Everything On My New 60 Inch Tv Looks Like A Soap Opera

Why do shows in high FPS look so soap opera like?

It’s due to motion. Soap Operas use cheaper cameras that shoot in 60 FPS rather than film that is 24 FPS. Basically, you’ve become accustomed to the dreamlike motion of 24 FPS being interpolated for 60 Hz TVs and now attribute higher frame-rates like 48 FPS to that of a lower quality production.Part of this is that interpolation acts as a motion smoothing. If you applied motion smoothing to higher frame-rate content, it tends not to have the soap opera effect.

What is a soap opera effect for new televisions?

The “soap opera effect” occurs when filmed content is shown on an LCD TV set to 60 frames per second (to minimize LCD lag issues), which is essentially showing each frame twice; the resulting picture looks more like it was shot on videotape (and yes, you can instantly tell the difference; film generally has a softer look than video) — in other words, everything looks like a soap opera — which film buffs and videophiles find distracting.Manufacturers have either bumped up the frame rate to 120 frames per second (showing the same frame four times) or inserted a black frame between picture frames to eliminate this problem, but the easiest solution is just leaving the frame rate at 30 fps and seeing if that works.

How do I eliminate the "soap opera effect" from my new TV?

Most likely you bought an LCD 120 or 240 Hz TV.  You TV creates extra frames by interpolating the 60 Hz input.  The only way to reduce the effect is to turn interpolation off - you will simply get duplicate frames.Every TV is different, but somewhere in the Setup menu there should be an option to turn off or adjust motion interpolation (the actual name varies, so check your TV's user manual for help) - For example, in Samsung TVs it is under Picture Options -> Auto Motion Plus -> Off.

Why do 4K televisions make feature movies look like soap operas?

Thanks for A2A.Why do 4K televisions make feature movies look like soap operas?I note that previous answers suggest motion smoothing and artificially high refresh rates can cause this problem but, from my own observation, I would be seriously looking at the quality of the display panel.My own 1080p TV is an earlier (less smart) 55″ LCD with LED back-lighting. The only thing about it that really sucks is the internal sound quality—hence I feed the sound through a PA system instead.As best I recall, visual settings are optimized for “movies”. Color settings are “vivid” and image settings are “sharp”. As the panel is sourced from Samsung, it was of a decent quality even several years ago.Tenants of mine picked up a “cheap” modern unit from a Walmart type store, and they were very happy with it. I hated it! Everything looked “CGI”. Standard news presentation looked cartoonish.While I suspect that the TV in question probably used a very cheap panel, I can understand how UHD could have an adverse effect on broadcast or streamed material, particularly if it’s smoothing each image (not motion smoothing—but upscale smoothing).Soaps are notorious for soft-focus. If your TV is applying a soft-focus filter while upscaling then, even a 1080p Blu-ray could end up looking a little sad.Go through as many of the system settings as you can find and set them in the direction of “vivid” and “sharp”. Keep a short diary of how each change affects your opinion of the picture—it also provides a means of undoing some changes without having to reset factory defaults.

What is the soap opera effect?

Soap Opera effect is a way of enhancing the picture on HDTVs by utilizing Motion Interpolation.  Motion Interpolation is a form of video processing in which intermediate  animation frames are generated between existing ones, in an attempt to  make animation more fluid.This is evident when first going from old CRTs to a new HDTV, particularly an LCD at 120hz.  The picture will look dramatically different than what you are used to on older analog televisions.  You can correct the soap opera effect by making adjustments in your TV's picture menu.

Why does the "soap opera effect" happen?

Internal processing in the TV increased the frame rate by interpolating frames. It’s making up frames to “smooth” the motion judder inherent in lower frame rate material. All well and good for…sports. Meanwhile, we’ve grown accustomed to a lower frame rate for movies.Before High Definition, soap operas were recorded at 480i/60 (in the USA). So was almost anything that wasn’t captured on film looked like “video”, because it was video. Modern digital cameras can capture a variety of frame rates to emulate “movies”, “video” or ultra high frame rates to eliminate any perceived difference between recorded content and “reality”. “Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk” was captured at 120 frames per second in 3-D. It looked like a soap opera on the big screen.So why do manufacturers do this? In order to overcome the lack of perceived resolution that is the result of a low refresh rate (motion blur), higher refresh rates on LCD displays are necessary. To drive the panel at the higher rate, the TV needs to create more frames. Someone must have thought, “Hey, since we’re already repeating frames to get the higher refresh rate, let’s do some motion interpolation to make it smoother too! We’ll make it a “feature” and charge more for it!”. Great idea, in theory. Bad idea in practice. It looks weird.

Why do many British TV shows look like video rather than the 24 fps "film look" of American shows?

Even a high-end show like "Downton Abbey," which is shot on an Arri Alexa, has the high-frame-rate-and-low-motion-blur "video" look to it. As an American viewer, I find this very distracting and it takes me out of the story. Is there a reason for it other than the 25 fps broadcast standard?Frame rate doesn’t make the difference that you think it does.Watch this:The 24p ConspiracySpeaking as someone who lives in Britain and shoots in both 24p and 25p regularly, I can tell you that the difference between 24p and 25p is literally nil. So it’s not to do with 25p broadcast standard at all.Also worth adding that I have been watching movies broadcast on TV at 25fps (they speed them up slightly) all my life, and they definitely look more like films than TV shows do!As you noted in your comment, the same cameras are typically used between US and UK dramas.It’s really quite hard to say exactly what it is you’re seeing since you haven't given specific examples to compare with.But look at sharpness.When things are sharper looking they always look less ‘film-like’, and when people say the image is “distracting” usually what they’re talking about is sharpness.You can even make actual films (even ones shot on film) look “not like films” when you turn sharpness right up on your TV (Blu-Ray remasters of old movies usually look horribly sharp).I’d guess that the British dramas you’re referring to have a sharper image than the ones you consider to be examples of being film-like.Here are a couple of images I took one time using the same camera - one with diffusion filter and one without. This was to show how, irrespective of frame rate (they’re still images…) one image can look more ‘film-like’ than another.As I noted in this blog post:A Guide To - Film Look With Digital by Matt Burwood on Filmmaking How TosWhen an image is too sharp you don't so much look through the image, instead you notice every single detail, and it's kind of distracting.You can see this effect clearly in the above images - the first one you can appreciate the image as a whole, while in the second image your eye is simultaneously drawn to many details at once, because the sharpness is too high and it is distracting.See also:Matt Burwood's answer to What is a way to gauge the quality of a movie camera?