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Comment by jonstewart | Hacker News Reader

My mind is blown. I didn't think -anyone- could possibly like motion interpolation for watching movies. I hate it so, so much. I'm trying to understand your POV.

How do you feel about watching movies in a theater? The frame rate there is low but the screen is so much larger.

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It's even worse in theaters. The screen is HUGE. Panning motions are so bad they often give me motion sickness.

There was one movie that they showed at 48fps - I think it was The Hobbit? I've forgotten. That was amazing. Blissful. My eyes have never been so happy.

Even if I forgot the plot already.

Yep. Hate theaters for this reason. Absolutely unwatchable. My LG G3 with motion smoothing provides far better experience. Even in Avatar 2 they put some sections of it in lower frame rate for no reason and I noticed them instantly.

Avatar 2 in the 48 FPS scenes was jaw dropping, it looked so real, as if you were transported there. It does not look the same in the 24 FPS scenes and pulled me right out of the movie.

There really are a large range of opinions about this. I love high frame rate, but can't stand interpolation. I wish theaters used higher frame rates. I really enjoyed the parts of Avatar 2 that were smoother, and it felt jarring to me whenever it would switch back to low frame rates.

Probably it's just what you're used to and how much you've been trained to notice artifacts.

Movies have a different display though. Film shutters and whatnot. Helps a lot with keeping the motion from just being jerky. OLEDs don't have that, and attempts at black frame insertion don't really work there because they already struggle with brightness. Hence, a mild motion interpolation is useful.

Different display technologies need different things. No difference from CRT filters on old video games played on modern screens.

Nah, it is just that filmmakers avoid a lot of panning shots because it looks like crap.

Is anybody shooting or distributing film anymore?

Lots of people still shoot with film. But distribution will always be digital unless your screening is specifically advertising a film showing. That's usually just big Imax movies like Oppenheimer in select cities, or indie theaters showing old movies who can get access to the film.

I wish for theatre film releases to move on to HFR instead of sticking to 24 FPS which was arbitrarily set by ancient technology limits.

Even the ""HFR"" is a joke. What is 48 fps supposed to be? Every modern TV can do 120 already. Use that as a baseline.

48 allows theaters that haven't upgraded to show the movie by throwing away every other frame.

Well then, they can have that same alignment with an actual high frame rate movie at 120Hz, displaying every 5th frame.

Your mind is blown that someone might not like to watch movies at a prehistoric 24Hz on a screen that is capable of 120Hz, after video games have been running at this frame rate for a decade already?

Yes! Whenever I see motion interpolation on a TV, it gives me a sense of revulsion. It seems okay for sports, I guess?, but awful for movies, to the point where I would rather turn the TV off than watch a movie with motion interpolation. Perhaps what I'm thinking of is the 3:2 pulldown thing for 60Hz TVs and I haven't seen what it's like on a 120Hz screen?

I don't play games much, but visually I've always distinguished between games and movies. I expect them to look quite different, not at all similar.

And I thought my feelings about this were universal, and had confirmation bias from seeing postings before Thanksgiving like "if your parents' TVs look weird, here's a guide for turning off motion interpolation depending on make and model", etc. I've assumed that the whole point of motion interpolation was for new TVs to impress people with how they look for sports, that this is what sells TVs in Best Buy, and the over-application of motion interpolation to other content was an unfortunate byproduct.

How much of that high FPS or interpolated media have you seen? At first I too was jarred by it, as if it were sped up somehow, but after a few hours, I couldn't watch regular 24 FPS anymore as it literally looked like a slideshow. I distinctly remember watching Thor: Love and Thunder in theaters and when they panned over the pantheon, you literally couldn't see anything. In contrast, Avatar 2 with the 48 FPS scenes was one of the most immersive movies of my life.

A lot of lower end TVs have really bad implementations of it. Maybe try it again on a LG G3 or a Sony A95L and it might be completely different from what you remember.

I'm in agreement with them here, judder on movie screens is so bad to me it's distracting. I don't think I've had a better visual experience in a theater than at home in a long time. The screen is physically larger, but when I sit 4 feet from my TV it's the same size visually.

Audio still wins by a mile in a theater though. Though home theater audio has gotten pretty darn good. I just wouldn't know as long as I'm in an apartment.

You can also always choose when to have motion interpolation on or off. For sports and nature documentaries I think it's just better. For animation it's worse. For other films it depends, I usually prefer it in something fast and actiony, like John Wick.

Motion smoothing is great on my 120Hz TV.

Theater is fine -- I have a home theater w/ a 24p projector. I wish it had 120Hz smoothing, but at least it's not dim like my local theater.

24p content at 60Hz is really, really bad (3:2 pull down what not). At least we can agree on that. That seems to be what "turn off motion smoothing" is about, to me.

24p content at 24Hz is fine, but 120Hz is better.

EDIT: I should say that the input lag (gaming) is much greater for smoothing, so even at ~30 fps I'd run my PlayStation at 60Hz no smoothing (game mode on &c).

The problem with motion interpolation is because most of it is the cheap variety. I don't like motion blur, it is annoying, but bad motion interpolation is worse.

I like interpolation too, but it must be high quality, not the low quality that's built into TVs. For example, I use SVP 4 which does interpolation with your GPU, works great.

Movied are even worse, I can absolutely see the judder especially when panning. It is one reason I prefer to wait for home releases and will go to movies that are specifically phenomena irreplaceable at home, such as Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX.

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