Filmmakers hate it.
Viewers do, too.
So why is it the default setting on almost every new TV in America?
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Each was playing, on a loop, a demo designed to showcase its quality and cast a spell.
Whether youve realized it or not, youve likely watched a movie in motion smoothing.
And however well-intentioned it was, most people hate it.
Motion smoothing transforms an absorbing movie or narrative TV show into something uncanny.
The very texture of what youre watching changes.
In other words, motion smoothing is fundamentally ruining the way we experience film.
Other filmmakers had been protesting the technology for years.
Martin Scorsese wrote to encourage her.
In a 2017 tweet,The Last Jedidirector Rian Johnson likened motion smoothing to liquid diarrhea.
That seems like a funny oversight, but its not surprising.
But when you finally have it at home, its really not suitable.
(Its also called something different depending on the manufacturer.)
Once people get used to something, they get complacent and that becomes whats normal, Morano says.
And what films were supposed to look like will be lost.
TVs, however, have always had a higher refresh rate per second, denoted in hertz.
And sports and live events are already shot at higher frame rates, so they need less smoothing.
But even if motion smoothing worked perfectly, it would still present problems.
Higher frame rates have a curious effect on how we process cinematic images.
But the movie was in no way immersive.
It was the exact opposite: The acting felt stiff, the story bogus, and the filmmaking amateurish.
No major cuts or additions had been made.
And suddenly,it all kind of worked.
This could explain why movies are often portrayed as magical, transfixing phenomena on some level, they are.
With 24 frames, people liked the actors better they felt the performances were better.
In reality, it was exactly the same thing.
It seems more dreamlike, he says.
The viewer imagines more.
It looked like film rather than video, he says.
Audiences were outraged because it seemed totally disconnected from the grammar they had been accustomed to.
And that may require new forms of creativity.
Its like the difference betweenLaw & OrderandCops, says Niles.
It could possibly be the same story, but its being told a different way.
Solving the motion-smoothing debateshouldnt be that hard.
Dont make it a deep dive into the menu.
Make it like youre changing channels.
The industrys reluctance, he says, has as much to do with uncertainty as anything else.
Manufacturers dont know who to listen to.
They dont know if it should be the reviewers, their own quality-assurance lab, or user complaints.
There has been some movement of late, however.
We started talking about this with TV manufacturers several years ago, he says.
Some manufacturers, such as Vizio, have stopped setting motion smoothing as the default.
We agree with filmmakers 100 percent.
But it may be years before such technology becomes widespread.
Motion smoothing isnt going away anytime soon, anyways, and not just because people like to watch sports.
In fact, it may become something of a necessity in the not-too-distant future.
But for a lot of filmmakers, motion smoothing is a hill worth dying on.
