Just watched my film on a TV and it looked strange...

S

Stab

Well-known member
As you might have read in my topic in the GH3 section, I have recently shot my 1st real short film. (on a GH3 indeed :) )

I was pretty happy with the look on my 2 IPS monitors, but I just watched in my 40 inch Toshiba (cheap) TV. It is a pretty new model LED TV, 50 hz 1920x1080 and arround 400 euro's so you know there is some artificial image improvement going on.

The film looked heavily oversharpened (even with sharpness turned down a lot), much brighter and the motion seemed a bit off. Sometimes the motion was film like, sometimes too fluid.
Also, the depth of field seemed much deeper. In one shot in which there is a skyline visible of a city, the buildings in the back seemed razor sharp and in focus while on my monitor it is clearly out of focus...
When I set the 'image preset' to 'cinema' it suddenly looked much more close to what I'm seeing on my monitors... The 'standard' option was way off though.

So what does this say about the footage? What is 'real'? And how will it look on a projecter if it will be ever played on a festival?

Does the oversharpening create the illusion of a deeper DOF? Is the motion strange because of the TV's processing it at 50hz? Is it brighter because of the TV's processing?

Thanks for your time.
 
I never thought I would say a camera could be to sharp, but haha the gh3 is so sharp on some shots it looks synthetic if that makes any sense. After studying the image for many hours and going back and fourth, I found I prefer the hacked gh2 over the gh3. I only wish the gh2 had the same build as the 3
 
maranfilms said:
I never thought I would say a camera could be to sharp, but haha the gh3 is so sharp on some shots it looks synthetic if that makes any sense. After studying the image for many hours and going back and fourth, I found I prefer the hacked gh2 over the gh3. I only wish the gh2 had the same build as the 3
Click to expand...

It is indeed sharp :) But I'm not sure it's actually sharper than the GH2 ...

Anyway, on my monitor it looks great actually... It's just that it looks different on the TV.
 
maranfilms said:
I never thought I would say a camera could be to sharp, but haha the gh3 is so sharp on some shots it looks synthetic if that makes any sense. After studying the image for many hours and going back and fourth, I found I prefer the hacked gh2 over the gh3. I only wish the gh2 had the same build as the 3
Click to expand...

This is the conclusion I came to as well. The hacked GH2 just has the perfect amount of sharpness / smoothness to edges and details that really make it feel a bit more filmic and simply more pleasing to look at. I don't think the GH3 is technically sharper, just somehow the edges and certain kinds of detail are much more noticeable- it's weird. It's uncanny how well the GH2 still holds up against all of the competition. I hear the GH5 is coming out by the end of the year as well, maybe they'll go back to their old secret formula instead of whatever they've been concocting with Sony.
 
Stab said:
Anyway, on my monitor it looks great actually... It's just that it looks different on the TV.
Click to expand...

It should look different. The color space for a computer monitor isn't the same as the color space for an HDTV. The TV is showing you Rec.709. It's likely that the closest your computer monitor can come to that is sRGB, and it's likely you aren't using that color space. So of course it looks different.

That's OK if you're delivering to the 'net.

If you're delivering to DVD, BD, or broadcast, you'll need to color correct and grade for that. To do that you'll need a broadcast monitor. Something like this.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Get yourself a copy of Van Hurkman's Color Correction Handbook. His book 'splains everything. Best technical book of any kind I've read. You'll be glad you did.
 
Thanks Bruce.

I understand that my monitor will not give accurate results about how it will ook on a TV.
But my question is, which one is more 'accurate' to the 'real' look. And which color space do cinema projectors have?
 
Stab said:
Thanks Bruce.

I understand that my monitor will not give accurate results about how it will ook on a TV.
But my question is, which one is more 'accurate' to the 'real' look. And which color space do cinema projectors have?
Click to expand...

The real look? There's not actually a "real look". People typically have separate grades for each distribution medium they use -- so they grade it to look right for the web, a different grade for DVD / BD / HDTV (and technically, a grade for DVD (Rec.601) and a different grade for BD / HDTV (Rec.709) but mostly Rec.601 isn't being done anymore), and yet another grade for cinema.

Digital cinema projectors use a bigger color space than HDTV -- CIE XYZ usually. There are monitors that will show you this, but they are out of my reach. If that's what you want, you might want to consider a finishing house to do the final color grading and create the DCP for you.

There is a separate color space for film outs, but you're not actually going to use film for distribution are you?

In any case, film outs and DCPs are over my pay grade, so you've reached the edge of my admittedly limited knowledge on the subject.
 
