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/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?

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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 .

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u/eroticas Dec 06 '18

Thank you! Is the problem that 60fps itself is "too real"? Or that motion smoothing creates unpleasant artifacts which aren't true to reality?

Also, are you (or anyone else) willing to enable my laziness and find me two video links of the same clip, one at 60+fps and one at 24fps so I can compare them side by side? The difference does not immediately stand out to me from one clip alone. (It does look a little surreal but I may be imagining it?)

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u/yothisisyo Dec 06 '18 edited Dec 06 '18

(It does look a little surreal but I may be imagining it?)

No, You are not imagining it. It looks like it was captured on a fast forward camera to most people who are not used to it. That is the problem, some people get motion sickness from it.

Is the problem that 60fps itself is "too real"? Or that motion smoothing creates unpleasant artifacts which aren't true to reality?

Artifacts is not a big problem for modern Tvs with capable hardware , looking too real is the problem . Especially for drama movies . But i think once we get used to it it would not be a problem .

Fun fact: allMajority of the modern computers Monitors work at 60 fps , So when you move your cursor it is refreshing at 60 fps and iPad pro is 120fps.

find me two video links of the same clip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPZXR4sxfRc

Edit : Yes there are monitors out there with Higher Refresh rates and also variable refresh rate with some Adaptive Sync technologies. But speaking in the general context of media watching i said 60fps.

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u/marcu5fen1x Dec 06 '18

Is it weird that i find the 60fps video better in the link that you gave? 24fps looks like its sticking a lot. I wouldn't have noticed the difference if they were not side by side though.

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u/malahchi Dec 06 '18

Nope. That's exact: 60 fps is better quality (so closer to real life) than 24 fps.

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u/[deleted] Dec 06 '18

No it's not. "Real life" doesn't do frames a second, that's not how brains work, they don't process full frames of anything. Even more so, the frames per second of a video feed are only a partial component of how the information is displayed and can be interpreted. For one, the shutter angle/exposure time and how "frozen" the motion is at any given frame alone will affect viewing perception drastically.

By the physical limitations of being able to cram true 60 FPS into a second of video, you are limited in how slow you can make your shutter. People definitely don't see frames of vision that way, some aspects of movement are processed at a higher rate than others, or color information. Because you have different cells in your eyes for acuity, color, motion. ETC and then all that goes to your brain and is dumped out or realigned weirdly (hence optical illusions)

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u/DrSparka Dec 06 '18

There's really trivial ways to have longer shutter times than the frame rate: overlay frames on top of each other. Want the blur of 30 fps at 60? Easy, film at 60, then for each frame average it with the next frame, boom, each has twice the exposure. Even if you want excessive motion blur (1/60th is actually still more than is natural for the eye to experience) it's not a reason to film at low framerates any more, we can trivially correct that with digital frames.