Dolby Vision 2

New HDR10+ Advanced standard will try to fix the soap opera effect

dolby vision, Dolby Vision 2, HDR, HDR10, motion smoothing, Tech, TVs / Kris Guyer / November 4, 2025

Intelligent FRC takes a more nuanced approach to motion smoothing by letting content creators dictate the level of motion smoothing used in each scene, Forbes reported. The feature is also designed to adjust the strength of motion interpolation based on ambient lighting.

Dolby Vision 2’s Authentic Motion

HDR10+ Advanced’s Intelligent FRC sounds awfully similar to the Authentic Motion feature that Dolby announced for its upcoming HDR standard, Dolby Vision 2, in September.

Dolby’s announcement described Authentic Motion as “the world’s first creative driven motion control tool to make scenes feel more authentically cinematic without unwanted judder on a shot-by-shot basis.” Authentic Motion will be available on TVs that adopt Dolby Vision 2’s most advanced tier, which is called Dolby Vision 2 Max, and will target high-end TVs.

TechRadar reported in September that Authentic Motion will have 10 levels of motion smoothing, citing a demo of the feature applied to a scene from the Amazon Prime Video series Paris Has Fallen, which was shot at 25p. In the demo, the video reportedly went from level 5 motion smoothing during a tracking shot to level 3 when “the camera switched to tilting down gently,” to level 1 “as the camera settled,” and then level 0 “when the still camera watched the woman talk.”

Will this work?

We don’t have sufficient information about either HDR standard to be convinced yet that the technologies will improve the appearance of videos using motion smoothing, especially to viewers who are already put off by motion smoothing.

Giving creators greater control over when exactly motion smoothing is implemented and how strong it is could mean that the soap opera effect isn’t applied to scenes unnecessarily. But neither standard has proven that motion smoothing will look natural when applied at different scales to specific shots.

New HDR10+ Advanced standard will try to fix the soap opera effect Read More »

The new Dolby Vision 2 HDR standard is probably going to be controversial

Dolby has announced the features of Dolby Vision 2, its successor to the popular Dolby Vision HDR format.

Whereas the original Dolby Vision was meant to give creators the ability to finely tune exactly how TVs present content in HDR, Dolby Vision 2 appears to significantly broaden that feature to include motion handling as well—and it also tries to bridge the gap between filmmaker intent and the on-the-ground reality of the individual viewing environments.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, Dolby says one of the pillars of Dolby Vision 2 will be “Content Intelligence,” which introduces new “AI capabilities” to the Dolby Vision spec. Among other things, that means using sensors in the TV to try to fix the oft-complained-about issue of shows being too dark.

Many editors and filmmakers tweak their video content to be best viewed in a dark room on a high-end TV with strong peak brightness, contrast, color accuracy, and so on. Unfortunately, that sometimes means that some shows are laughably dark on anything but the most optimal target setup—think Apple TV+’s Silo, or the infamous Battle of Winterfell in the final season of Game of Thrones, both of which many people complained were too dark for clear viewing.

With Content Intelligence, Dolby Vision 2 will allegedly make the image “crystal clear” by “improving clarity in any viewing environment without compromising intent.” Further, it will use ambient light detection sensors in supporting TVs to adjust the content’s presentation based on how bright the viewer’s room is.

Fixing motion smoothing—or making it worse?

There’s plenty that’s going to be controversial in Content Intelligence with some purists, but it’s another feature called Authentic Motion that’s probably going to cause the biggest stir for Dolby Vision 2.