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Motion interpolation is an absolute essential for me. I can’t stand how choppy TVs (even high end models) are without them. 30fps videos look very jarring to m

Motion interpolation is an absolute essential for me. I can’t stand how choppy TVs (even high end models) are without them. 30fps videos look very jarring to me, I almost always notice “tearing” or “shuddering” - even when in a cinema. Enabling motion interpolation / frame rate up scaling usually fixes this for me. It’s so distracting and at times almost painful for me to watch without it that at times I’ll use a tool (Topaz Video AI) to re-render videos to 50-60FPS.

xnx 3y ago
Is tearing common? What video source are you watching where the frames recorded in the video do not match the frames displayed by the display?
- smcleod 3y ago
  Very common for video footage lower than 40FPS. It doesn’t matter what the source is (AppleTV, laptop with HDMI, nvidia shield, PS5) - this is very noticeable to a large chunk of the population.
  - wolfd 3y ago
    What do you mean by “tearing”? Like, VSync-off tearing or a different effect?
    - Zetobal 3y ago
      Must be vsync off otherwise nobody would watch movies.
    - smcleod 3y ago
      Sorry I was conflating juddering and tearing, I meant juddering.
  - Retr0id 3y ago
    Perhaps you're conflating juddering and tearing? - they are distinct. Judder is what you see with, for example, low-fps panning, but tearing is where one segment of the screen (usually a horizontal strip) is out of sync, still displaying the previous frame, while the rest of the screen has moved on. This is not normal on a correctly configured system.
    - smcleod 3y ago
      Sorry - yes I am - I had to look up some examples but I’m talking about juddering.
ethbr1 3y ago
Interesting! I can't stand motion interpolation. Turned off on every TV I own. Will literally walk away and do something else if it's on a (non-sports) TV in public. There's something "too smooth" about it that irks me.
- smcleod 3y ago
  It’s interesting to think how different our visual systems must be right? I’m always saying to friends “how can you watch this? It’s so choppy!” And some of them agree and others don’t see it at all. Biology is weird so I say just give people the options to pick what works for them.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    I read this (from HN?) awhile ago, and it boggled my mind about how much subjective reality is actually invisibly self-fabricated. https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-surviving-on-the-roads/ https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s... I expect refresh rate is similar, given that... if a substantial portion of your subjective perception is mentally fabricated, then your brain physiology contributes, and that's set during childhood. For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced frames per second).
    - toast0 3y ago
      > For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced frames per second). Considering it as 30 interlaced frames per second isn't really accurate. It's 60 fields per second. A lot of content intended for interlaced broadcast is not 30 fps broken into fields, it's 60 distinct half pictures per second. (Excuse my rounding)
    - MandieD 3y ago
      That link is an article I really, really wish I'd read while learning how to drive, and is something I'll teach my kid before he starts riding a bike with traffic. I hadn't seen it before, so thanks.
jandrese 3y ago
Decades of TV being filmed on cheap(er) video cameras that had lousy picture quality but captured at 60 fps vs. film that looked beautiful but only captured at 24 fps has taught people that blurry smeary motion is the ideal.
- J_Shelby_J 3y ago
