Mat Kelcey’s slow movie player is an interesting application of e-ink technology. E-ink displays are known for their low power consumption, high contrast, and readability in various lighting conditions, but they are typically limited to displaying black and white or grayscale images. Another downside of the E Ink displays is their low refresh rates. All of these notwithstanding, as Hackaday pointed out, it is impressive that Kelcey was able to adapt the technology to display color frames from a movie like Alien. It sounds like a lot of effort went into optimizing the display settings to achieve the best possible results.
When displaying images on a screen that can only show black or white pixels, the common method is to use dithering. This involves manipulating the relative densities of black and white to create the illusion of a more complex image. However, simply using a dithering algorithm doesn’t always result in a high-quality image. Mat Kelcey, who created a very slow movie player using a high-resolution e-ink display, explains the limitations of dithering and provides numerous visual examples to support his explanation.
An important factor to consider is the e-ink display used, as altering the contents on the screen requires a significant amount of effort. The process of changing the display can sometimes result in an unattractive visual output. A slow-motion video player strives to display each frame in a sophisticated and elegant manner and rewriting the entire screen for every frame would lead to unappealing transitions, which is not desirable.
The challenge that Mat had to overcome was two-fold. Firstly, he needed to find a way to dither a frame that not only looked great but also minimized the number of pixels changed from the previous frame. This presented an interesting problem that he decided to solve using an innovative approach. He trained a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) to generate the dithers, with the aim of striking a balance between the best image quality and minimal pixel change from the previous frame. The results of his efforts are impressive, as the visuals are of high quality, even when there are sudden changes in scene contrast to deal with. For those interested in the code, all of it can be sourced from the GitHub repository here.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
