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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#91

Post by Retr0id »

exitb wrote: post #67
mort96 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never accept the hate for 48 FPS. 24 FPS looks like garbage. Panning shots are a stuttery mess. 24 FPS looks somewhat okay when the camera is still and only the people in it are moving, but the ridiculous choppiness ruins any moment with camera movement. A higher refresh rate is simply an objective improvement. I don't care that you associate it with bad soap operas.

How low frame rate looks is dependent on the display technology. It looks good when the the frame or pixels are displayed for a very short amount of time (like on a CRT or a film projector) or when the transition between frames is gradual (like on TFT and IPS panels). It looks not so great on an OLED screen where the pixels are continuously lit up and the transition is near instantaneous.

Newer OLEDs can be configured to do Blank Frame Insertion (BFI), sold under various confusing marketing names.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#92

Post by johnchristopher »

jblakey wrote: post #78

On a related note, why is Netflix's interface so locked down? Why would it be bad for me to turn off autoplay for trailers? Why can't I say "never show me this show again, I'm never going to watch it"? And why, in this age of AI, and they still putting white text over a white background? That last one, especially, made me say "do people at Netflix eat their own dogfood"?

> Why can't I say "never show me this show again, I'm never going to watch it"?

Maybe someone is paying Netflix to suggest this movie (edit:content) to you ?

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#93

Post by tshaddox »

mort96 wrote: post #20
gigaparsec wrote: post #11

The number one thing that bothers me the most in the "netflix aesthetic" is the weird looking background bokeh that every scene seems to have. It looks like a cheap gaussian blur filter applied in post production and adds to the fakeness. This is probably due to the optics in some of the latest Red digital cameras, but it's still not convincing. Kinda like 48 vs 24 FPS.

I will never accept the hate for 48 FPS. 24 FPS looks like garbage. Panning shots are a stuttery mess. 24 FPS looks somewhat okay when the camera is still and only the people in it are moving, but the ridiculous choppiness ruins any moment with camera movement. A higher refresh rate is simply an objective improvement. I don't care that you associate it with bad soap operas.

At the end of the day I can’t really fault someone for having a genuine aesthetic preference one way or the other. And yet it’s difficult for me to understand complaints about HFR as a genuine aesthetic preference distinct from the complaints that likely existed about talkies, color film, HD video, etc.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#94

Post by mort96 »

fullstop wrote: post #81
mort96 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never accept the hate for 48 FPS. 24 FPS looks like garbage. Panning shots are a stuttery mess. 24 FPS looks somewhat okay when the camera is still and only the people in it are moving, but the ridiculous choppiness ruins any moment with camera movement. A higher refresh rate is simply an objective improvement. I don't care that you associate it with bad soap operas.

> 24 FPS looks like garbage. Panning shots are a stuttery mess. This depends on the TV, of course, but I prefer 24 FPS over the soap opera effect.

That's the thing I'm talking about though. I don't care that you associate better motion with bad soap operas.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#95

Post by Veen »

bawolff wrote: post #80
vehemenz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you think "objective" means, but typically it means independent of experience. When you say "objective improvement," in what sense, independent of experience, is higher frame rate better? Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological.

I'm confused. You don't think having 2x the visual data is better independent of experience? > Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological. Isn't any straight forward application of a dictionary definition borderline tautological?

> You don't think having 2x the visual data is better independent of experience?

What does "better independent of experience" mean? The experience is the whole point, and its quality is not linearly proportional to the amount of data on screen.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#96

Post by royjacobs »

drexlspivey wrote: post #85
masurus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Film has become vastly inferior to digital both in stills and cinema if we're talking about technical aspects like dynamic range and colour accuracy. The problem is, just like with CGI which has gotten pretty good at modelling light transport, it feels off because it's too clean and clear. Digital it's too good at capturing reality. Film introduces a bunch of artefacts and limitations that 'look' nicer than accuratel…

Can you do an 8K remaster of a movie shot in 4K digital? With film you can just rescan the negative with a higher resolution.

This will not magically make extra detail appear, though. Film does not have infinite resolution.

For instance, the ARRISCAN film scanner goes up to 6k for 35mm. They could go higher, but there's no point.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#97

Post by mort96 »

vehemenz wrote: post #53
mort96 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never accept the hate for 48 FPS. 24 FPS looks like garbage. Panning shots are a stuttery mess. 24 FPS looks somewhat okay when the camera is still and only the people in it are moving, but the ridiculous choppiness ruins any moment with camera movement. A higher refresh rate is simply an objective improvement. I don't care that you associate it with bad soap operas.

I'm not sure what you think "objective" means, but typically it means independent of experience. When you say "objective improvement," in what sense, independent of experience, is higher frame rate better? Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological.

The purpose of a movie is to give the illusion of motion. A higher refresh rate creates a better illusion of motion than a lower one.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#98

Post by tristor »

PKop wrote: post #4

It's hinted at here, but film produces a much better overall look than digital. It is just that digital is way cheaper and easier to work with. There is certainly more versatility in what you can create in post production with digital but the base look of what is captured is more beautiful on film, and this is the same with photographs. Look at high quality old images captured on film, they blow most digital images o…

Digital is vastly superior to film for photography. I shoot both, sometimes side by side. What differs is that film is more pleasing to the eye without significant post processing, digital requires it.

But in both cases, if you get your photo in the viewfinder before you get in the camera, digital always comes out better in the end. There’s simply so much more information captured, and you can in fact get more stops of DR with digital than with film.

Edit: To add to the above, I use a light meter and check DR in post processing. Film is usually good for 8-9 stops of DR (depending on film type) and is better in overexposed scenes with bright lights. Digital generally gets 12-14 stops of DR and handles underexposed scenes better at constant ISO.

Another factor is that in dark scenes due to finer grains, digital is capable of running higher ISO in producing recoverably usable photos with denoise filters (Nik’s Tools). On my current rig, ISO 3200 is usable, on film typically ISO800 is the max I would run, there are a few good ISO 1200 films though, but they are black and white. ISO isn’t directly analogous between film and digital, but it’s close enough for the purpose of this comparison.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#99

Post by entropie »

I've said it and I say it again, most or some of the reasons why it looks weird to us (people who grow up with a TV) come down to camera quality.

Most TV camera setups were about lighting and the needed amount.

Since a few years cameras are so good, we have almost real blacks and real whites sometimes even in the same frame and its naturally filmed and does not look like total shit. We have crazy aperture sizes and we use them and there is the often coitized gaussian/blur backgrounds. We have very sharp images even with very bad lightning conditions so some movies are very dark.

I think like the younger ones are already very used to it and wonder about "how odd old films look".

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#100

Post by rightbyte »

bawolff wrote: post #80
vehemenz wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you think "objective" means, but typically it means independent of experience. When you say "objective improvement," in what sense, independent of experience, is higher frame rate better? Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological.

I'm confused. You don't think having 2x the visual data is better independent of experience? > Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological. Isn't any straight forward application of a dictionary definition borderline tautological?

Higher frame rate makes CGI special effects harder to make convincing. E.g. the Hobbit.
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