There's little argument that, among today's flat-panel display technologies, OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) screens are objectively the best.This self-emissive screen technology is capable of perfect black levels and snappy pixel response times.That's why modern OLEDs have little to no ghosting compared to LCDs.
Because pixels change so quickly, you're seeing every frame in crisp isolation.The problem is that almost all the movie content you watch actually needs some of that blur to look right.Movies give your OLED a new frame only once every 41-ish milliseconds It's a big gap to cross Close Except for a few high frame-rate movies like and , movies are shot and released at 24fps.
There's a long history behind why the industry settled on this frame rate that I can't really go into here.In short, it's a mix of film's technological history as well as the best balance between smooth motion and cost.An important factor when you are paying for film by the foot.
That's why it's called "footage" after all.Regardless of why the number is 24fps, that is the reality that your OLED panel has to deal with, and its pixel response time is too good for this established cinematic standard.This is why when you see certain types of camera movement, such as slow panning, the image appears to skip and jump.
You are literally seeing one frame instantly snap to the next.This has always been a problem, even on film projectors and CRTs, so filmmakers plan their shots to minimize it.However, they couldn't account for future technology that would have no natural blending from one frame to the next.
OLED pixels expose motion that slower LCD pixels can smear together What a twist! So what's actually going on here? It all comes down to how LCDs work compared to OLEDs.The simple explanation is that Liquid Crystal Displays have pixels that take longer to change state.The crystals that change how light passes through them physically shift form.
This is why LCDs have a pixel response time typically between 1ms for the fastest panels and 10ms for slower, cheaper models.Compare that to OLED, which has pixels that can change state well under a millisecond.As far as the human eye is concerned, that's pretty much instant.
With just 24 frames of content per second, the delineation between one frame and the next is crystal clear with no overlap.A 120Hz panel fixes cadence judder, but it cannot make 24fps genuinely smooth Fix one problem, reveal another It's important not to confuse this choppy motion with another issue known as pulldown judder.Pulldown judder happens when you have a mismatch between the refresh rate and frame rate of your TV and content, respectively.
If you have 24 frames per second, they cannot be divided evenly into a 60Hz refresh rate.So the TV is forced to use a 3:2 pulldown method where frames persist in alternating patterns of three and then two frames.With this uneven frame pacing, the motion on screen has a herky-jerky look to it.
However, modern LCD and OLED TVs do not suffer from pulldown judder.If you have a 120Hz TV, then 24fps divides perfectly, allowing for 5 frames to persist before changing to the next.Many TVs can now also simply change their refresh rate to 48Hz, which is also a perfect number for 24fps content.
RTINGS has an excellent deep dive backed by testing to show the different types of stutter and judder, where you can also see how OLEDs expose motion stutter in 24fps content that has nothing to do with frame pacing.There is no perfect fix, but a little interpolation may be the best compromise The usual advice for movies and a feature known as "motion smoothing" is to turn it off completely.It's that setting on a TV that gives movies the "soap opera effect" where all the movement looks liquid-smooth, and you lose that dreamlike cinematic quality.
One reason motion smoothing exists is that flat panels can achieve higher refresh rates and become less and less naturally blurry, so motion gaps in 24fps and even 30fps content (typical of TV shows) become apparent.But motion smoothing isn't always a bad thing.By "inventing" in-between frames that didn't really exist in the original movie, an OLED can get back some of the blending effect it lost as technology advanced.
Most TVs these days don't have a simple on-off switch for motion smoothing.This means you can usually just add a notch or two of interpolation without losing the cinematic look and feel of the movie.In fact, you'd be restoring the movie to how it was meant to be seen.
Just don't push it to the point where things look like a stage play filmed with your dad's camcorder.
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