Have you ever been watching a movie or tv show and found it doesn’t look right? Almost like the movement of the picture looks too smooth? Well, that’s commonly called called the ‘soap opera effect’.
Why is it called the soap opera effect? It stems from the fact that soap operas were shot at higher frame rates compared to movies particularly (but also some TV shows), giving them a kind of ‘hyperreal’ smoothness to the movement.
If you’ve been fed up with this weird looking motion on your TV but don’t know how to solve it, we’re here to help. But first a quick explanation as to what’s going on.
Why does the soap opera effect happen?
Modern TVs are very bright and work at a range of different frame rates (how often the image on-screen changes) and this can cause a problem called ‘judder’ in movies (which are shot at 24 frames per second), where you can really see gaps in the movement sometimes, which you can’t see in the dim, custom-designed world of movie theaters.
On top of that, many cheaper or older TV literally can’t show a clean 24fps image. Many of these TVs have screens that refresh at 60fps, and can only cleanly show motion at a number that 60 divides into (such as 30fps, which is common in HDR video). This means you’ll get more judder, because 24fps movies are having frame moved forward or backward in timing to fit the world 60fps TVs.
(More advanced TVs are 120fps, and these actually can show a clean 24fps image, because 120 divides by 24).
On top of that, lower-quality…