line between hyper real and, not?

FPV drone cinematography seems particularly suited to the strengths of HFR. For every like 5 'well that's a gimmick' FPV shots that have been showing up in film recently, I'm blown away by one. Those things get me excited.



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justsomeguy

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #17 on: September 20, 2023, 08:25:24 pm »

I currently use SMV 4 (Smooth Video Project) software, which interpolates the lousy 24fps, and artificially upscales the refresh rate, which results in butter smooth video with no jitter or choppiness. It's an absolute pleasure when it works properly, and ALL modern video should be this good, since it's all digital now, and the 24fps standard is a holdover from when film stock was expensive to buy.

When it works, it's great, but it's also highly complex, and has compatibility problems and limits with vlc.

May I ask if JRiver has introduced any schemes to provide this same added quality to videos, or if not, if they have a set of instructions for making your media player work well with SVP.

https://www.svp-team.com/

If not, you might consider making the smoothness of video a high priority to build right into your player--as it is something I don't see any competing company doing with their players, and it is the next best step in video technology.

Kindest thanks! :)

ILOVETOFLY

I use SVP with MC. These are my settings to make it work.

...and if you use the right settings in SVP you don't get the SOE. It's not perfect but I much prefer it to the stuttery low frame rate mess.
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BryanC

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #18 on: September 21, 2023, 11:27:25 am »

What I'm hoping for is scene-dependent VRR, so that cinematic pans and such can rev up the frame/refresh rate and then dial back down to film standards for meatspace.
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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #19 on: September 21, 2023, 11:37:00 am »

What I'm hoping for is scene-dependent VRR, so that cinematic pans and such can rev up the frame/refresh rate and then dial back down to film standards for meatspace.

I've played around with this! Not scene dependent as much as shot dependent.
You don't even need VRR. ~120 is magic because you can toss ~24 content in it cleanly. It's an interesting solution but uh, it's VERY stylistically opinionated, like, it's an artistic decision, not so much a technical one. Cutting between them is coo! I just again, it feels gimmicky without there being an artistic motivator behind it, due to how obvious it is, it needs to be a creative decision, not exactly a technical one.




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haasn

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #20 on: September 21, 2023, 02:17:13 pm »

It's trivial to take a 48 (or, indeed, 120) fps movie and turn it into a 24 fps movie. It's very hard to do the opposite. What's next, going back to VHS and Vinyl to preserve the "artistic feel" of the nostalgic medium?

If one group's preferences should dictate another group's suffering, then why not offer the higher quality format by default and let people ruin their own viewing experiences voluntarily...

eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #21 on: September 21, 2023, 02:35:24 pm »

It's trivial to take a 48 (or, indeed, 120) fps movie and turn it into a 24 fps movie. It's very hard to do the opposite. What's next, going back to VHS and Vinyl to preserve the "artistic feel" of the nostalgic medium?

If one group's preferences should dictate another group's suffering, then why not offer the higher quality format by default and let people ruin their own viewing experiences voluntarily...

I mean, production costs for 'film level' 60-120 content are ridiculous. Beyond the image acquisition (which is a whole thing), the entire production, and post production workflows need to accommodate it. VFX costs alone are going to be vastly higher. Low key like, there's major films which have some VFX shots (or elements of shots) rendered at sub 24fps and retimed because even 24fps was too costly / time sucky to render out.
Now I'd argue rendering out at 60, and interpolating to 120 in some cases, probably fine.
However that's already more than double what you're dealing with on any other normal show (a show here just means a gig / job) that a vfx company works on.
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Manni

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #22 on: September 27, 2023, 11:42:43 am »

I use SVP with MC. These are my settings to make it work.

...and if you use the right settings in SVP you don't get the SOE. It's not perfect but I much prefer it to the stuttery low frame rate mess.

Thanks, a few questions:
- Which version of SVP do you install so that it works with MC? [scratch that, I found the option for custom install]
- How do you add the avisynth filter as in your screenshot?
- What are your SPV settings to get no SOE (if off topic, please PM me). I'm very sensitive to SOE.

I'd be curious to check this out.
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DocCharky

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #23 on: September 27, 2023, 09:52:45 pm »

The main issue with motion interpolation is that most people seem to think it must be all or nothing.

I play a lot of 60+fps games, but don't like HFR in movies, be it native (Gemini Man) or interpolated. It does not look like a movie to me, because our brains "know" what a movie is supposed to look like as a form of art.

