Tom Cruise tweets against TV motion smoothing

I think this effect looks horrible on new TVs. Even non-video people notice something is off with this stuff. I hope more people speak up about it.
 
I am one of the ones that like the smooth look and not the judder of slow frame rates shot badly a lot of the time these days. I shoot everything at 60p and finalize there too for my masters to go to DVD or Bluray at 60i . Not shot slow frame rates since moved from film cameras to video in the early 1980's. My projects are live events so an archive not a film based on fiction so different approach in my mind. I am happy for the creative types to use anything in the book to achieve the emotional response they are looking for from the audience. So I am not against any particular frame rate but it has to be shot well. As far as TV watching I think it depends on the subject matter. If you really want to watch a film going to the cinema is a better choice than the TV anyway with much better result. Holidays shot now at 60P in HD look a lot better than the Super 8 film I shot in the 1960's !!!
 
What bothers me is that the information on proper frame rate is already embedded into the carrier signal of the video feed. If it's shot at a certain frame rate then it should be shown that way. Motion smoothing doesn't add any real information, it just "interpolates" meaning that it guesses at the in between frames.
 
Mitch Gross said:
What bothers me is that the information on proper frame rate is already embedded into the carrier signal of the video feed. If it's shot at a certain frame rate then it should be shown that way. Motion smoothing doesn't add any real information, it just "interpolates" meaning that it guesses at the in between frames.
Click to expand...

All of these "Tru Motion" or whatever the manufacturer calls them features make 24 frame material look really off. Might be okay for 60p generated sports and news but for filmed content, the judder and twitchiness looks horrendous.
 
With an argument such as that one ^ the manufacturers will respond "just wait, it's becoming better, we'll get it right eventually". So, instead of that, I would just insist that it's wrong and that any kind of smoothing, no matter how well done, is damaging and disrespecting the original material.

(I also turn it off on any home I visit, without asking, in front of everybody and without explaining how to turn it on again; I just tell them I'm making their TV look better; nobody has complained yet, and most people actually see the improvement)
 
I do not know if they always let you turn it off. I just setup a new 4k Samsung and the controls were so minimal I could not find much to change.
 
One must remember that unless the TV has a high refresh rate ( 120 or more) then 24P will have pulldown so will not be as intended anyway. A lot of the high refresh rate TV have the option of smoothing the image ( creating extra frames through interpolation to match the refresh rate of the TV ( which is mainly 60P to 120P ) or if they are 120hz they can multiply the 24P frames correctly much like a 5 blade film projector. Plasma TV with 72hz could do the same as a 3 blade projector. My Plasma and 240hz Sony have the option for film playback but a lot of lower cost TV's do not so the viewer is seeing pulldown NOT the motion as the creator intended and that I find very disturbing and prefer to smooth. Just my choice . But if one wants to see the film motion as intended go to the cinema as most TV's will not show this correctly.
 
That’s crazy. Old-ass crt tvs can show it correctly as can my 720p plasma from 2008. Seems like the new stuff should be able to do it no problem. It’s like that frog trying to escape the well that falls back down 2 feet for every three feet he climbs.
 
Ron Evans said:
One must remember that unless the TV has a high refresh rate ( 120 or more) then 24P will have pulldown so will not be as intended anyway. A lot of the high refresh rate TV have the option of smoothing the image ( creating extra frames through interpolation to match the refresh rate of the TV ( which is mainly 60P to 120P ) or if they are 120hz they can multiply the 24P frames correctly much like a 5 blade film projector. Plasma TV with 72hz could do the same as a 3 blade projector. My Plasma and 240hz Sony have the option for film playback but a lot of lower cost TV's do not so the viewer is seeing pulldown NOT the motion as the creator intended and that I find very disturbing and prefer to smooth. Just my choice . But if one wants to see the film motion as intended go to the cinema as most TV's will not show this correctly.
Click to expand...

Most TV's do pulldown well enough. I have a projector where I can do the 120hz multiplication, 24hz or 60hz pull down and I can't really tell the difference between any of them.
 
Last edited:
I agree that TV's do pulldown. That is the issue I am pointing out that this is not 24fps. It is a pulldown of 24fps. I guess it depends how sensitive one is to motion changes. Which ever pulldown is used either for a field based CRT or progressive flat panel display then it is not 24 fps as intended for film playback. Some frames of film will be displayed more than others. That is how pulldown works. The process converts every 24 frames of film to 29.94fps of video with the small time difference too. If you are a purist that should bother you as it is not as intended. Of course it works and is what most people see as film on a TV or (slightly different) computer monitor. I am not a fan of slow frame rates but pulldown is a modification of the source and what most people see on their TV's it is not what they would see as pure 24fps in the cinema. Because of the way frames repeat it has a tendency to exaggerate judder to my eyes.
 
Batutta said:
Most TV's do pulldown well enough. I have a projector where I can do the 120hz multiplication, 24hz or 60hz pull down and I can't really tell the difference between any of them.
Click to expand...

My Panasonic plasma does 60Hz and 96Hz. It can be set to treat 24p material at 60Hz with pulldown, or at 96Hz without pulldown. I can definitely see the difference between the two.
 
The 96hz option is a cool feature. If they have the double showing of the frame with the blank in between it would be pretty true to projector viewing. Wish all TVs did this.
 
im curious to see that (doubt my 2008 plasma does it). i consider myself sensitive to this stuff—before i even got into or knew what video production/framerates etc. was I could tell that, for instance, some episodes of the original twilight zone had a “live” look and most did not—but I’ve never noticed anything off about the motion in narrative material on TV.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top