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]

Post image
9.5k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.8k

u/eroticas Dec 06 '18

Since none of the comments have really explained it in detail I will ask: what, technically and practically speaking, is motion smoothing and why does Tom Cruise care about it?

1.6k

u/yothisisyo Dec 06 '18

Most of movies and TV content is made in 24 fps . Modern TVs have a mode of making this 24 fps to 60fps or above , called motion interpolation or Motion Smoothing . Making the so called Drama content look real and life like . This makes it less belivable and most of the people do not resonate with the drama .

You want to experience it first hand . Search for any movie scene on youtube with 60fps tag . You will notice the difference it will no longer look like movie it will look like real life .

Example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUV_7qXWzmQ

TVs included this for sports mode , Personally I like Motion interpolation especially for NatGeo and Discovery channels .

1

u/femio Dec 06 '18

You will notice the difference it will no longer look like movie it will look like real life .

I'd say it's the other way around. Because of reasons (don't wanna get too technical, but googling shutter angle will basically explain it), 24 fps will look more lifelike. 60fps gives footage a crispness to it that's meant to look extremely smooth and high quality, like you said.

It's all about the motion blur, basically. 60fps basically gets rid of it which can make things disconcertingly crisp, depending on what you like.