Subscribed Fans best streaming service Companies like Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney Plus may soon be upgrading to Filmmaker Mode picture presets, allowing them to experience movies on TV with the same level of quality that the film director intended.
The news came during a conference LG held last week to give TV reviewers a close-up Check out the new G3 OLED TV. Proceedings include a briefing by Mike Zink of the UHD Alliance, an industry group whose membership spans the consumer electronics, technology, and Hollywood production communities. While Zink mainly outlined the group’s activities, he also mentioned that TV makers are preparing to implement the Dolby Vision filmmaker model.To understand why this is important, we first need to introduce the Filmmaker pattern, and why it Very important.
Filmmaker Mode is a standardized picture preset available at The best 4K TVs From manufacturers like LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Hisense, and Vizio, and developed by the UHD Alliance in response to film directors (Martin Scorsese and Denis Villeneuve among their biggest advocates) getting tired of See their movies on TV. Inaccurate color and unnatural motion handling were two of the main sticking points for these directors, but there were also concerns about maintaining the film’s original aspect ratio and eliminating aggressive image sharpening and noise reduction.
Filmmaker Mode solves all of these problems, allowing viewers to watch movies the way the director intended, simply by selecting a specific picture preset on the TV. While Filmmaker mode is generally a good choice for viewing a wide variety of programming, it has a key limitation in that it cannot be used to watch programming with Dolby Vision high dynamic range.
When watching a movie with Dolby Vision, the TV automatically switches to Dolby Vision picture mode. For example, a TCL 6-series model I recently reviewed uses Dolby Vision IQ mode by default, but also offers Dolby Vision Deep Color and Dolby Vision Normal options. The difference between them is that IQ mode uses sensors in the TV to adjust the picture brightness based on the ambient light level in the viewing environment, while Dark and Normal are fixed presets for nighttime and daytime viewing respectively.
Of these, the preset most similar to Filmmaker Mode is Dolby Vision Dark, which uses a warm color temperature, a setting that provides a neutral white balance for accurate color reproduction. It also turns off processing modes that add motion interpolation (the source of the dreaded “soap opera effect”) and high levels of picture sharpening and noise reduction.
Dolby Vision Dark, as the name suggests, like Filmmaker Mode, is for viewing in a dimly lit or darkened room, much like a director’s masters a film for home video or streaming distribution. But not everyone likes to watch in a cave-like environment, which is why Dolby Vision Normal and IQ presets exist. In both cases — at least on the TCL 6-Series TVs — a high level of motion processing is applied, and the Dolby Vision standard further switches the color temperature to a less accurate mode. The result is a photo that would make Martin Scorsese and Denis Villeneuve sick, and we won’t even make Tom Cruise pay attention to the situation.
Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode…to the rescue?
Aside from what was briefly discussed at the LG TV event, we don’t know the details of Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode yet. It’s apparently approved at the end of 2022, so won’t appear in any new series in 2023, although 2024 is a possibility.
Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode is important because current TV preset suites for viewing Dolby Vision programming are all affected to some extent. Dolby Vision IQ is a good option because it automatically compensates for indoor ambient lighting, but it differs from Filmmaker mode because it adds motion processing to images. True, you can tweak settings in Dolby IQ mode to remove motion interpolation, but that defeats the purpose of the presets—like Filmmaker mode, viewers can simply choose and expect an accurate, director-approved presentation.
The problem here is that preset modes like Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Vision Normal make things brighter, but in doing so they accentuate judder and blur artifacts inherent in images shot at 24 fps. Motion interpolation processes can successfully remove such artifacts, which is why they are applied in these modes. But motion interpolation also makes movies look like daytime soap operas—one of the main reasons why the Hollywood community is pushing the filmmaker mode.
Ideally, a Dolby Vision Filmmaker mode would bring the benefits of Dolby IQ – automatically adjusting brightness based on the room’s ambient lighting – and possibly combine it with variable frame rate motion processing – something like TrueCut motion technology used to create Avatar: The Way of Water. TrueCut Motion is a “motion grading” tool for film post-production that allows frame rates to be adjusted on a variable basis to reduce the visual impact of judder and blur without making motion look unnatural.see it move when i grab it Avatar: The Way of Water In IMAX theaters (and in subsequent demos at CES 2023), its visual superiority was evident.
I don’t know what Dolby has in mind for Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode, as details about it haven’t been released outside of the tech and manufacturing communities. But if it somehow strikes a balance between accurately conveying a film director’s vision and allowing for more flexibility in home viewing conditions, that would be a very welcome development.