  I used to think that but now I’m not so sure. Yeah 24fps is bad for panning and sweeping movements, but…. There is something about 24fps that I believe may have something to do with how the eye or brain works that makes viewing more immersive. Perhaps it’s due to historical cultural reasons, but I’m not sure that totally explains it. FWIW I play valorant on a 390fps monitor so I am not a “the eye can only see 60fps” truther.
  - smcleod 3y ago
    24/30fps looks dreadfully unnatural and distracting to many people though. It’s almost painful to watch on larger screen sizes.
- smcleod 3y ago
  If it’s blurry or smeary then your TV / source is doing it very wrong or just can’t keep up or is too low resolution / lacks quality upscaling.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    It's blurry and smeary in the movie theater. You just can't capture fast motion at 24 fps. Once you train yourself to look for it you will never be able to stop seeing it.
    - smcleod 3y ago
      Oh sorry you mean it’s blurry and smeary at 24 fps in the cinema! Yes I agree. Sorry I thought you meant that higher frame rates looks blurry.
HPsquared 3y ago
Same. It's more noticeable on large screens because more is in the peripheral vision. Screens are larger today (and perhaps people are putting bigger TVs into smaller rooms than before) so we see more of the screen in our peripheral vision than before. Peripheral vision has a lot of rods (instead of cones) which are more sensitive to rapid motion. I can certainly pick up flicker and "perceive the frames" more clearly when looking in my peripheral vision. Same goes for the old CRT monitors: 60 Hz was an absolute no-no, 85 was tolerable but higher was better. Edit: CRTs were worse, of course, because they were constantly flashing light-dark, unlike LCDs which simply transition from frame to frame.
wolfd 3y ago
A major issue with motion interpolation is that it can’t be perfect, and is often far from it. The implementation on many TVs is jarring, you’ll see super-smooth motion while an object is moving a slow or medium speed, but as soon as the patch of pixels that it’s tracking goes really fast, it assumes the patches are distinct, and the motion will be juddery. Individual objects switching from high-framerate to low in the span of a half-second is quite noticeable to my eyes, but I admit that most people around me don’t seem to care. Maybe one day the real-time implementation will be good enough, but I find that it’s shockingly bad most of the time.
doctorhandshake 3y ago
Is it possible what you’re seeing is ‘judder’[1] or bad 3:2 pulldown? I really don’t think much actual ‘tearing’ [2] makes it to screens in theaters - that would be a big screwup! 1 - https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/judder https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/judder 2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing
- smcleod 3y ago
  Yes sorry, Judder is the correct term.
smusamashah 3y ago
For me when motion interpolation is on, I can immediately see that it's interpolated. And then I keep noticing the artifacts where the lines meet and boundaries. It's very distracting. I experimented with this setting while watching Koyaanisqatsi and for me it was better when it was very slight interpolation (at 3 on the scale of 1 to 10).
satvikpendem 3y ago
Check out SmoothVideoProject, it does the interpolation in real-time. I also use Topaz sometimes but it's too slow for most use cases unless you have the time to wait.
- smcleod 3y ago
  Very cool! Shame that Plex Server / AppleTV doesn’t implement this natively
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    Yes, maybe it could be done as a plugin but I generally use it on my computer. They also have an Android app which interpolates video on your phone too, pretty cool.

