Turn On Motion Smoothing for the Super Bowl (Then Turn It Off)
pcmag.comTV wonks tend to rail against the motion smoothing feature on TVs. I know, because I'm one of them; I tell people to turn off the feature whenever possible. However, there is one important exception: live sports.
Turn motion smoothing on for the game. Seriously, it's one of the few cases where motion smoothing is good.
Motion smoothing is a video-processing feature on most TVs, which injects frames in between the frames of a video signal to make the motion look less jerky. These frames are interpolated, calculating halfway points and processing the picture to keep the video even and consistent. It works, but in the process of adding frames and smoothing out the action, the video starts to look unnatural. It's often called the "soap opera effect," and it makes the movies and shows you're watching look like they're all recorded for daytime TV.
Film content is usually recorded at 24 frames per second, and TV content is usually kept at 30. Motion smoothing bumps those numbers up to 60, 120, or even (depending on the math of the TV manufacturer) 960 with different tricks. When the carefully produced content you're watching was created, edited, and mastered at 24 and 30 frames per second, making it look smoother is really jarring. So yes, turn off motion smoothing if you're watching a TV show or movie.
On the flip side, motion smoothing is a useful feature when you're watching live sports, which show you the camera feed, filtered through a studio and editing bay, straight to your TV. You're watching players on the field right now, and tracking the ball as it gets passed, kicked, thrown, and shot. So it isn't quite the mastered artistic vision of a movie or TV show. Also, depending on your TV provider, the live feed will be a
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