Moviegoers who subscribe to major streaming services like Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney Plus will soon be able to benefit from an upgrade to the Filmmaker Mode picture preset that lets them watch movies on their TV at the same level of quality as the director. of the film intended. .
This news came during a session LG hosted last week for TV reviewers to get an up-close look at the new G3 OLED TV. The talks included a briefing by Mike Zink of the UHD Alliance, an industry group whose members span the Hollywood production, technology and consumer electronics communities. While Zink mainly provided an overview of the group's business, he also mentioned that a Dolby Vision Filmmaker mode is being rolled out for TV manufacturers. To understand why this is important, we'll first need to cover Filmmaker Mode and why it's important.
Filmmaker Mode is a standardized picture preset found on top 4K TVs from manufacturers such as LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Hisense, and Vizio, and was developed by the UHD Alliance in response to filmmakers (Martin Scorsese and Denis Villenueve se are among its biggest advocates). ) who were tired of seeing their movies poorly played on TV. Inaccurate colors and unnatural motion handling were two of the main sticking points for these directors, but there were also concerns about maintaining a film's original aspect ratio and removing aggressive image sharpening and reducing of noise.
Filmmaker Mode solves all of these problems, allowing viewers to watch movies the way their directors intended with little effort beyond selecting a specific preset image on their television. And while Filmmaker mode is generally a good choice for watching all kinds of programming, it has a key limitation in that it can't be used to watch programs with Dolby Vision high dynamic range.
When watching Dolby Vision movies, TVs automatically switch to Dolby Vision picture mode. One TCL 6 series model I recently reviewed, for example, uses its Dolby Vision IQ mode by default, though Dolby Vision Dark and Dolby Vision and Normal options are also available. The difference between these is that IQ mode uses sensors in the TV to adjust image brightness based on the ambient light level in the viewing environment, while Dark and Normal are fixed presets for daytime and nighttime viewing, respectively. .
Of these, the preset that most resembles 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 disables rendering modes that add motion interpolation (the source of the dreaded "soap opera") and high levels of image sharpening and noise reduction.
Dolby Vision Dark, as the name suggests, is, like Filmmaker Mode, for viewing in a dark or dim room, much like the one the director sat in when his movie was mastered for home video or broadcast. But not everyone likes to watch in a cave-like environment, which is why the Dolby Vision Normal and IQ presets exist. In both cases, at least on the TCL 6 series TV, high levels of motion processing are applied and Dolby Vision Normal shifts the color temperature to a less accurate mode. The result is a picture that would have Martin Scorsese and Denis Villeneuve gagging, and we're not even going to bring the situation to Tom Cruise's attention.
Dolby Vision Filmmaker Mode... to the rescue?
We don't yet know the details of the Dolby Vision Filmmaker mode beyond what was briefly discussed at the LG TV event. It was apparently approved at the end of 2022, and for this reason, it won't appear in any new sets for 2023, although 2024 is possible.
What makes a Dolby Vision Filmmaker mode important is that the current set of TV presets for watching Dolby Vision shows is compromised to some degree. Dolby Vision IQ is a good option because it automatically compensates for ambient lighting in the room, but it's not the same as Filmmaker mode, as it adds motion processing to images. True, you can adjust the settings in Dolby IQ mode to remove motion tweening, but that defeats the purpose of a preset – something that, like Filmmaker mode, viewers can simply select and expect to see an accurate, approved presentation. by the director.
What's at play here is that preset modes like Dolby Vision IQ and Dolby Vision Normal make images brighter, but in doing so they accentuate the shake and blurry artifacts inherent in images shot at 24fps. Motion tween processing can successfully remove these artifacts, which is why they are applied in these modes. But motion tweening also makes movies look like daytime soap operas, one of the main reasons the Hollywood community has been pushing for a filmmaker mode.
Ideally, a Dolby Vision Filmmaker mode would bring the benefits of Dolby IQ, automatically adjusting brightness based on the ambient lighting in a room, and possibly combining it with variable frame rate motion processing, something to the effect of TrueCut technology. Motion used to create Avatar: The Waterway. TrueCut Motion is a "motion grading" tool used in film post-production that allows you to variably adjust the frame rate to reduce the visual impact of shake and blur without making motion unnatural. After seeing it in action when I caught Avatar: The Way of Water in an IMAX theater (as well as a follow-up demo at CES 2023), its visual benefits were crystal clear.
I have no idea what Dolby has in mind for the Dolby Vision Filmmaker mode, as details about this have not been released beyond the technical and manufacturing communities. But if you can somehow strike a balance between the precision of a director's vision and the potential for greater flexibility in home viewing conditions, that's a welcome development.