Motion Smoothing Is Ruining Cinema
vulture.com
vulture.com
The appearance of video is harsh and artificial. It's cold, but also at times exceptionally clean, crisp and vivid.
Music videos (as the very term suggests) often display a mastery of this style of production, which, when met with intent, can prove evocative in its own way.
If you approach movies knowing that the motion smoothing is a side effect of the monitor, it's actually an interesting way to rewatch old movies and shows. It has a surreal effect, and the movies themselves are otherwise impossible to truly change. It is unquestionably the technology introducing a new layer of distortion.
Which can only mean one thing: the preference is generational, and with time it might just so happen that a generation gap will erase all knowledge of the way things were, and there will arrive a new normal, distorted and alien to those who grew up exposed to the original norms.
Motion smoothing just doesn't look better, especially when it is poorly implemented (the norm) - the motion tends to speed up and slow down, which is worse than the judder it is supposed to fix.
Even properly sourced hi frame rate material looks bad - I saw the Hobbit in HFR and it was difficult to watch the seemingly fake production - my mind could no longer be tricked because there was so much detail in each second for it to reason with. Nevermind the extra lengths that Peter Jackson had to go through to properly light the film, and the extra detail needed in the set work, costumes and makeup.
Change my mind!
That said, content needs to be authored with higher frame-rates in mind. Movies shot at 24FPS are reviewed, edited and produced according to the expectation it will be viewed that way.
Like you were implying, they were shot, edited, and delivered with those limitations in mind. Of course, they were done for the cinema and home theater is a close approximation.
I remember hearing cinematographers talk about working with IMAX and panning was something they specifically brought up. If you shot something in a way you would for 35mm (normal movies), things may jump 10+ feet between each frame. So you have to go much slower or choose not to use a pan. The same attention would be done if they used other tools like shooting digital or on video or were shooting for television.
The only problem was that you pretty much had to watch it in dark room (LCD before LED backlighting).
During the day I had to switch back to vivid.
I will say that most aspect ratio problems have gotten better over the years (excepting maybe youtube)
> motion smoothing is fundamentally ruining the way we experience film
and fluid perception of reality is ruining this journos life I bet
A few like James Cameron and Peter Jackson have tried. Nobody liked it because it looked like a soap opera. I'm not against higher fps, but film has some historical limitations it clings to that remind us it's "film" such as 24fps and widescreen.
The big complaint is that it's on by default--it's not something people are (explicitly) choosing.
Personally, I hate motion smoothing. It's just a gimmick to add a bullet list to the box. I figure it might be useful for sports (I would say video games, but it generally introduces a noticeable lag). It sucks that it's on by default and not consistent or obvious to turn off. If you're happy to opt-in, you do you.
Standard for film is a 180degree shutter (half open half closed when capturing). Originally, you had to physically advance the film to the next frame while the shutter was closed. Video would be effectively always open giving you a longer blur. If you shoot at a 60fps instead of 24fps you're going to have 2.5x less blur (and also 2.5x less light). So downsampling wouldn't look right at 24 or 30fps.
Nope, it's also terrible for sports.
I would guess they use some (advanced) interpolation. If so, isn’t the problem one of a) interpolating twice instead of in one go and or b) using lower quality software inside the tv?