[MPlayer-users] Frame interpolation

[Greg Trounson]

>> Are there any plans for mplayer to do frame interpolation to negate
>> 24p judder?
>
> There was a time when everyone wanted 24p cameras to look more like "the
> movies".
>
> By which I mean to say: you want to interpolate back up to a higher frame
> rate? Blech, what a horrible idea. You might as well go ahead and watch it
> in 4:3 crop with mono audio, in black and white, while you're at it, just
> to
> ensure the experience is as damaged as possible.
>

I really must disagree here.

I have a Philips 100Hz television that does exactly this, with what they
sell as "Natural Motion".  Movie content (25 fps in PAL territories) is
interpolated with motion detection to 50fps and the difference is
incredible.

In particular, pan/tilt shots and steadily moving objects look beautifully
smooth with "Natural Motion" enabled, where the exact same shots looks
jittery both in the cinema and on my TV with Natural Motion disabled.  It
works surprisingly well with multiple objects and parallax movement too. 
It doesn't do so well in some situations involving heavy depth-of-field
parallax, such as sideways motion in long grass but these tend to be the
exception.  The ability to encode movies in mencoder with similar motion
compensation algorithms is potentially a very useful feature that I'd like
to see implemented.

But none of this would be an issue if the source material was a more
usable frame rate.  AFAICT 24fps is these days an artificial handicap kept
purely for the same reasons people resisted moving to sound and colour
film.  That is, films done at 24fps look like proper films just because
the rest of them do.

Greg