BEFORE you settle down for a Christmas flick, make sure you won’t ruin it with a dodgy TV setting.
It turns out that it’s surprisingly easy to sabotage your own movie night with a common (but widely hated) telly feature.
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Directors and movie stars alike have slammed the setting, but it still appears on millions of TV sets.
It’s called Motion Smoothing, although you might find that it’s called Motion Interpolation or some other “Motion” name.
The idea is that it smoothes out motion, which doesn’t sound all too bad.
But it can create a troubling effect that plenty of TV buffs think is a killer for home cinema.
HOW DOES MOTION SMOOTHING WORK?
Motion Smoothing is a way to make the content that you’re watching look smooth.
When your TV is showing a moving picture, it’s actually just showing lots of still images very quickly to give the impression of motion.
The number of times that a TV can refresh this image is known as the refresh rate.
Modern TVs typically often have a refresh rate of 60Hz (or sometimes 120Hz). At 60Hz, your TV screen is refreshing the image 60 times every second.
Now if you’re watching a piece of content that has been produced at 60 frames per second then you have a perfect match.
But Hollywood films are often produced at 24 frames per second, which means that they don’t line up perfectly.
This mismatch creates a cinematic feel that we’ve all grown used to.
Many people think this doesn’t need fixing because it’s what we all know and love.
But Motion Smoothing does attempt to fix this mismatch by bringing the movie up to 60 frames per second.
That way, it matches the TV and creates a smooth effect.
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To do this, it’ll insert artificial frames based on computer guesswork.
TV experts regularly warn against this, so consider turning the feature off.
TRY FILMMAKER MODE INSTEAD
A best option is something called Filmmaker Mode.
It’s a special TV feature that changes a load of settings, including switching Motion Smoothing off.
Most people are watching these classic films at home rather than movie theaters.
Martin Scorcese
The feature was created by the UHD Alliance to show movies as their directors intended.
“Modern televisions have all kinds of incredible possibilities in terms of their technical capabilities,” said Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, in a promo for Filmmaker Mode.
“But that also means that we need to be sure that the original intent of the filmmaker is carried through to the presentation.”
And Martin Scorsese (who directed Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street), said: “Most people are watching these classic films at home rather than movie theaters.
WHERE CAN YOU GET FILMMAKER MODE?
Some of the TV brands that serve up FMM include:
- BenQ
- Hisense
- LG
- Panasonic
- Philips
- Samsung
- Vizio
But it’ll depend on your specific model – just go into your TV settings to see if you have it.
Picture Credit: Samsung
“And the filmmaker mode is of particular importance when presenting these films, which have specifications unique to being shot on film.
“Including the size of the frame, their aspect ratios, their approach to light and shadow, to color or black and white.
“In each case, absolutely specific and unique to the given film. Filmmaker mode is a long overdue and welcome innovation.”
Many TV models now support Filmmaker Mode so look for it in your settings.