Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Butterflow: motion interpolated videos from the command line (github.com/dthpham)
95 points by lsh on Feb 17, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 18 comments



Found this cool project (not mine) that uses butterflow for applying motion interpolation to Himawari-8 satellite images: https://github.com/dandelany/animate-earth

The final results look really nice https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Mlo4zfmEITcNoCpBKfEfg/pla...


Hey cool, that’s my project! Thanks for the shoutout :) happy to answer questions if you’ve got any.

BTW, here's my favorite video - a compilation of the best results with some music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lPsA8J3U0Q


I definitely noticed in these videos some color artifacts where red and blue colors bleed for short bursts. Are these inherent to butterflow or specific to this channel?


They are artifacts in the data - the different color channels that make up the image are captured at different times, so if there is any movement of the satellite between exposures, or software glitches that only affect one channel, they show up as bleeding colors in the final merged image.


This looks really cool to this casual observer. It actually uses optical flow to interpolate frames. The slow-motion demos are very impressive.

Is this the first open source software that uses this approach? I found a masters' thesis project, but it doesn't appear to be maintained.

Does anyone know if this is how slow-motion works on iphone cameras?


There are a couple of projects that use optical flow:

https://nageru.sesse.net/ https://github.com/slowmoVideo/slowmoVideo/


iPhone cameras actually record at 120/240fps rather than recording at a lower rate and interpolating.

Thank god. I don’t want the soap opera effect on my videos. Interpolation is the first thing I disable on a TV.


On TVs where it's interpolating to convert from 24fps to 60 it usually looks terrible, but slowing down a real 60fps video using motion interpolation usually looks much better, as there's less that needs guessing


Until everybody starts filming at 60/120hz, I am forced to use motion interpolation on my tv, even if it's full or artifacts. I hope it will take less than 50 years for movie technology to advance..



Did anyone try this on hand-drawn animation? How does it look? I'm not optimistic, since usually processes made for live-motion don't work that well, but going from e.g. 8 or 12 FPS to 24 FPS with no manual work would be just amazing.


I haven't, but I have used Butterflow quite a bit and it tends to really break down for frame rates below 24 as well as fast motion, though sometimes it pulls through with the right circumstance. Some clips from really old cartoons might work, but probably not the entire cartoon itself without a lot of trial, error, and editing. Even then, one might be SOL for some parts of it.

One success I had with Butterflow was upping the frame rate on the Apollo moon landing videos. It looked like a home video! lol Unfortunately I left the results on my work computer before I left the company, but with the Docker image of Butterflow and youtube-dl to get the footage, you can experiment yourself.


Stumbled across it in 2017 and created this experiment, https://twitter.com/dsvensson/status/1097072994478944256


Butterflow quit working for me on 2 different machines after upgrading ffmpeg to 4.1. I've seen similar reports elsewhere. Did anybody get it working with a fresh install using all updated libraries?


Would be cool if this can be integrated with mpv, I tried SVP but integration is a bit awkward when you just want to chill.

That said SVP is nice for 30 fps youtube videos on slower connections or just videos without a high-quality 60hz source... even without svp videos look significantly nicer in mpv than in chrome on youtube.


How does the output compare to running a video with mpv and vapoursynth to increase the frame rate? e.g., this recipe: https://gist.github.com/phiresky/4bfcfbbd05b3c2ed8645


One good application of this tech is old movies with poor frame rates. The WW1 documentary They Shall Not Grow Old uses a technique like this.


I came across Butterflow while trying to smooth out the ragged motion in anime. It didn't work out-of-the-box unfortunately, but there are other similar attempts happening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvgcCyfVVog




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: