The two linked clips (of the same scene) certainly look different to my eye, with the second one being far more like what I’m used to in motion pictures. That said, it’s very difficult for me to pin down just what is different, to me. And clearly one is the result of processing done on the other, but which one is which?
Without getting as technical as others here (couldn’t if I tried!), I’d posit that there’s something of an “Uncanny Valley” effect going on. The visual effects (and that includes virtually everything happening around the actors here) are realistic enough that we don’t register them as obviously fake, yet not realistic enough to trick our brains that we’re seeing actual reality. The resulting in-between-ness causes a cognitive dissonance, which may be what you’re labeling “weird.”
My guess (like so others have said) would also be that the “weirdness” comes from the higher frame rate. From the fact that it’s an unusual presentation of a pretty well known, otherwise conventional movie clip, and that note that they’ve seen " films on display TVs in stores" that looked the same way—I’ve seen quite a number of TVs in store electronics sections over the last few years set up to show off the frame interpolation effect with demo movies, which seems a plausible thing for the OP to run into as well.
On another angle to the weirdness, or perhaps a contributing factor, would be the number of effects elements in that scene. In just my own, limited, experience, I’ve noticed that CGI and other heavy visual effects in live action films not seeming to “mesh” well—possibly due to how they were rendered, or composited in shot, and how the interpolation software works with them. In the OP’s “Avengers” clip, in particular, a shot of Iron Man flying towards the camera didn’t quite seem to consistently mesh up, framerate wise, with a large alien pursuing him.
This doesn’t seem to be much as a problem with fully animated CGI films I’ve seen play at high frame rates—which might be confirmation bias on my part, or a sort of buffering from any “uncanny valley” effect by the cartoonishness of the medium, or the scenes from animated films generally being “shot” (that is, rendered) rather than being composited together from lots of different elements, like you might see in an effects-heavy live action movie.
I might also guess that the type of camera work and editing done for an action film intended for 24-fps might look jarring or overly frenetic when viewed at a higher frame rate, adding to the sense of “weird.”
But one further thought…depending on how much greenscreen work or reshoots were done in the OP’s linked scene, quite a bit of it might indeed not have been filmed outdoors under natural daylight, and the higher frame rate just makes it more noticeable!
This seems very unmistakeably to be an example of the soap opera effect, esp. clearly when comparing the two otherwise identical clips.
I am fascinated by the soap opera effect. I can’t figure out what is wrong with what I’m looking at, though I know what causes it, and I know it’s wrong.
Yeah, to reiterate, there have been two different links to two different clips of this same scene posted (from the OP and from post #6), and one shows the effect and the other doesn’t. So the effect can’t be due to the camera movement or to overuse of special effects or anything like that, because those are the same in both versions.
Yes! That’s it. Just did some reading up on it. WTF Just Happened: My New HDTV Makes Movies Look Unnaturally Smooth | WIRED Thanks, everyone.
But can the impact of the effect be greater depending upon the original source’s use of camera movement or special effects? I’m guessing that the volume of interpolated frames causes more of an issue in special effects laden scenes, putting in actual signal that conflicts with that which our brains normally create to fill in the microgaps.
When I look at the first clip, it’s like all the actors are in super sharp focus and really well lit, but everything else is just a tiny bit less sharp and bright. It is a bit weird to me, too.
The first clip is 60fps, the second isn’t. This was answered in the second reply.
It’s the same effect that was in the Hobbit movies.
Yeah, that’s what I perceive, as well. It’s kind of like the actors are the only real thing, and everything else is green screened (I mean, yes, I’m sure much of it actually is green screened, but the actors just “pop out” from the backgrounds in some subtle way, and I don’t mean depth-of-field effects or anything like that. That I’m very familiar with and that looks fine and natural to me. There’s just something a little bit odd.)