Netflix Streaming Jitter - Page 5

Did you mean to post this to the "Gems and Finds" thread?

Torchwood on the PS3 is juddery for me. Interesting thread with a few clues such as lowering quality. With the pc games I use a frame rate limiter to smooth some games out that have this problem. Wish there was one for the ps3 streaming.

On my new WD TV Live I switched from 60p to 24p. @60p DS9 looks "shimmery", but watchable, @24p it stutters so much it's really unwatchable.

I wonder if Netflix even bothers to test this stuff after they encode it?

DSP was shot on film but then mastered on video. This is why the netflix stream is 30fps. So with the WD outputting 24p, that means two frame rate conversions were compounding each other, 24 -> 30 -> 24. (And maybe a 60i -> 30p conversion thrown in as well?)

Does the WD player force 24p even when playing 30p video? Optimally, players with 24p enabled would only use 24p when the video was truly 24p. Otherwise they should switch back to 60p in order to avoid problems like what you're seeing.

It only forces 24p (or 50p) on Netflix when I pick it, otherwise it always defaults to 60p.

If I understand correctly, that's unfortunate. Is it necessary guess the stream's frame rate and then choose the right output setting? If choosing the wrong one results in stutter, it is somewhat cumbersome to achieve proper playback.

Of course but sometimes when I click on a topic a late arriving ad "jitters" the topic a line and I get that another one instead.

Yep. On my ps3 it is ALWAYS 60p for everything. These shows that are shot on film might be 24p like their blu ray counterparts or 60i like their HD broadcast versions. Either way, it seems there is something wonky going on

Noticed the dropped frames/skipping on an SD Program last night too
"Death of a salesman" on the PS3
Not nearly as often as the HD which is one to two per second but noticeable and annoying

It only takes a few seconds to pick 24p/50p/60p. It's a safe bet most film based sources are going to be 24p anyways. I just watched The Fighter in 1080/24p and it looked excellent.

I don't think you'll ever have a Netflix streaming device that picks output refresh rates based on original sources.

LG Blu-Ray players do eg BD390

On 24P material it outputs 24P - everything else P60.

Of course they can only get the 720P stereo streams.

The multiple threads on netflix streaming quality / jitter / best device are a bit overlapping and this may not belong here, but thought I should add a bit here in case people are reading on the subject.

My LG BD670 used to choose the correct frame rate based upon the stream being delivered from netflix. Or at least I seem to remember it behaving correctly.

However I began noticing lots of dropped frames and jerky motion recently. A bit of investigation has revealed that the LG BD670 is no longer dynamically choosing the correct output setting. Instead it is stuck on 24p or 60p as configured in the settings. This is what is causing the problem.

Previously I left it configured to 24p and it would automatically switch back to 60p when needed. (It still does this when playing files from a dlna server.) The setting essentially meant, output at the native rate. However now I must constantly switch it manually by returning to the main menu and then restarting the netflix app. This is annoying! The dropped frames and stuttering is so bad that it is a necessity. Outputting a 30 fps stream at 24p results in constant stuttering and can induce headaches!

Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a recent phenomenon?

I just checked and my BD390 still seems to switch correctly between P24 and P60 on Netflix. I leave it set at P24 output - and as you say it then essentially outputs at the native rate.

I've filmed the screen with a canon elph slow-mo feature. You can clearly see that frames are completely out of order! **not** jitter. Not stutter.

Watch for a few seconds. The frames go

1. 2. 4. 3. 5. 6. 8. 7. Etc.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymdDM6pIXdk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Is this what this forum is experiencing? It's making my eyeballs fall out.

I've noticed this issue as well, but thought I was just being nitpicky, but wow, that's terrible. There's a pretty serious technical glitch in the way this content is encoded or presented. I've had this problem with both PS3 and Roku playback. It seems to be device-independent, so I'd guess it would either be an encoding problem, or a global software problem across all platforms.

What show/episode is that from? I'd like to see how it looks when played normally.

The jitter that I've personally seen is a strobing/flickering effect seen during camera pans in SD content. That's a result of the encodes themselves and not the playback device or display.

I've seen the strobing on various shows, and even on Cable TV (NatGeo seems the worst.) For Netflix SD, Rocko's Modern Life has alot of strobing.

You may be pleased to know that The Fall is perfect now, since it was upgraded to HD at some point.

^^More like liberated from the clutches of the evil, judder prone Starz. It was a Starz Play title before, now Netflix has acquired it (and other former Starz controlled movies) independently.

Netflix jitter gone! Consider this...While troubleshooting a problem with an 'unsupported signal' issue HERE, I took the opportunity to stream Mad Men via Netflix to both the Sony BDP-N460 Bluray player and my Sony KDL-52EX701. Mad Men had consistantly exhibited classic stutter/jitter through the BD player. When I streamed directly to the TV, picture was smooth and flowing. Switched back to BD stream, jitter is back. Seems to me that THIS IS A DEVICE ISSUE. Has anyone else had there jitter fixed with a different device?

dc

wired LAN connection 12/1

The new Netflix player on the TiVo Premiere does it. For material 1080P material encoded at 24 fps, it automatically switches to that frame rate if your HDTV can handle it. Mind you, it's adaptive and it take several seconds to get to that point. At that point, most TVs will blank the screen while they execute a HDMI handshake with the HDTV.

