"Soap Opera" effect

[diprotic]

I'm quite happy to view most content at its native framerate, for me that is NTSC FILM 23.976 or pure FILM at 24.

However, IMO, some content just looks better at higher framerate. Some HD podcasts of just people walking around on stage look strange to me at FILM framerates.

One such source was interlaced, so I tried the yadif (x2) deinterlace mode on VLC. I presume this deinterlaces and doubles the framerate, because the result looked much smoother.

I wonder, is there a simple way to easily (and, for lack of a better word, "properly") increase the playback framerate of a progressive source that doesn't need deinterlacing? I prefer VLC, and I'm on a modern Mac, if that helps.

BTW, I don't really care that this is a visual trick and it doesn't really add quality. It improves my visual perception for certain sources, and that's all that matters to me

Edit: And just to be clear, I'm not looking to re-encode if at all possible. Ideally there will be a filter or plugin that can do this during playback. Thanks!

[Brad]

Trying to do this during playback will be problematic.

Yadif 2x isn't interpolating motion; it's only interpolating spatially. That's why I prefer the term "50i" to "25i", unlike the EBU. The temporal capture is 50Hz but half the lines are thrown away.

Yadif 2x reconstructs the missing lines. Yadif 1x reconstructs the missing lines then throws away half the resulting frames (not really; it just skips processes every other field -- but the result is the same).

[poisondeathray]

There are TV's that do framerate interpolation (add fake "inbetween" frames)

Software meant for realtime playback e.g. svpflow , some people use mvtools2 scripts with ffdshow , interframe()
http://www.svp-team.com/wiki/Main_Page

The interpolation isn't perfect and depends on the type of content. Some interpolate better than others. Usually there are "edge morphing" artifacts

Use search for "framerate interpolation" this has been discussed many times before

[diprotic]

Strange. I thought this would be more straightforward.

@vaporeon800: I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm quite satisfied with the effect that yadif x2 provides, regardless of actually what's going on. I'm interested in achieving a similar effect without deinterlacing.

@poisondeathray: Yes, my TV does interpolate, but it stutters every few seconds and I'm not sure why, so I turned it off. I also searched as you suggest, but didn't find anything that specifically applies to this situation.

Is there really no simple VLC filter that will basically dupe frames? I'm not looking for something "scientific." I can achieve basically what I want by doing ffmpeg -i source.m4v -r 60 out.m4v. It just dupes frames like hell. Is there no equivalent for playback?

[poisondeathray]

Is there really no simple VLC filter that will basically dupe frames? I'm not looking for something "scientific." I can achieve basically what I want by doing ffmpeg -i source.m4v -r 60 out.m4v. It just dupes frames like hell. Is there no equivalent for playback?

Dupe frames will look the same

e.g. 30p source, played at 30p will look the same as a 60p source with duplicate frames and twice the number of frames. Exactly the same

A progressive source doesn't have that temporal information (compare to an interlaced source) . You need to generate the "inbetween" motion samples


There are other considerations too - what your TV frequency/refresh is currently set to

e.g. 24p interpolated to 48p will have slightly different judder cadence than standard 3:2 on a 60Hz monitor . 29.97p or 59.94p on a 59.94Hz display will be perfect, as will , each frame is "evenly spaced"

[jagabo]

Is there really no simple VLC filter that will basically dupe frames?

Your player is already duplicating frames when you play 25p material on a 50p or 60p display. That's how 25 frames becomes 50 or 60 frames every second. What you are looking for is interpolating motion, not simple duplication. Yadif 2x works on interlaced material because that already has 50 different pictures every second. Each frame at 25 fps has two half (resolution) pictures intended to be viewed separately and sequentially. 25 fps * 2 half pictures per frame = 50 half pictures per second. Yadif 2x turns each of those half pictures into full pictures.

[diprotic]

I think I get it. It doesn't matter if I have 1000fps, if there isn't any interpolation, there will still only be so much visual information in a given second.

It works with yadif x2 because deinterlacing actually does contain that visual information, albeit in an...interlaced way

@poisondeathray: my TV is rated up to 120Hz. It has a "ClearFrame" feature that interpolates frames, and it does look OK, but every few seconds it "skips" or stutters or judders or whatever you call it. The point is, it's not really "clear" so I turned it off.

I was just so taken by the smooth playback that yadif x2 provided I presumed there must be a simple way to produce the same effect on progressive source. It seems that nothing is ever simple.

I have looked at SVP, but it apparently only runs on Windows. There is no functionally equivalent library for Linux, Mac or VLC?