is some aliasing acceptable?

[Mark Hahn]

I was watching network news tonight and I happened to notice aliasing in a pundit's jacket. I went back and it was quite pronounced.

Is it possible that the masses that watch video find aliasing more acceptable than softness? You can almost always trade one for the other.

I know that the 5D2 has more aliasing than needed for the sharpness, I'm not arguing the 5D2 is OK. I'm just trying to get a handle on how much trouble I'm going to be in when my video and film shows aliasing.

[Jon Fairhurst]

I think this is context dependent. We don't accept aliasing on the silver screen, but we do in our living rooms. That includes Hollywood movies on DVD and BD. And we accept gobs of it on computer monitors!

[Don Miller]

Years back I took my two daughters to the second Charlie's Angels movie. It was terrible, so I just looked at the technical cinematography. In some scenes there was an incredible amount of CA. I think there's all kins of crud we miss. They also couldn't properly light both Cameran Dias and Lucy Lu in the same scene. Either one or the other look good, never both.

That's why I don't get too excited about some of the technical flaws in the 5DII image. These problems matter, but the big filmic low dof images matter a lot more. In a similar vein, the low light capability of the 5DII compared to Red matters a lot more than the pixel shifting Red uses to criticize the 5D.

Minimize technical problems but not at the expense of getting the look you want. Competence without feeling is boring.

[Evan Donn]

I've recently been noticing just how many shots are actually out of focus in major films - or shots that were obviously slightly out of focus but have been unsharp-masked back to an acceptable level of detail but now have haloing, etc as a side effect. I'm pretty confident I'm the only one in the theater really paying attention to that kind of thing, and even when I'm aware of it as long as the story, acting, etc work I usually just note it and then forget about it - and that's the bottom line. I'd much rather watch a great performance with a little aliasing on the actor's jacket than a perfect image with bad dialogue and wooden acting.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Recently I watched The Fall with the director's commentary. During one scene, his young actress is looking out of a window, and the director says something like, "I wish we had better focus on that shot."

What's funny is that even on DVD, I remember noticing the soft focus on that shot on my first viewing. It took me out of the story for a brief moment and was quickly forgotten.

That's the curse of the edit bay. The director and editor saw that soft focus over and over and over. In my role as a viewer, the shot was easily forgiven.

[Daniel Browning]

Originally Posted by Mark Hahn

I was watching network news tonight and I happened to notice aliasing in a pundit's jacket. I went back and it was quite pronounced.

I'm shocked and horrified that you have ever seen *any* network news without aliasing. It seems like every time I turn on the news, on every channel, at all times of the day, aliasing is always visible. Most of the time I get to enjoy heaps of oversharpening, overexposure, interlace twitter, and compression artifacts as well.

Originally Posted by Mark Hahn

Is it possible that the masses that watch video find aliasing more acceptable than softness?

I think so. They also prefer 4:3 stretched to 16:9, as much overscan as possible, oversaturation, and other hallmarks of junky video.

However, I think even the masses know, on a subconscious level, that aliasing gives them the "video un-natural, fakey, junky" feeling, whereas anti-aliased images give them the "filmic, natural, realistic, quality" feeling.

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Don Miller

Years back I took my two daughters to the second Charlie's Angels movie. It was terrible.

So WRONG! Don't you talk that way about my angels.

[Xavier Plagaro]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

That's the curse of the edit bay. The director and editor saw that soft focus over and over and over. In my role as a viewer, the shot was easily forgiven.

That's a very good point! A shot with not much focus is not important, if it doesn't last 10 minutes! But yeah, I also see a lot of out of focus shots on movies. Certainly when seen on a big screen, most defects amplify horribly!

I work for a short-film festival, we have a video section and some short-films contain over-exposed areas. Full white skies are a classic. When watched in a monitor or on a tv, it seems less objectionable. When projected with a good projector, that white zones scream "this is too light" and the whole theater gets bathed with light...

Cinematography, so many factors, near impossible to have them ALL under control!!! ;-DD

[Don Miller]

Originally Posted by Evan Donn

I've recently been noticing just how many shots are actually out of focus in major films - or shots that were obviously slightly out of focus but have been unsharp-masked back to an acceptable level of detail but now have haloing, etc as a side effect. I'm pretty confident I'm the only one in the theater really paying attention to that kind of thing, and even when I'm aware of it as long as the story, acting, etc work I usually just note it and then forget about it - and that's the bottom line. I'd much rather watch a great performance with a little aliasing on the actor's jacket than a perfect image with bad dialogue and wooden acting.

And the sound track is 98.6% of video anyways. Really just a couple of blurry bumps on screen is all that's needed :)

The worst focus I remember was at the beginning of HD television. The first year they shot prime time in HD they shot wide aperture and focus was everywhere except where intended. I often wonder if it was the equipment or the older cameramen just didn't see well enough for the new tech.

[Wayne Avanson]

Originally Posted by Evan Donn

I've recently been noticing just how many shots are actually out of focus in major films - or shots that were obviously slightly out of focus but have been unsharp-masked back to an acceptable level of detail but now have haloing, etc as a side effect. I'm pretty confident I'm the only one in the theater really paying attention to that kind of thing, and even when I'm aware of it as long as the story, acting, etc work I usually just note it and then forget about it - and that's the bottom line. I'd much rather watch a great performance with a little aliasing on the actor's jacket than a perfect image with bad dialogue and wooden acting.

I've been doing the same over the past few months. I thought at first it was intentional, but some examples I've seen in major films have been 'just soft enough to be wrong, but not soft enough to be intentionally arty'
Glad others have noticed too, I thought it was just me…

Avey