IF you’ve forked out hundreds or even thousands for a posh TV, don’t let a silly settings mistake ruin your picture.
There’s a controversial TV setting that top directors absolutely hate – and as a sensible telly fan, I listen and turn it off. You should too.
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It’s called Motion Smoothing and – as the name suggests – it smooths out motion.
You’ll generally notice this during fast-paced action scenes, for instance.
Sounds fairly harmless, right? Well not according to movie buffs who complain that it creates an unnatural effect.
If you’re looking to turn it off, it might also be called Motion Interpolation on your TV.
WHAT IS MOTION SMOOTHING?
Modern TVs will often have a refresh rate of 60Hz.
That means that every second, your TV will refresh the image that it’s showing on screen 60 times.
So if you have a lovely piece of content that was also filmed at 60 frames per second then it’ll match up perfectly and look very smooth.
That’s because the screen is refreshing perfectly in sync with the content that you’ve got.
But the problem is that movies are typically either shot at – or produced at – 24 frames per second.
This results in a cinematic effect that we’ve got used to over many years.
And it’s how directors typically envision their movies and want them to be seen.
Motion Smoothing creates artificial frames on a piece of, say, 24fps footage to bring it up to the refresh rate of the TV.
It uses computing trickery to “guess” what the in-between frames might look like.
And then these fake frames are added in so that you have an artificial 60fps that matches the refresh rate on your TV.
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There’s seemingly no end of Hollywood insiders who say this ruins the cinematic feel of a movie.
Back in 2018, Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise complained about the feature, saying: “The unfortunate side-effect is that it makes most movies look like they were shot on high-speed video rather than on film.”
And Star Wars director Rian Johnson and Hollywood legend Martin Scorsese have also urged TV fans not to use it.
Even Samsung has admitted that for watching movies, it’s worth turning motion smoothing off: “Motion smoothing features eliminate ghosting and blurring that occurs from fast moving images.
“On Samsung TVs, these are known as Auto Motion Plus or Picture Clarity.
“These motion smoothing settings look great on live TV, like sporting events or parades, which are filmed at 30 frames per second.
“Most movies, however, are filmed at 24 frames per second and are not intended to be viewed with these features.
“When turned on, this causes the dreaded soap opera effect.”
THE BETTER WAY
There’s an even better solution than just turning motion smoothing off.
Filmmaker mode is a long overdue and welcome innovation.
Martin Scorsese
Many TVs now support something called Filmmaker Mode, or FMM, created by the UHD Alliance.
It changes a whole host of your TV’s settings including, unsurprisingly, switching off motion smoothing.
“Modern televisions have all kinds of incredible possibilities in terms of their technical capabilities,” said Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan.
“But that also means that we need to be sure that the original intent of the filmmaker is carried through to the presentation.”
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And Martin Scorsese (who directed Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street), said: “Most people are watching these classic films at home rather than movie theaters.
“And the filmmaker mode is of particular importance when presenting these films, which have specifications unique to being shot on film.
“Including the size of the frame, their aspect ratios, their approach to light and shadow, to color or black and white.
“In each case, absolutely specific and unique to the given film. Filmmaker mode is a long overdue and welcome innovation.”
WHERE CAN YOU GET FILMMAKER MODE?
Some of the TV brands that serve up FMM include:
- BenQ
- Hisense
- LG
- Panasonic
- Philips
- Samsung
- Vizio
But it’ll depend on your specific model – just go into your TV settings to see if you have it.
So you’ll want to make sure you’ve got that set up to override any other settings you’re using on your TV when watching movies – including if you’re plugging in a Roku or Amazon Fire Stick.
