Moire, in a big-budget movie?
- Thread starter Cracker Funk
- Start date
I've seen that preview several times on the big screen.. never noticed any moire.
I've seen this trailer in a theater and didn't notice the moire, whereas it was very obvious watching it here - I don't think it's in the original footage.
My guess is that they provided a 4k master, and yahoo movies or whoever did the original upload didn't scale it properly for the lower resolution.
If there's moire in the source video then you're right - it won't go away when you make it bigger. But it's entirely possible to have a high-res clean source that displays aliasing if it's scaled down improperly - it essentially creates the same situation as you get in camera, there's too much detail to properly display at the new lower resolution. If you use a quality scaling algorithm it will blend the values of adjacent pixels to average out the high detail. Low quality scaling usually just discards excess pixels, which gives a similar effect to line-skipping a sensor and can result in the same kinds of artifacts.
My guess is that they provided a 4k master, and yahoo movies or whoever did the original upload didn't scale it properly for the lower resolution.
If there's moire in the source video then you're right - it won't go away when you make it bigger. But it's entirely possible to have a high-res clean source that displays aliasing if it's scaled down improperly - it essentially creates the same situation as you get in camera, there's too much detail to properly display at the new lower resolution. If you use a quality scaling algorithm it will blend the values of adjacent pixels to average out the high detail. Low quality scaling usually just discards excess pixels, which gives a similar effect to line-skipping a sensor and can result in the same kinds of artifacts.
I had a revelation about moire a while back. During a shoot a model flipped a mesh scarf in the air and I saw some ugly moire, with my naked eye. Yep, moire occurs in real life even when cams aren't around. Since that shoot, moire doesn't bother me that much.
Also look at the opening of the trailer, there's a railing in the background showing aliasing! Naked human eyes do NOT see aliasing to my knowledge.
Also look at the opening of the trailer, there's a railing in the background showing aliasing! Naked human eyes do NOT see aliasing to my knowledge.
Last edited:
@ChimpPhobiaFilms:
Now I want a 5D MK III.
See, I wondered that, too - downscaling poorly would definitely cause moire, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who realized that may be the cause in the video!
Now I want a 5D MK III.
See, I wondered that, too - downscaling poorly would definitely cause moire, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who realized that may be the cause in the video!
Now I want a 5D MK III.
Then a Red Epic... then an Alexa! Then a Hollywood crew and gear! Then... the world?
Okay, does "Moire" happen when you use real film?
I'm pretty sure it doesn't, but when the film is scanned for post work, wouldn't it possibly occur then?
Unless, of course, it was completely raw and uncompressed, which Hollywood could definitely afford to work with.
It would still be compressed at some point for distribution since almost every theater is digital these days
Haha, Zensteve you're the best! That poster is very convincing, and effective (I wanna see it)! 
IDOM, thanks for the info on the down-scaling of footage. That's probably the most reasonable explanation of what happened here. I just can't imagine that a movie like this could have a DP so incompetent. So now I point my fingers at the trailer editors!
IDOM, thanks for the info on the down-scaling of footage. That's probably the most reasonable explanation of what happened here. I just can't imagine that a movie like this could have a DP so incompetent. So now I point my fingers at the trailer editors!
...now I point my fingers at the trailer editors!
Nah, you should point them at the codec engineers, we should be able to have insanely great detail that only takes up a few megs of space!
Haha, sadly that's not really possible (yet)...
Eh - The Hobbit had awful artifacting from the GoPro footage. The Bling Ring had disgusting noise all over a whole lot of the shots.
It's not necessarily down to the Cinematographer - there's any number of times it could have been introduced, and if it's playing fine on the big screen, then I would assume it's something going on in the down-scaled Yahoo Movies version.
For the record, film will not produce moire patterns, but a lousy scan, or quick scaling algorithms may introduce it (which may have been a similar case in this instance)
It's not necessarily down to the Cinematographer - there's any number of times it could have been introduced, and if it's playing fine on the big screen, then I would assume it's something going on in the down-scaled Yahoo Movies version.
For the record, film will not produce moire patterns, but a lousy scan, or quick scaling algorithms may introduce it (which may have been a similar case in this instance)
Exactly - moire/aliasing is a result of the conflict of a fixed pattern or solid line with the fixed grid pattern of an imaging device. Film doesn't have a fixed pattern, so it won't produce these effects - but at any point in the process where you introduce a grid at a lower resolution than the original source it's possible to create these kinds artifacts. It's entirely possible to avoid with proper downscaling algorithms, but the best ones require significantly more processing power than the fastest ones. In this particular case someone may have just been in a hurry and selected a faster option when they downconverted the trailer, or they may have uploaded the original to youtube and it could be that youtube is using a faster algorithm to reduce load on their servers.