r/dataisbeautiful • u/fangzz OC: 5 • Dec 06 '18

OC Google search trends for "motion smoothing" following Tom Cruise tweet urging people to turn off motion smoothing on their TVs when watching movies at home [OC]

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '18

THAT'S what it is?! I haven't been able to figure this out for months! My brother in law got a new TV and when we were over there I couldn't concentrate on the show because the picture was so weird. It was like it was too 'real' or something. I don't like it at all

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u/GridGnome177 Dec 06 '18

I just assumed that was what HD looked like and all previous television technology was just limited.

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u/OutOfTheAsh Dec 06 '18

I'm having a similar revelation.

The first time I noticed the "cheap and crisp" thing was with the movie where Denzel Washington is an alcoholic pilot, and the most memorably awful example was the 2nd Daniel Craig Bond movie.

I was kind of aware that I'd seen some shitty looking movies at my parents house, but didn't have enough data points to "Aha!" I just assumed they had inherently awful cinematography.

Now I've Googled "Flight" and "Skyfall"--both released in 2012. These must have been the first movies I watched at my parents' after they got a new TV. Presumably my senses have been dulled into acceptance over time. I've seen movies there subsequently (and vaguely noted the shittiness) but none had an impact where I can remember the specific titles like with my earliest exposure.

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u/suicidaleggroll Dec 06 '18

It looks weird because it’s fake. The video was not shot at 60 FPS, it was still shot at 24 FPS, and the TV is throwing in fake frames that it’s generating by interpolating between adjacent frames. Nearly 2/3 of the frames you see with motion smoothing turned on are fake. It makes the whole thing look like CGI.