Reviewers judge denoisers on stills. Audiences judge them in motion. Those two juries disagree constantly, and the motion jury is the one that buys tickets.

What the eye actually forgives

The human visual system will forgive a soft frame far sooner than it forgives a shimmering, crawling edge. So I tune for temporal stability first and claw back sharpness second — never the reverse.

soft, but stable
sharp, but boiling
↔
Drag to compare the same frame from both denoisers. Pause here and the left wins; play it back and the right wins by a mile.drag ↔

Sharpness is a screenshot virtue. Stability is a cinema virtue.

The learned denoisers are finally good enough that this is a real choice rather than a compromise. That is a quiet, wonderful upgrade to my daily work.