Whatever's connected to the TiVo, a television or AVR, has to re-sync to the new video format. If you turn off 1080p24 on the TiVo and leave 1080i enabled, it will play the 1080p24 encodes and display them as 1080i30. You'll still get 1080 rez video from Netflix, without having that 2 or 3 second visual glitch when it switches to the 1080p24 encoding. Sadly, TiVo cannot scale anything to 1080p24--you can't leave it as the only enabled resolution.

Uniquely, if TiVo's resolution is constrained to 720p it will still take the 1080p24 Netflix encode (if you have bandwidth) and downscale it to 720p. All the other 1080p-capable Netflix players I have on other devices will stop at the higher of the two 720p encodes if video output is set to 720p.

My girlfriend and I have been rewatching The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine via Netflix, and the strobing effect is AWFUL. I define the strobing effect as a weird flickering that's very apparent especially during horizontal camera pans. I'm pretty sure it's the same issue that others are seeing, and it severely detracts from the entire viewing experience.

Out of curiosity, I bought an episode from Amazon VOD for $1.99 -- "The Search, Part I" to be exact (since it features gorgeous visual effects). Low and behold, NO STROBING EFFECT!! This whole time, I thought it was my TV (Panasonic GT25 plasma) or my player (PlayStation 3) causing the strobing - phew!! Also, my receiver shows Multichannel 5.1 PCM through Amazon VOD, whereas it reports PCM 2.0 upscaled to Dolby PLII on Netflix.

Not to mention, the image quality of the DS9 episode seemed ever-so-slightly sharper on Amazon VOD instead of Netflix. Maybe sharper isn't the right word, but rather, Netflix's quality seemed like they recorded it off of TV back in 1994, while Amazon VOD's seem ripped from the DVD collection. Though, the interlacing is still there on the Amazon VOD, so I don't think ANY source material will fix it.

1. Since the PS3 upscales DVDs, how does TNG or DS9 look when upconverted? Would anyone be willing to take high-quality screen caps of an episode on DVD upscaled and compare it against Netflix and Amazon VOD?

(I am tempted to plop $200 +/- for the DS9 box set, hence the question. Netflix has left me disappointed.)

2. Is there a fix for this strobing, even if temporarily? I've toyed with every setting on the TV and PS3. Unfortunately, nothing seems to fix the strobing.

I've tried a couple times to catch up on PSYCH via Netflix... and I get that same nasty jitter/strobe. Not sure what the hell is going on, it hurts my eyes to even try to watch it. It definitely does this on S5:E2 if anyone wants to check it out... less than a minute in, a car is being pulled out of a river, watch the subsequent camera pan. The strobe effect is incredibly strong... not a subtle nitpick or anything.

Noticed a similar problem while trying to watch No Way Out... strobbing so bad that I couldn't watch the damn movie. Switched over to Amazon, and it had the same problem. Weird.

I'm only up to S2, but I haven't had any issues with Psych on Netflix.

Haven't made it to season 5 either, but the 'jitter' Is usually associated with older tv shows That have been encoded for streaming, and the old StarzPlay titles, which featured the effect in the vast majority of the titles they made available to Netflix thru their now defunct contract.

 

Just a thought-do you know about the Video Quality setting under Your Account? There you select from 3 choices, the  quality level according to whatever speed you have from your ISP. Perhaps it has defaulted to "Low" by accident.

Edited by Westly-C - 1/25/13 at 2:32pm

Video quality is fine on other shows/movies... just checked my account to be safe, and no video quality cap was ever set. I'll take a peek at the earlier seasons on Psych to see if they have the strobing issue too.

EDIT:

Checked out a random episode from season 1, and it's perfectly fine. Maybe it's just a problem with season 5, which would be even more odd.
Edited by JP32 - 1/25/13 at 6:15pm

I'm using the same blue ray player but with mine, whenever I stream with netflix the first few minutes of each show or movie I stream flickers back and forth between the show and a black screen. While this goes away after a while it's EXTREMELY annoying and I almost just can't stand watching it anymore. It's very frustrating to pay for something that doesn't work.

I have 2 Panasonic BD players among several other devices I use to stream Netflix and I don't have that issue. It may be a problem with your unit or that model.



Ian

Linacircle, that sounds like the infamous black flash issue on the 2011 Panasonic players. The newer models and other brands don't do that. When my player did that, I sold it as quickly as possible.

Why wont Netflix do anything about these horrible camera panning encoding issues? I watch Neflix with an Apple TV connected with hdmi to a Panasonic plasma tv. The stuttering/not smooth camera panning effect is seen everywhere. It goes like chuck chuck chuck. But the severeness differs a lot. In Frasier and TNG for example its simply unwatchable for me. Seems like very strange stuff is going on (something like frames going back and forward fast). In recent shows and films its not that bad, but still too noticeable. Its simply not smooth. The effect is not seen on dvd/blu-ray releases. Is Netflix aware of this topic?