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I was trying to show my kids my favorite Saturday morning cartoon, but the animation that felt so fast and fluid when I was a kid just looks incredibly choppy to me now. Did the actual frame rate change on these old shows, or is it just my modern eyes being spoiled by how smooth everything is today?

Yep, not your imagination. A lot of those cartoons used limited animation with many frames being reused, so you only got a small number of distinct drawings per second. On a CRT, the motion blur hid that, but on modern screens it looks choppier.

The actual number of unique drawings didn't suddenly change; the pipeline did. Film to TV conversions and later streaming can mess timing a bit, which changes how smooth it feels.

I did compare a few scenes and noticed some sequences hold a pose longer before snapping to the next beat. It feels off today, not because you remembered wrong, but because production choices back then were different.

Which show were you showing?

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