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The "soap opera" effect is mainly a perceptual response to the high frame rate itself, even if there are no interpolation artifacts. That's why it has its name:

The "soap opera" effect is mainly a perceptual response to the high frame rate itself, even if there are no interpolation artifacts. That's why it has its name: soap operas are typically filmed at 60fps, with cameras that cameras one full frame every 1/60th of a second.

AstralStorm 4y ago
More specifically, the reaction to lack of blur. You can get 60 fps upconverted footage from motion interpolation to not exhibit the effect by adding copious gaussian motion blur. The same problem (plus perceived judder due to low fps) appears if you play a video on a screen equipped with correctly tuned strobe backlight. It's one of the reasons as to why simple kernel interpolation (blurmotion) with most kernels does not exhibit this effect either.
- ubercow13 4y ago
  Why would there be a lack of blur? The 24fps (say) footage will start with more blur as the shutter speed will be slower and this blur will remain when interpolated to 60fps. It would surely have a physically impossibly high amount of blur after interpolation.
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Interpolation doesn’t change shutter angle which is what causes motion blur to have a specific aesthetic look, so when interpolated it looks wrong for the frame rate. You’re right in that it doesn’t change the amount of blur, I’m not sure why the person you’re replying to thinks that. But it does change the aesthetic of the blur. Perhaps they’re thinking of the issue with the Hobbit where the higher frame rate at a given shutter angle (180 let’s say) that shortened the blur compared to a traditional 24 fps film. They adjusted this for the second hobbit film to leave the shutter open longer (not a 360 shutter, but something like a 270) to bring back some of that feeling.
taneq 4y ago
A similar thing happened with The Hobbit, iirc. It was shot in 60fps and everyone said the CGI was too obvious, I think we’ve just learned to associate high frame rates with computer games.
- cma 4y ago
  Hobbit was 48hz (to be a multiple of the more standard 24 letting it also work on 24-only projection systems I am assuming).
  - ace2358 4y ago
    And this was because there were two cameras for the whole 3D craze. One for each eye. Though I don’t think I saw the 48fps in cinemas in Australia
- breatheoften 4y ago
  My big problem with the high frame rate in the hobbit was the slack of camera stability -- I think whatever image stabilization solution they used performed very poorly for that film -- not sure what went wrong but always hypothesized it was related to the higher capture rate. It felt like the camera was always bouncing and moving around randomly in a way I found very displeasing...
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  I have to admit, watching it in 48fps (pretty sure it was 48 and not 60) the CGI sequences did look very much like video game cutscenes.
leeoniya 4y ago
> The "soap opera" effect is mainly a perceptual response to the high frame rate itself, even if there are no interpolation artifacts. also, i think the 3:2 pulldown (24->29.97fps) and interlacing that typically causes jitter/blurring is absent at framerates that are even multiples (30->30 or 30->60)
modeless 4y ago
Sure, but most hand drawn animation is done at 12 FPS or lower. Even just upsampling from 12 to 24 would be awesome and wouldn't get into the territory where the soap opera effect is caused by the framerate itself.
- dagmx 4y ago
  This would change the acting choices the animator made however. to take my response from elsewhere , consider a single drawn frame impact that is held for 2 or more frames. That timing is integral to the performance. When you interpolate, it no longer holds the right amount so the performance changes. People may scoff at that, but it’s a huge deal for artists. It was hell when we had dailies and motion smoothing on one of the TVs turned on (if we weren’t using screening rooms). Suddenly all the notes were different and acting didn’t feel right.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Gordonjcp 4y ago
Not quite! They capture one full frame every 1/30th of a second in the US and Japan, and 1/25th everywhere else. They capture one *field* every 1/50th of a second, and interlace it. The reason for this is that it was hard to scan a full 625 lines in 1/50th of a second, and it would have required ludicrous bandwidth for the AM transmitters of the day and massive output valves to drive the scan coils in TV sets which would then produced huge flyback spikes. So the decision was to scan 312.5 lines per field, offset slightly, with each pair of fields forming one 1/25th of a second frame. Telecine was easy in the UK because you could speed the film up a little and then each TV frame would be two fields per film frame. If you shoot 50i you can deinterlace to 25p by combining the two sets of scan lines from each field with a bit of clever processing to hide the "combing" caused by things moving between fields, or you can double it up to 50p by just copying each line out twice with a bit of clever processing to smooth out the steps. I could post some video clips showing this if you were interested. Of course modern digital TV cameras are capable of shooting 60p as you say, but anyone shooting "telenovela" stuff is going to be shooting 60i.
- warmcompress 4y ago
  Thank you!! Our contemporary 60hz world seems to have retconned broadcast video standards.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    It gets worse because for NTSC colour they changed it to 59.94Hz so that the colour subcarrier could be an odd multiple of the scan rate and just fit into the 4MHz-wide channels. This is why all your video editing software has got those ballachey 59.94/24.97 modes. It gets worse because for telecine you need to need to show two frames of 24fps film for every three frames of video, so you need to slow your film down to 23.976fps so it fits. Ballache.

