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Answerman - Why Are Motion-Smoothing Televisions So Terrible For Anime?


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Sacto0562



Joined: 12 Jun 2010
Posts: 288
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:12 pm Reply with quote
On my Sony KDL-40EX500 dating from 2010, the Motionflow functionality is turned off by default. The problem with turning it on is that it makes movies look like a high-res soap opera. It's especially bad with older anime like Dirty Pair, since it gives it an "unnatural" look to any motion. .
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:55 pm Reply with quote
Top Gun wrote:
Eh, there's a pretty fundamental difference between framerates in games vs. movies/TV, and I doubt that most gamers who build high-performance rigs to maximize FPS would automatically favor the same with produced content they watch. (They're certainly vehemently opposed to "fake" refresh rates like those generated by interpolation.) Higher FPS values in a game have a legitimate practical benefit: more frames being rendered means smoother performance and potentially heightened situation awareness, which can be critical for genres like shooters. In contrast, varying the framerate of a movie isn't really anything more than an aesthetic choice. I saw the first Hobbit movie in 48 FPS, and while I didn't flat-out hate it, it was definitely a jarring experience that I didn't bother repeating for the remaining parts.


That's a good point. I didn't really think about if they might have different standards between interactive media and non-interactive media. (Then again, maybe they don't consume any non-interactive media to begin with.)

I know someone who will not play any games below the maximum allowed framerate, with a preference for 60 fps or higher. He's into the technical side of recording and uploading gameplay videos to YouTube, and he treats recording videos and viewing videos with the same standard: He feels bugged if a video he watches is below 60 frames per second, especially if the game can genuinely run at 60 frames per second. But I never asked him about his thoughts on watching TV and movies (except that he rarely consumes either), so I think I should.
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5521
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 1:13 am Reply with quote
Quote:
(The human eye has a sample rate of roughly 60-80 times per second, so beyond that, there's not much perceptible difference.)


This isn't entirely accurate. In fact, there's a lot of evidence to suggest humans can "see" well above 1000fps. There's a lot of factors but it seems Top gun provided good info on that already
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walw6pK4Alo



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 8:49 am Reply with quote
I have my television set to have it on for the digital cable and off when signal is coming from the computer or BD player. I think the motion interpolation is fine for news, sports, and most TV series I watch through cable.
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MrTerrorist



Joined: 20 Oct 2010
Posts: 1348
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 10:01 am Reply with quote
Thank you for this question and answer.
I always wonder for a long time why TV Shows and Movies look "bright and smooth" while soap operas and news shows looked "bland and rough". So it has to do with the former going 24 fps while the later going 30 fps.

This has finally help solve that question. Thanks again.
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peno



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 349
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 10:37 am Reply with quote
I must admit I am one of those people who can't tell difference between interpolation on and off. But, since I can't tell a difference, I am keeping it off, since it's useless feature for me. Sharpness, on the other hand, is feature I can't live without. It may be because I have bad sight, but when I have sharpness off, the picture is way too blurry, especially on SD picture, which unfortunately is still majority of TV airing in my country. So, usually, I am keeping sharpening a little over half.
What I hate more about default settings of TVs, than interpolation on, is how unnaturally lively the picture usually is on default settings, to the point when human skins are orange, so the people look like aliens from really bad sci-fi. I don't understand why they can't set the picture on realistic colours.


Last edited by peno on Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:36 am; edited 1 time in total
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
Posts: 3804
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:22 am Reply with quote
Televisions often ship with the "vivid" mode enabled. This helps retailers display sets in places like Best Buy with strong overhead lighting. I find it too bright, and too blue, and either choose an alternative color scheme from the options provided or adjust the set to my own liking.
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BigHeadClan



Joined: 21 Oct 2013
Posts: 283
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:37 am Reply with quote
Hmm I'll have to test this myself as I've noticed that watching TV and anime at my buddy's place always seems to feel like I'm watching this in fast forward.
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Mr. sickVisionz



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 2171
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:45 am Reply with quote
I hate this stuff. If the content is made at a higher FPS I can accept it easier but I hate when it's normal FPS and then the fakeness is turned on. Even if the movement didn't look fake, it glitches up so often and it seems like something about the codec used in streaming media makes it exceptionally terrible for streamed content that looks fine at normal FPS.
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UrQuan3



Joined: 05 Jan 2014
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:22 pm Reply with quote
Pretty much my opinion. I actually got to blind-test that one by accident. Bought a new Samsung TV, hooked it up, and didn't make it 15 seconds into the first show before going "Oh my God, that looks horrible!" I then spent an hour online figuring out what the heck was causing all that stuttering and killed it.

The show was "Tenchi Muyo - War on Geminar" BluRay, for those wondering.

Now, for things that can actually source/create higher framerates like games, I can tell a very large difference going from 30 to 60 fps. I also see a nice, but smaller improvement going from 60 to 120fps. I have never gotten to test higher, but I am a big fan of 120.
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Sahmbahdeh



Joined: 05 May 2015
Posts: 712
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:10 pm Reply with quote
Hm, this is interesting, as I have never really had any problems watching anime at 60fps. Live action looks terrible, to be sure, but I think animation looks fine. I recently rewatched the Garden of Sinners film series on bluray, and the only thing the upped frame rate did was make the panning shots way smoother, which is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
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0nsen



Joined: 01 Nov 2014
Posts: 256
PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 1:10 pm Reply with quote
Hm... I like high frame rates and sharpness. I hate grain, though. Any feature of TVs that can get rid of grain?

PS: https://aww.moe/7f8phc.mp4
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peno



Joined: 06 Jul 2016
Posts: 349
PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 4:30 pm Reply with quote
Grain is salt and pepper of old movies. It makes them realistic looking. I dunno about feature in TVs to get rid of grain, but unfortunately, a lot of HD remasters of old movies went through degrain filter and I really hate that, since the results are often awful. Of course, too much grain can be bad, but if creators of new masters doesn't have quality source, why pretend they have and apply some artificial filter, whose results are often questionable?
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Naiera



Joined: 21 Nov 2004
Posts: 42
Location: Denmark
PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:43 pm Reply with quote
Motion smoothing crap is terrible for EVERYTHING. Not just anime or any other particular source or form of entertainment.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 10:34 pm Reply with quote
Naiera wrote:
Motion smoothing crap is terrible for EVERYTHING. Not just anime or any other particular source or form of entertainment.


The optimist in me says that motion-smoothing is simply something new whose potential hasn't been fully understood yet and is a technology with a lot of rough edges, and that eventually, something created with more refined motion-smoothing in mind will appear (if it hasn't already) that will look marvelous with it.

As it stands though, using motion-smoothing on something not made with it in mind is like trying to fry chicken by microwaving it (that is, using the wrong tool to create something), or using a synthesizer from the 80's to replicate orchestral Beethoven (that is, the technology hadn't yet advanced very far so its uses are limited).

(I would argue that there are some animated TV shows right now that do use it quite well, but they're limited mostly to parallax in panning shots.)
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