I think your computer is most accurate as that is where you are editing. Once you go to another media, you have to play a bit to get that same look.

I have recently been trying to get some of my pieces to display well on HDTV's and I've found that the quality of the display makes a huge difference. All my footage is from a Canon T3i, Panasonic TM700 and the new GoPro Hero3 Black Edition. The T3i clips are much softer than your GH3 images and turn out incredible on a 55 - 70" HDTV !!!

In the past couple years I learned the hard way that you really need to keep your output in the 16-235 range (Rec.601 and Rec.709 "studio") to prevent lesser quality HDTV's from blowing up the image.

I recently discovered that I can use DLNA through Wifi from a tablet to play full gamut 0-255, 26mbps MP4's on the newest crop of HDTV's with great success. I believe that many of the digital projectors used at film festivals can often play these 0-255 files directly from computer to the big screen quite successfully. In any case, I'd highly recommend that if you are going to a festival with your piece that you get the exact make and model of projector to be sure you have the right type of file for it.

Like Bruce, I know nothing about DCP and if Philip Blooms latest blog posts are any indication I don't want to either :)
 
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I'd bet money that your TV has some kind of smooth motion feature turned on. A terrible, terrible "feature". That's why it looked better on cinema, because it turned that mode off. Check the TV settings.
 
Stab said:
Thanks Bruce.

I understand that my monitor will not give accurate results about how it will ook on a TV.
But my question is, which one is more 'accurate' to the 'real' look. And which color space do cinema projectors have?
Click to expand...

Assuming you've calibrated your HDTV (or at least done the best you can) it will give you a more accurate representation of your video than you computer monitor. I don't know what you used to edit the movie but generally speaking you are fighting against the computer software, the computer GFX card and the computer monitor when you are attempting to see what video actually looks like. Computers are designed output and display computer GFX, not baseband video signals.

-Andrew
 
No rocket science involving the creation of a solid DCP, just some learning, patience, and a bit of technical knowledge. The people who sell services to author them sure try to turn them into voodoo to protect their business.
 
Stab, I'm pretty confident that what I said in my last post is the cause. It's sometimes called the "soap opera effect". The TV is taking the 24 fps and interpolating it to a higher looking framerate, for "real life effect" as they sell it. But in reality, it just makes it look like crappy video. Watch any primetime drama or big budget blockbuster with this setting on, and it's still going to look like crappy video. There are lots of forum posts, articles, etc. about it. Keywords would be soap opera effect, motion interpolation, motion smoothing, smooth motion. Here's an older thread on it.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...-lcd-TVs-reverse-direction!-24p-back-to-video

Probably the cinema setting turns this "feature" off. It does on my Panasonic TV.
 
BrandonT said:
Stab, I'm pretty confident that what I said in my last post is the cause. It's sometimes called the "soap opera effect". The TV is taking the 24 fps and interpolating it to a higher looking framerate, for "real life effect" as they sell it. But in reality, it just makes it look like crappy video. Watch any primetime drama or big budget blockbuster with this setting on, and it's still going to look like crappy video. There are lots of forum posts, articles, etc. about it. Keywords would be soap opera effect, motion interpolation, motion smoothing, smooth motion. Here's an older thread on it.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...-lcd-TVs-reverse-direction!-24p-back-to-video

Probably the cinema setting turns this "feature" off. It does on my Panasonic TV.
Click to expand...

Thanks Brandon. I know about the effect and how it looks. And yes, it is horrible :)

I have a fairly cheap TV though and it does not have any option like this. It's a 50hz TV and there is no function like this in the menu. The motion was not 'far off' by the way, it was mostly the colors and brightness that shocked me.
In the 'film mode' or whatever it is called, it just changed the colors to make everything less saturated and 1-2 stops darker. By doing so, it became more close to what I'm used to on my computer monitor.
 
I know you said it's a cheaper TV but does it have individual controls for things like brightness, RGB and color temperature? The default settings on a TV are meant to make it stand out on a showroom floor so the colors will be pumped up (especially red), the contrast will be extreme and the whites will be pushed towards blue so you certainly want to get off the default setting as soon as possible. Here's a good blog post that talks about it in more detail if you are interested. http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html
 
It's true, tv's come from factory with all kinds of no no's set by default. When you install your fresh tv, set sharpness mostly off, noise reduction off, slight de-sat on Colour, check if gamma control is an option (play with those). And of course if the 100hz or 120hz option is on, shut it off! (How terrible)
 
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