Noonan

I'm late to the party on this one but I just now have a TV it applies to. I'm not sure if there's an official name for the feature but what's everyone's opinion on the video feature which "smooths" (how my TV calls it) the frame rate, making the picture look quite different. To me it makes it look like it's raw video rather than post-processed film, or something similar?

Seems to be common these days so I was curious how others felt about it? I ended up turning it off after a couple hours of using the new set. I don't think I could get used to it.

kefrank

I can't stand it. To me it's akin to colorizing a black and white movie or chopping the original aspect ratio.

Noonan

Glad I'm not alone. Is there a name for this feature for future reference?

When it's on, I feel like I'm actually watching people get filmed on a studio set rather than characters in the show's world. Hard to explain...

wishbone

Odd question about picture clarity

Noonan

Thanks; good info. Happy to see I'm in the majority.

Obi-Wanma

Turn it off. Next topic

milo bloom

Garbage - turn it off.

big e

The official name, as far as I can tell, is "motion smoother." You may hear the effect it has on video referred to as "the soap opera effect." It gets no love from me; I hate the feature. Why does it even exist in the first place? It seems like such an odd option.

DWilson

I was sort of fascinated by it at first when I saw it on a store display, -I just couldn't figure out how it was doing that, making it look so different, like video-tape. Of course, then I noticed the glitching in the movement (you see a similar thing when cable channels artificially speed up a TV show) and I lost interest.
A friend of mine loves it, though, and that's his standard setting. It's effective with reality shows.
I believe the feature is there to fix the artifacts that occur when you watch Sports or other events when there's a lot of motion and flashing lights.

slybone

Apparently it was conceived to be used with video games. I'm not a gamer myself, so who knows, maybe it's great for that, but I know that for movies it just needs to stay off!

Alan Smithee

Video games usually need any processing options turned off just because they introduce delay into the display, meaning that your game is unplayable since what you're seeing on the screen is a split-second after it actually happened in your game system.

I find the feature a bit amusing, I've used it for a few things like kinescopes of live TV shows (filmed off a monitor, before videotape was available), YouTube uploads of video material at a lower frame rate (it almost restores it back to how it should look) and selfishly on a few concert videos that were shot on video intentionally at a lower frame rate- although that's how it's meant to look, I think it looks awful. If you shoot something on video it should be 30fps, a lower frame rate doesn't make it look like film, just crap.

Sonic

I confess I get a huge kick out of Auto Motion Plus on my Samsung. It makes me feel that I am behind the scenes. The first time I witnessed it was at PC Richards on a Samsung they were playing Transformers 2 Blu-Ray with Auto Motion Plus and my jaw freaking dropped. It looked uncanny and so crisp.

Same with San Andres 4K and others looks pretty amazing real live action.

Eddie W

The thing that drives me crazy about this 'feature' it's that it's enabled as the default in almost all TV's. Something that changes the picture this drastically for the worse should be something you have to turn on, not turn off. As a result most people don't even know they're watching it. They just think that's the way HD looks.

On my LG I have to turn this off on every input & every picture setting. It's ridiculous.

Josh-da-man

Keep it turned off unless you're watching sports.

And even then...

Rypro 525

wouldn't auto smoothing make instant replays look goofy too?

Alan Smithee

Yes, plus the commercials- that's how I can tell when restaurants and places like that have it on.

Incidentally, I am no longer speaking to my uncle because on Thanksgiving I saw he had the smooth motion turned on and he yelled at me when I attempted to turn it off. The guy is a professional photographer too- but he's also a Trump supporter.

Dan

I’ll only turn it off when someone asks me to; which three people did during Christmas.

You don’t fuck with another man’s television. You just don’t do it.

Deftones

Yup.

Only time I ever dream of turning it on is during football. My Sony has a specific mode for football. Otherwise, keep that shit off my TV

Rypro 525

question while i'm at it, a TV with "Motion Rate 240" is also glorified motion smoothing right? that should be turned off if need be?

Dan

The best thing to do is look up your TV on rtings.com and see what settings they recommend.
But yes, turn that off.

Deftones

Those #'s are all marketing bullshit. Most TVs are either 60 Hz or 120 Hz. Anything other than that is made up bullshit to trick consumers.

Alan Smithee

24hz is the proper rate for movies, 60 for most American video (NTSC) and 50hz for European (PAL). It would be interesting to see a true 240hz format, but in that case the material would be INTENDED to be seen at that frame rate.

Robot Porter

Back in the early days of broadcast HD, this feature did help when watching sports. Which could be blocky or blurry. Nowadays that's rarely a problem.

Of course, it will make everything look like 30 fps video. But that wasn't a problem with sports. As that's how we've always watched sports on TV. It was a problem with movies, creating what many call the "soap opera effect". Because soap operas are the main dramatic programming in the US that was shot on video.

Funnily enough, a similar process was used when restoring old episodes of "Doctor Who". Because it was shot on video. But the only surviving copies from the 1960s are 16mm filmed recordings of the video tape original. So a process called VidFire was used to restore the video look to these episodes.

Alan Smithee

That was also done with the DVD set of the Ed Sullivan Shows with Elvis Presley. That's actually a decent use for this "feature"- I've turned it on when watching other stuff that's from kinescopes. Video-based material already looks fine without it though- certainly no reason for it to default to being on.

slybone

Christopher Nolan wants TV manufacturers to make it easier for consumers to turn off Smooth Motion.

https://www.thewrap.com/christopher-...ion-smoothing/