But I also think raw 24p motion is mostly unwatchable on modern displays.

Here is the thing: when looking at pure motion, 24p will not look the same on an old film projector, a CRT screen, an LCD panel, or an OLED panel. I believe we never experienced 24p motion as we do now because the tech was different. Old film projectors had shuttering (sometimes even double or triple) which played on flicker fusion (a trick many displays try to emulate with BFI), interlaced video naturally smoothes motion, and old LCD panels had a slow response time which kinda smoothed motion as well.

But raw 24p on OLED screens looks like a slideshow, because of the insanely fast response time. IMO, this whole "purist" trend of "NO PROCESSING" and filmmaker mode is absolutely ridiculous. You need to consider the tech behind the display and how it actually looks.

So I do think a tad of motion interpolation is necessary on these types of displays. Think 4/10. Not enough to lose the cinematographic look of a movie, but enough to make it watchable on an OLED screen.

It's trivial to take a 48 (or, indeed, 120) fps movie and turn it into a 24 fps movie.

It's not.

When you shoot 24fps movies, you usually use a shutter speed of around 1/48-1/50 to get "regular" motion blur.

If you shoot in 120fps, you don't get any motion blur. So even if you ditch 4 frames and keep only 1 frame every 5 frames to reach 24fps, you will end up with a terrible looking slideshow: a succession of very sharp pictures with no motion blur at all. It would be unwatchable.

To avoid this, you need to add fake motion blur in post after conversion. It's not impossible (After Affects even has a couple of native filters for that), but it's not "trivial" either, because as always with motion vectors based algorithms it can produce artifacts.

So, fake pictures with MI, or fake motion blur? Pick your poison 😄

Movies and TV shows are storytelling.  The story is king. 
I disagree.

"Story" is abstract. It must be told.

Imagine your parents experienced something unusual and funny while shopping together, and they want to tell you. Maybe your mother will tell it to you in a funny and interesting way, and your father in a dull and boring way. They experienced the exact same events, but one tale is good, the other is bad.

You can have the better story in the world. But if your book is badly written, if the actors playing on stage are bad, if your movie is ugly, or if your drawing sucks... the final result will just be plain bad. Or at the very least, the story will have to be absolutely outstanding to overcome these drawbacks.

A movie is a combination of picture and sound. It is experienced through eyes and ears. It does not only need an interesting story. It must also look good, and sound good.
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Charky

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blgentry

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #24 on: September 28, 2023, 07:18:04 am »

But I also think raw 24p motion is mostly unwatchable on modern displays.
...

But raw 24p on OLED screens looks like a slideshow, because of the insanely fast response time. IMO, this whole "purist" trend of "NO PROCESSING" and filmmaker mode is absolutely ridiculous. You need to consider the tech behind the display and how it actually looks.

So I do think a tad of motion interpolation is necessary on these types of displays. Think 4/10. Not enough to lose the cinematographic look of a movie, but enough to make it watchable on an OLED screen.

I'm sure you are correct.  I rely upon my modern TV (not computer monitor) to "do the right thing" with 24p content.  I make a particular point of "TV vs monitor" because most monitors do not have support for any sort of real 24fps content.  Some do for sure, but most do not.  In my TV there are various controls for motion with funny names made up by the manufacturer.  I followed the recommendations of RTings.com and set up my TV's motion to be on very low settings, but not completely off.  The visual result is very pleasing and does not show any of the common motion and texture issues that many HD TVs do.  I was very careful about this.  I spent extra time to make sure that every source connected to my system uses the native frame rate, whether it be 29.97, 24 (23.976) or 25 Hz.  I really want motion to look correct.  Juddering and stuttering are very jarring to me as a viewer.

So yes, I agree.  The display needs to do a *tiny* bit of magic to make 24fps look as we expect it to look on modern displays.  That's a very good observation. 

Quote
A movie is a combination of picture and sound. It is experienced through eyes and ears. It does not only need an interesting story. It must also look good, and sound good.

You and I agree.  I don't think my point came through for you, but you are restating my point in a different way.  If the story isn't compelling, no amount of processing or special effects will make it compelling.  Story should be emphasized more.  We have too many movies that have unacceptably bad stories that are being padded by visual effects.  I fear that high frame rate is yet another technological "trick" that won't help story telling, but rather will attempt to replace it.  Much like visual effects have already replaced story in many poor movies.  I hope that makes sense.