AstralStorm 4y ago

More specifically, the reaction to lack of blur. You can get 60 fps upconverted footage from motion interpolation to not exhibit the effect by adding copious gaussian motion blur. The same problem (plus perceived judder due to low fps) appears if you play a video on a screen equipped with correctly tuned strobe backlight. It's one of the reasons as to why simple kernel interpolation (blurmotion) with most kernels does not exhibit this effect either.

ubercow13 4y ago
Why would there be a lack of blur? The 24fps (say) footage will start with more blur as the shutter speed will be slower and this blur will remain when interpolated to 60fps. It would surely have a physically impossibly high amount of blur after interpolation.
- dagmx 4y ago
  Interpolation doesn’t change shutter angle which is what causes motion blur to have a specific aesthetic look, so when interpolated it looks wrong for the frame rate. You’re right in that it doesn’t change the amount of blur, I’m not sure why the person you’re replying to thinks that. But it does change the aesthetic of the blur. Perhaps they’re thinking of the issue with the Hobbit where the higher frame rate at a given shutter angle (180 let’s say) that shortened the blur compared to a traditional 24 fps film. They adjusted this for the second hobbit film to leave the shutter open longer (not a 360 shutter, but something like a 270) to bring back some of that feeling.

taneq 4y ago

A similar thing happened with The Hobbit, iirc. It was shot in 60fps and everyone said the CGI was too obvious, I think we’ve just learned to associate high frame rates with computer games.

cma 4y ago
Hobbit was 48hz (to be a multiple of the more standard 24 letting it also work on 24-only projection systems I am assuming).
- ace2358 4y ago
  And this was because there were two cameras for the whole 3D craze. One for each eye. Though I don’t think I saw the 48fps in cinemas in Australia
breatheoften 4y ago
My big problem with the high frame rate in the hobbit was the slack of camera stability -- I think whatever image stabilization solution they used performed very poorly for that film -- not sure what went wrong but always hypothesized it was related to the higher capture rate. It felt like the camera was always bouncing and moving around randomly in a way I found very displeasing...
Gordonjcp 4y ago
I have to admit, watching it in 48fps (pretty sure it was 48 and not 60) the CGI sequences did look very much like video game cutscenes.

leeoniya 4y ago

> The "soap opera" effect is mainly a perceptual response to the high frame rate itself, even if there are no interpolation artifacts. also, i think the 3:2 pulldown (24->29.97fps) and interlacing that typically causes jitter/blurring is absent at framerates that are even multiples (30->30 or 30->60)

modeless 4y ago

Sure, but most hand drawn animation is done at 12 FPS or lower. Even just upsampling from 12 to 24 would be awesome and wouldn't get into the territory where the soap opera effect is caused by the framerate itself.

dagmx 4y ago
This would change the acting choices the animator made however. to take my response from elsewhere , consider a single drawn frame impact that is held for 2 or more frames. That timing is integral to the performance. When you interpolate, it no longer holds the right amount so the performance changes. People may scoff at that, but it’s a huge deal for artists. It was hell when we had dailies and motion smoothing on one of the TVs turned on (if we weren’t using screening rooms). Suddenly all the notes were different and acting didn’t feel right.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Gordonjcp 4y ago

Not quite! They capture one full frame every 1/30th of a second in the US and Japan, and 1/25th everywhere else. They capture one *field* every 1/50th of a second, and interlace it. The reason for this is that it was hard to scan a full 625 lines in 1/50th of a second, and it would have required ludicrous bandwidth for the AM transmitters of the day and massive output valves to drive the scan coils in TV sets which would then produced huge flyback spikes. So the decision was to scan 312.5 lines per field, offset slightly, with each pair of fields forming one 1/25th of a second frame. Telecine was easy in the UK because you could speed the film up a little and then each TV frame would be two fields per film frame. If you shoot 50i you can deinterlace to 25p by combining the two sets of scan lines from each field with a bit of clever processing to hide the "combing" caused by things moving between fields, or you can double it up to 50p by just copying each line out twice with a bit of clever processing to smooth out the steps. I could post some video clips showing this if you were interested. Of course modern digital TV cameras are capable of shooting 60p as you say, but anyone shooting "telenovela" stuff is going to be shooting 60i.

warmcompress 4y ago
Thank you!! Our contemporary 60hz world seems to have retconned broadcast video standards.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  It gets worse because for NTSC colour they changed it to 59.94Hz so that the colour subcarrier could be an odd multiple of the scan rate and just fit into the 4MHz-wide channels. This is why all your video editing software has got those ballachey 59.94/24.97 modes. It gets worse because for telecine you need to need to show two frames of 24fps film for every three frames of video, so you need to slow your film down to 23.976fps so it fits. Ballache.