Motionflow - Good or bad...?

richiejazz

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I know various merits of motion flow settings have been discussed plenty of times, but having most of my custom settings now settled on my Sony XD80 55" (that Ive finally set up!), its the one thing I just can't seem to find a decent setting for.

Ive got motion flow, and most other 'assist' settings off for 4k films/blu ray etc but leave it on for standard TV and App settings (Netflix/Prime etc) Ive found a standard setting or custom setting of Clearness =1, Smoothness 1-2 subtly smooths over "normal" movement, including most noticeably scrolling credits text, where with no Motionflow the juddering of the text was really annoying me!

However, when any motion flow is on at all Ive found it utterly useless for anything sudden or fast moving - cars zooming past, people moving quickly and blurred infront of the lens etc. In these cases there seems to be very obvious 'blips' of artifacting appearing or strange flashes of distortion is the best way I can describe it. Its like the system can't cope and panics. Ive noticed these annoying little burns on bright flashes from explosions too. Does anyone know what this is? Is it a limitation of the TV, software or something else? As I say its either on or off - even on the lowest settings it happens noticeably which is a shame, as I said I like having the subtle setting on for a general 'sheen' and for the effect it has on slower moving items, but its so annoying, particularly in action films where it can't seem to cope with anything sudden.

any insights??
 
The XD80 is a 50/60 Hz panel, if I remember correctly, so the effects of Motionflow settings may not be identical to the 100/120 Hz panel sets like the XE90.

In any case, try turning off all reality creation + other picture "improvement" settings, they can interact with motionflow in a bad way by exaggerating some of the blips in the picture.

Failing that, try just Clearness = 1 with Smoothness at minimum - it should not interpolate in that case but at least give some additional motion clarity (although possibly with the introduction of some double images in fast movement).

Film mode also interacts with Motionflow setting, try setting it to "Medium" from "High". "Low" / "Off" seem to turn the Motionflow off for movies (I *think* Film mode was called that - I am used to the Finnish-translated menu item names due to the EPG language always being Swedish if I use English menus... thanks Sony)
 
I find it varies depending on the source. Using film mode also helps in some cases. I have an xe9305 so no point in discussing my specific settings.
 
In any case, try turning off all reality creation + other picture "improvement" settings, they can interact with motionflow in a bad way by exaggerating some of the blips in the picture.

Failing that, try just Clearness = 1 with Smoothness at minimum - it should not interpolate in that case but at least give some additional motion clarity (although possibly with the introduction of some double images in fast movement).

Film mode also interacts with Motionflow setting, try setting it to "Medium" from "High". "Low" / "Off" seem to turn the Motionflow off for movies (I *think* Film mode was called that - I am used to the Finnish-translated menu item names due to the EPG language always being Swedish if I use English menus... thanks Sony)


Thanks babator - I'll experiment with the reality creation settings, tbh from fiddling with this setting Im still not sure exactly what it does! Although I;ve learned to dial back some of the 'improvement' settings I think Id rather have them and sacrifice the motion flow if they solve the issue. But haven't yet turned everything off and just engaged motion flow.
Clearness 1 / smoothness min is what I was going with, but the smoothness added value fixes the roll credits judder (not a priority I know but gave me assurance it was doing something!)

Re Film mode I didn't notice any difference flicking between Auto and Off when I tried it.
 
Have found that there is no particular interaction between Motionflow and any other settings including Reality Creation. Have also cross referenced this with the Cinema Pro preset which has all those 'improvement' settings turned off.
Its purely the Smoothness dial being anything above minimum that starts introducing what I described straight away.

Ive left the Clearness on 1 - which is what most people seem to recommend - what does Clearness do exactly? All Ive noticed is that it reduces brightness slightly.....
 
I remembered wrong about the interaction then, or we are talking about a different thing (or the XD80 works a bit differently). I was thinking about a sort of "graininess" or "instability" in darker scenes that seemed to appear on some material if smoothness was increased too much along with some sharpness-related settings - but I admit I never noticed it with Smoothness 1 but only around Smoothness 3 and above. Perhaps I just never focused my attention on it enough to notice, and if I had, I would notice the same problem you have!

Clearness introduces black frame insertion. The black frames "reset" the motion tracking in the human eye in a way that increases perceived motion clarity.
 
Thanks re clearness - will try experimenting with that more.

I wouldn't describe it as graininess - more violent jumbo pixelations in certain or multiple places where there is sudden, or I guess unexpected movement. Whilst in some regards its flash and its gone subtle, its very noticeable. Being an audio engineer I guess to me its more like the equivalent of digital distortion. It starts happening noticeably with smoothness 1 and above and is more frequent the higher you go but is noticeably there from the off. Just seems weird to me.... I don't know if it could be inherent to my set, I just find it strange that on a forum this detailed it hasn't come up before.
 
It's weird because that sounds like what was happening on my 2015 LG OLED when a moving object went behind a rock or something like that - sometimes a big splash of pixels appeared briefly - but I haven't noticed it with the XE90.

In daily use, I often do use Smoothness 1 / Clearness 0 with movies, just to get rid of a little bit of the 24p judder, but I usually leave Motionflow off completely for sports (and since the Oreo Android TV update has caused a periodic reoccurrence of the well-known XE90 frame repeat problem in scene cuts, I often just use Game mode as a workaround).

The thing is, even though it's called the same Motionflow and the settings are called pretty much the same across the range, different Sony sets do have differences in their implementation - for example the XE93 does not suffer from the frame repeat problem.
 
hmm, I tried damn close to all combinations and interactions between all settings and couldn't find anything it was clashing with it - but yes 'big splash of pixels' sums it up!

Ive kind of started using th opposite Smoothness 0 / Clearness 1 as most recommendations tended towards that clearness setting, although tbh I haven't really noticed the clearness at work.

I have it completely off for high quality stuff and UHD Blur ray playback obviously.

Not found a sports settings Im totally satisfied with yet though. Football seems a bit meh to me. Have been switching between the Live Football mode - although for that I notice it puts the Motionflow into 'smooth' preset.
 
So this seems to be related to sudden contrast/brightness change more than any motion that’s happening. It’s more prolonged and noticeable in things like explosions and, it seems, video projectors. The footage below is from The Man In The High Castle in 4K (excuse the bad phone footage- but the effect is clearly visible)

This is still with the Smoothness at just 1 and it seems irrelevant where any other settings are.
I tried bumping down the overall contrast and it did seem to behave much better. However, I had to take it down to stupid levels around 10 so not practical. Brightness even all the way down doesn’t seem to have an effect. Neither did turning the Advanced Contrast Enhancer off...

 

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