xnx 3y ago

Is tearing common? What video source are you watching where the frames recorded in the video do not match the frames displayed by the display?

smcleod 3y ago
Very common for video footage lower than 40FPS. It doesn’t matter what the source is (AppleTV, laptop with HDMI, nvidia shield, PS5) - this is very noticeable to a large chunk of the population.
- wolfd 3y ago
  What do you mean by “tearing”? Like, VSync-off tearing or a different effect?
  - Zetobal 3y ago
    Must be vsync off otherwise nobody would watch movies.
  - smcleod 3y ago
    Sorry I was conflating juddering and tearing, I meant juddering.
- Retr0id 3y ago
  Perhaps you're conflating juddering and tearing? - they are distinct. Judder is what you see with, for example, low-fps panning, but tearing is where one segment of the screen (usually a horizontal strip) is out of sync, still displaying the previous frame, while the rest of the screen has moved on. This is not normal on a correctly configured system.
  - smcleod 3y ago
    Sorry - yes I am - I had to look up some examples but I’m talking about juddering.

ethbr1 3y ago

Interesting! I can't stand motion interpolation. Turned off on every TV I own. Will literally walk away and do something else if it's on a (non-sports) TV in public. There's something "too smooth" about it that irks me.

smcleod 3y ago
It’s interesting to think how different our visual systems must be right? I’m always saying to friends “how can you watch this? It’s so choppy!” And some of them agree and others don’t see it at all. Biology is weird so I say just give people the options to pick what works for them.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  I read this (from HN?) awhile ago, and it boggled my mind about how much subjective reality is actually invisibly self-fabricated. https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-surviving-on-the-roads/ https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s... I expect refresh rate is similar, given that... if a substantial portion of your subjective perception is mentally fabricated, then your brain physiology contributes, and that's set during childhood. For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced frames per second).
  - toast0 3y ago
    > For reference, I grew up on NTSC screens (29.97 interlaced frames per second). Considering it as 30 interlaced frames per second isn't really accurate. It's 60 fields per second. A lot of content intended for interlaced broadcast is not 30 fps broken into fields, it's 60 distinct half pictures per second. (Excuse my rounding)
  - MandieD 3y ago
    That link is an article I really, really wish I'd read while learning how to drive, and is something I'll teach my kid before he starts riding a bike with traffic. I hadn't seen it before, so thanks.

jandrese 3y ago

Decades of TV being filmed on cheap(er) video cameras that had lousy picture quality but captured at 60 fps vs. film that looked beautiful but only captured at 24 fps has taught people that blurry smeary motion is the ideal.

J_Shelby_J 3y ago
I used to think that but now I’m not so sure. Yeah 24fps is bad for panning and sweeping movements, but…. There is something about 24fps that I believe may have something to do with how the eye or brain works that makes viewing more immersive. Perhaps it’s due to historical cultural reasons, but I’m not sure that totally explains it. FWIW I play valorant on a 390fps monitor so I am not a “the eye can only see 60fps” truther.
- smcleod 3y ago
  24/30fps looks dreadfully unnatural and distracting to many people though. It’s almost painful to watch on larger screen sizes.
smcleod 3y ago
If it’s blurry or smeary then your TV / source is doing it very wrong or just can’t keep up or is too low resolution / lacks quality upscaling.
- jandrese 3y ago
  It's blurry and smeary in the movie theater. You just can't capture fast motion at 24 fps. Once you train yourself to look for it you will never be able to stop seeing it.
  - smcleod 3y ago
    Oh sorry you mean it’s blurry and smeary at 24 fps in the cinema! Yes I agree. Sorry I thought you meant that higher frame rates looks blurry.

HPsquared 3y ago

Same. It's more noticeable on large screens because more is in the peripheral vision. Screens are larger today (and perhaps people are putting bigger TVs into smaller rooms than before) so we see more of the screen in our peripheral vision than before. Peripheral vision has a lot of rods (instead of cones) which are more sensitive to rapid motion. I can certainly pick up flicker and "perceive the frames" more clearly when looking in my peripheral vision. Same goes for the old CRT monitors: 60 Hz was an absolute no-no, 85 was tolerable but higher was better. Edit: CRTs were worse, of course, because they were constantly flashing light-dark, unlike LCDs which simply transition from frame to frame.

wolfd 3y ago

A major issue with motion interpolation is that it can’t be perfect, and is often far from it. The implementation on many TVs is jarring, you’ll see super-smooth motion while an object is moving a slow or medium speed, but as soon as the patch of pixels that it’s tracking goes really fast, it assumes the patches are distinct, and the motion will be juddery. Individual objects switching from high-framerate to low in the span of a half-second is quite noticeable to my eyes, but I admit that most people around me don’t seem to care. Maybe one day the real-time implementation will be good enough, but I find that it’s shockingly bad most of the time.

doctorhandshake 3y ago

Is it possible what you’re seeing is ‘judder’[1] or bad 3:2 pulldown? I really don’t think much actual ‘tearing’ [2] makes it to screens in theaters - that would be a big screwup! 1 - https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/judder https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/judder 2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing

smcleod 3y ago
Yes sorry, Judder is the correct term.

smusamashah 3y ago

For me when motion interpolation is on, I can immediately see that it's interpolated. And then I keep noticing the artifacts where the lines meet and boundaries. It's very distracting. I experimented with this setting while watching Koyaanisqatsi and for me it was better when it was very slight interpolation (at 3 on the scale of 1 to 10).

satvikpendem 3y ago

Check out SmoothVideoProject, it does the interpolation in real-time. I also use Topaz sometimes but it's too slow for most use cases unless you have the time to wait.

smcleod 3y ago
Very cool! Shame that Plex Server / AppleTV doesn’t implement this natively
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  Yes, maybe it could be done as a plugin but I generally use it on my computer. They also have an Android app which interpolates video on your phone too, pretty cool.