Action smoothing is a TV processing feature that creates extra frames between the original ones in a video, making motion appear more fluid on screen. It’s the same technology more commonly called “motion smoothing” or “frame interpolation,” and it’s turned on by default on most modern televisions. If you’ve ever noticed that a movie looks strangely smooth, almost like a live broadcast or a home video, action smoothing is almost certainly the reason.
How Frame Interpolation Works
Most movies and scripted TV shows are filmed at 24 frames per second, a standard that’s been used in cinema for nearly a century. Modern TVs, however, refresh their displays at 60 or 120 times per second. That mismatch creates a problem: the TV has more refresh cycles than it has frames to show. Without any processing, some frames get displayed two times while others get displayed three times, which can cause a slight stuttering effect called judder.
Action smoothing solves this by analyzing two consecutive frames and generating a new, artificial frame to place between them. The TV estimates where objects in the scene are moving and synthesizes a blended image that represents the midpoint of that motion. This fills in the gaps, so instead of repeating frames unevenly, the TV displays a smoother stream of unique images. A 120Hz panel, for instance, can show each original frame of 24fps content for exactly five refresh cycles, and interpolated frames make the transitions between them seamless.
Why It Makes Movies Look “Off”
The result of all that extra smoothness is something called the soap opera effect. Daytime soap operas have traditionally been shot on video at higher frame rates, giving them a hyper-clear, almost flat look that’s very different from the softer, more cinematic quality of film. When action smoothing is applied to a movie, it mimics that same quality. Motion sequences gain a level of sharpness and detail that makes everything feel like you’re watching live events through a window rather than a carefully composed film.
For many viewers, this feels wrong even if they can’t immediately pinpoint why. The 24fps look is deeply associated with storytelling and drama. It carries a slight motion blur that the human eye reads as “cinematic.” When smoothing strips that away, the image takes on a camcorder-like realism that clashes with the fantasy of the story. Filmmakers have been vocal about this. Tom Cruise released a public statement urging people to disable the feature, saying it “makes most movies look like they were shot on high-speed video rather than on film.” Rian Johnson, director of The Last Jedi, once called motion smoothing “liquid diarrhea.”
When It Actually Helps
Action smoothing isn’t universally bad. It works well for content that benefits from maximum clarity and minimal motion blur, particularly live sports. When a camera pans across a football field or tracks a fast-moving ball, 24fps content tends to stutter and blur. Sports broadcasts typically run at 60 frames per second, but even then, the rapid camera movements can cause visible judder on certain displays. Smoothing fills in those gaps and keeps the picture stable during fast pans, making it noticeably easier to follow the action.
If you’re watching the Olympics, a soccer match, or any sport where tracking a ball matters, turning on motion smoothing can genuinely improve the experience. The same goes for nature documentaries with sweeping landscape shots, or any content that was originally shot at high frame rates. The soap opera effect only becomes distracting when it’s applied to content that was deliberately crafted for 24fps.
What Each TV Brand Calls It
One reason this feature is confusing is that every manufacturer uses a different name for it. None of them call it “action smoothing” or “motion smoothing” in their menus. Here’s what to look for:
- LG: TruMotion
- Samsung: Auto Motion Plus (sometimes listed under “Clarity” settings)
- Sony: MotionFlow
- Vizio: Smooth Motion Effect
These all do the same thing with minor differences in how aggressively they interpolate. Most offer a slider or multiple levels rather than a simple on/off toggle, so you can dial back the effect without eliminating it entirely.
How to Turn It Off
The setting is usually buried a layer or two deep in your TV’s picture menu. Start by opening your TV’s settings and navigating to picture settings, then look for an “advanced” or “expert” submenu. From there, you’ll typically find motion controls under their own subcategory, sometimes labeled “clarity” (especially on Samsung models). Set the motion interpolation or smoothing option to off, or drag any related sliders to zero.
A faster alternative is to switch your TV to Filmmaker Mode, if your model supports it. This is an industry standard developed by the UHD Alliance that disables all post-processing in one step: motion smoothing, artificial sharpening, noise reduction, and any other image “enhancement.” It locks the display to the source content’s original frame rate, aspect ratio, and color profile. Many TVs from LG, Samsung, Vizio, and others now include Filmmaker Mode as a picture preset, and it’s the simplest way to watch movies as they were intended to look.
Action Smoothing in Robotics and AI
If you arrived here from a machine learning or robotics context, “action smoothing” has a separate, technical meaning. In reinforcement learning, it refers to techniques that prevent a robot or AI agent from making jerky, erratic movements. Without smoothing, a trained AI might rapidly switch between actions from one moment to the next, which is inefficient and potentially dangerous in physical systems like robotic arms or autonomous vehicles.
Researchers address this by adding constraints that penalize large changes between consecutive actions, encouraging the AI to make gradual, stable transitions instead. One approach, called conditioning for action policy smoothness (CAPS), uses two types of constraints: a temporal one that minimizes differences between back-to-back actions, and a spatial one that keeps nearby states producing similar outputs. The goal is a smooth trajectory where the robot’s movements change gradually rather than abruptly. A newer refinement called Grad-CAPS defines smoothness not just as slow change but as consistent change, producing even more natural-looking robotic behavior while maintaining task performance.