!!! WinDVD 6.0 has TrimensionDNM !!!

For those of you who aren't sure what TrimensionDNM, it's a technology by Philips that does some fancy interpolation to solve the 3:2 pulldown herky jerky problems and present all NTSC material at a full 60 fps (from 24fps), and play PAL sources at 75 fps (from 25 fps).

I tested it out on WinDVD 6.0 and I have to say it's unreal!!! Everything looks so much smoother (though if that's a good or bad thing it depends on the scene). For example a lot of slower moving scenes benefit from the subtle change in smoothness, but the high motion scenes look out of this world. For example, the ROTK Region 1 disc I have is has rather jerky action scenes, courtesy of Peter Jackson's frenzied camera movements and the accompanying action onscreen + the 3:2 pulldown problem. Turning on TrimensionDNM makes the action a lot smoother...BUT every single CGI effect looks fake now...something about the high framerate and smooth motion makes the movie feel like a game! On the upside, you can really see what Aragorn and co are doing in those fast action scenes!

I'll report more when I've investigated this issue more. Read about Philips motion compensation TrimensionDNM technology here:
- EXTERNAL LINK -

AND

Download a demo here:
- EXTERNAL LINK -

Enjoy!

Isn't NTSC at 30fps???

actually the NTSC specs do not have a 30fps part, instead the vertical refresh is defined to be 60Hz, and since most regular TVs display interlaced content (alternate fields at 60fps) it became popular to classify NTSC as playing at 30fps.

Anyways, for film sources to play properly on NTSC systems, the 3:2 pulldown is used to obtain 60 fps from 24fps by displaying each frame in a 3, 2, 3, 2...sequence. On regular TVs then, every 1/60th of a second the TV updates the screen with half the lines of the 60fps content. On progressive displays at 60Hz, the content is displayed at a full 60fps instead of 60fps interlaced.

This is awful. I had no idea that the issue was this complicated. Those stupid engineers should figure out easier and better transmission technologies than we currently have. :.(

Yeah, and another thing that's even worse is de-interlacing! As you know sources shot on video (like TV shows) have fields instead of frames, so they present huge challenges for engineers to de-interlace when trying to present them on progressive displays.

I think the Faroudja engineers have done a terrific job in their adaptive deinterlacing algorithm. But for PC software players, there's still quite a ways to go. Since WinDVD 5.0, Intervideo has been offering progressive de-interlacing that's somewhat okay, but really, there's quite a bit of work to make it look good.

Lastly, I want to add a comment about the TrimensionDNM option in WinDVD 6.0 after further testing. There are some flickery artifacts onscreen very occasionally, and it happens mostly on erratic motion. I *think* it might be due to the motion prediction that's messing the up the output.

BTW Eddie, did you try out the TrimensionDNM demo I posted above?

-Chin

Chin,

I haven't had the chance because I'm using computers at my school's labs instead of my own (which are broken and in shop right now).

Eddie