I'm a technophile and always have been.  It's weird for me to be arguing on the other side here.  ...and it's because I love entertainment as well as tech.  But I'd rather see a good stage play by high school students than to watch a blockbuster movie with great visual effects and a crappy story.

Thanks for reading.

Brian.
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DocCharky

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #25 on: September 28, 2023, 10:10:23 am »

I agree :)

IMO the two Avatar movies (especially #2 since its the latest) are the epitome of that. The story is truly abysmal, yet it's technically so stunning I find them hard to dislike.

I couldn't watch them in HFR though (to stay on topic...).
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Charky

"Rule #1 : If it works, don't change anything."

haasn

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #26 on: September 30, 2023, 07:57:40 am »

When you shoot 24fps movies, you usually use a shutter speed of around 1/48-1/50 to get "regular" motion blur.

If you shoot in 120fps, you don't get any motion blur. So even if you ditch 4 frames and keep only 1 frame every 5 frames to reach 24fps, you will end up with a terrible looking slideshow: a succession of very sharp pictures with no motion blur at all. It would be unwatchable.

To avoid this, you need to add fake motion blur in post after conversion. It's not impossible (After Affects even has a couple of native filters for that), but it's not "trivial" either, because as always with motion vectors based algorithms it can produce artifacts.

So, fake pictures with MI, or fake motion blur? Pick your poison 😄

Ah yes, shutter angles, another modern emulation of ancient video technology that I fail to understand... But the solution here is also easy, just stop forcing a 180° shutter on us. Funnily enough, I wouldn't even find 24 Hz movies half as unwatchable if they used a 360° shutter angle, because then it wouldn't have that headache-inducing choppy aliased motion look.

But in any case, if you record at high frame rate with a 360° shutter angle you have access to all of the information in the source. So if you want to artificially recreate those precious, precious "vintage 50s camera tech"-esque aliasing artifacts, all you have to do is throw half of your frames away before downmixing to 24 Hz. It will recreate the result of a native 24 Hz 180° video capture, perfectly, no advanced processing necessary.

blgentry

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #27 on: October 01, 2023, 08:58:08 am »

Funnily enough, I wouldn't even find 24 Hz movies half as unwatchable if they used a 360° shutter angle, because then it wouldn't have that headache-inducing choppy aliased motion look.
What movies or shows have you watched that have anything other than 24, 25, or 30 fps rate?

Brian.
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Manni

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #28 on: October 30, 2023, 01:27:03 pm »

Thanks, a few questions:
- Which version of SVP do you install so that it works with MC? [scratch that, I found the option for custom install]
- How do you add the avisynth filter as in your screenshot?
- What are your SPV settings to get no SOE (if off topic, please PM me). I'm very sensitive to SOE.

I'd be curious to check this out.

Could anyone kindly point me in the right direction regarding using SPV with JRiver? Especially how to install/add avisynth filter and which settings to use to linit SOE.

Thanks!
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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #29 on: October 30, 2023, 02:25:01 pm »

What movies or shows have you watched that have anything other than 24, 25, or 30 fps rate?

Brian.

There's not that many. There's also a few weird post conversions happening in Chinese films that I've been trying to figure out. They don't really exhibit the same tell tale signs that 'automated' frame interpolation usually generates. It's closer to like what I've done for a few demos where I will manually hint the 'shot changes'. Detection is fine but doesn't cover subjective decisions like ensuring certain heavily blurred pans  or extremely fast blurry motion doesn't mess with the interpolation too much. Tron Legacy's LightCycle race is one of my go to's for this, very complex and lots of places for it to excel or utterly fail.
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JimH

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #30 on: October 30, 2023, 03:13:17 pm »

JRiver has VideoClock.  I'm not familiar with SVP or SPV.  Smooth Video something?
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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #31 on: October 30, 2023, 03:21:53 pm »

JRiver has VideoClock.  I'm not familiar with SVP or SPV.  Smooth Video something?

It's a popular (it's been around for AGES) method of interpolating frames on the fly for playback. It does work with JRiver (at least it has in the past when I tried it).


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eve

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Re: Does JRiver Offer Video Smoothing?
« Reply #32 on: October 30, 2023, 03:23:44 pm »

They have it working well in video games, so I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they have it working well for movies.
I realized I didn't explain why it doesn't exactly translate. So the genius of frame interpolation with games is that we have far more 'data' about what's actually happening, we have motion vectors, we have depth buffers, etc. With a movie, you're guessing and ultimately, I still find many of those guesses 'wrong', hence the manual hinting I eluded to.
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