Let's set this straight - No one can do 24p consistently well - Page 22

Truth is I watch movies almost exclusively with WMC at 59.94 Hz.(really just for the convenience) I grew up with 3:2 pulldown and it doesn't bother me that much. There are a few slow panning scenes that bug me, but it is hardly noticeable. And a dropped frame at 59.94 is too fast for me to see.

24p on the other hand, Yes no problem seeing dropped frames.I don't have to look for them, they pop out at me.

So I'm really not that obsessed at getting 24P, It is just that my ATI card gets pretty darn close with my current equipment I choose to participate in this discussion. Media Browser is getting better and better at switching to an external player, one day I might make the switch back to MPC-HC and 24P. I really like the picture and smoothness of MPC-HC and 23.976 (considering I can watch the whole movie without a dropped frame) But I like the convenience of staying in WMC.

So you were lucky but I had the drops and took some rounds to come closer to this Intel 24Hz bug and more. Since I've heared nothing else I can only speak for the HD3000 in a Cougar Point HM67 + additional HD6630 (Dell Vostro 3550). Here it's not a good idea to set the refresh rate to 23Hz (Intel Graphics Control Panel) cause the HD3000 will log in to insane 23.991 which produce rel. hard drops every 21sec.
Annoying in smooth panning starts e.g. in Blade Runner. The solution was easy but not easy to find cause usually best are the 23Hz and I tested them on different configs over and over.

Then one day just switched to 24Hz in the Control Panel and the drops disappeared in the movie! With 23.976-Slices the 21sec hard drops also gone (EVR shows 24.001 now) but only left the micro drops every 40sec which are really hard to notice in movies.

Good night!

You are lucky then.

I didn't even know what a frame drop was till I built my first HTPC and started playback of my BD rips and was trying to figure out why every so often the picture would do something really annoying.

Some people don't notice 3:2 pulldown either, even if you point it out to them. It drives other people nuts.

assassin, are you trying to do 24p on your ST50? that wont work. do you have another 120/240hz tv that youre using?

It's rather funny you would say that, especially since 99% of users don't even know what 24P is, and don't care about it. Most of the ones who DO care have Oppo BD players and playback actual discs. I can assure you that if the Oppo BD players that the videophiles cherish were dropping frames, we would know about it, and.... Oppo would fix it.

I would be willing to bet real money that the overwhelming majority of HTPCs are running 60fps and/or the TV is running 60fps. It typically requires a bit of extra "work" to set an HTPC and TV up for actual 24P playback and I am pretty sure most users don't care.

I find 3:2 pulldown judder annoying too, which is why I set the gear to 24P.

It's fine that you don't notice frame drops. It's fine that your customers don't notice it. For those of us that do notice it, it's annoying. I actually had my setup completely sorted but upgraded my AVR and some of the problems returned. It would appear that Onkyo has some video processing issues with 24P content, when their AVR is put into skip mode for video the problems don't seem to be occurring.

But hey, as long as you're happy with your gear tell the rest of us that we're foolish to care about annoying problems. For that matter, why bother buying a better quality TV. The basic one is good enough right? Why bother getting ISF calibration done, who cares if skin tones are off a little bit... 99% of people "don't care" and "don't notice" that either.

I am one of these lucky ones. I don't want to see it as it's just something to obsess over.

Hey, I agree with you 100%. If the problem doesn't bother someone then great (and how fortunate for them)! Also as I said, the majority of people are clueless and will run the HTPC in 1080p/60 mode, 720P, or the TV will be set to a non 24P mode... so it all becomes irrelevant.

Where you are rubbing me the wrong way is the implication that the problem is not noticeable, or that, if we just "watched the movie" it would not bother us. I can assure you that frame drop issues, depending on the gear used and how they manifest can be very annoying. Sit 9' from a 65" TV and it is far more annoying. I didn't spend $10K+ on my home theater setup to be annoyed by a problem that a $60 budget BD player does not have.

Ultimately it sounds as though you feel that this issue is costing you business and "scaring away your customers". There are two solutions (in addition to your approach of demystifying the issue).

1. Sell them a 6450 (it does not have the problem).
2. Beat on the manufacturers to take HTPC hobbyists seriously and fix the problem!

If the problems did not exist, there would be nothing to be afraid of.

Aha, so I'm at the wrong place here -
"what the hell are you doing to show the drops to the public?? We want them to stay as ignorant as always...". I don't believe your shop is in Europe.

e.g. Germans hate judder cause they had a lot of it in the past thru PAL. Everything optimized for NTSC...

i had no idea about 24p when I first started using the computer. I just plugged the computer to the tv and started watching a movie, I had a headache by the end of the movie from all the jutter, if someone can't notice that, I'm amazed. Then I switched things to 24hz and still you could easily notice the frames dropping.

Where are most people getting their 24p content from? Is this from playing Blu-ray discs on the HTPC? Or from playing rips of Blu-ray?

If you were to just play a Blu-ray disc how would you know if was 24/23.976 or 30/29.97 fps? If it's a movie you could presume it was shot in 24 fps film. But what about a disc with a TV program or movie, how would you know if it was done in film or 30 fps video?

IDK about getting the information from the disc but mediainfo works great for getting the info from rips plus the stats screen in MPC-HC shows it too while the video is playing.

I can't speak for others, but I rip my BDs to MKV files and store them centrally on a NAS. This way the movies can be played back in any room of the home on a small/cheap media player. The HTPC which runs XBMC, has an SSD, BD drive and other goodies is in the main family viewing area.

All BD material (at least for North America) is 23.976, whether it was originally a 24.00 FPS movie or a 29.97 FPS TV series (the frame rate would be converted in both cases when it is mastered for blu-ray).

DVD on the other hand is 29.97 and when displaying a 24FPS movie there is always 3:2 judder present because it's introduced as part of the 24 frame-per-second film to 30 frame per second video conversion process.

The reason we have frame drops is that nasty 23.976 instead of a nice even 24.000 fps. The reason for this tiny offset, which results in a frame drop ever 40 seconds or so if 23.976 content is not synced up correctly is due to legacy of the NTSC format which is now over 70 years old.

Basically when you play NTSC BD content back on your TV you have two choices. You can play it back in a multiple of 24P if your TV supports it (many higher end ones do)... the draw back of 24P playback is the previously mentioned problem of dropped frames if your video card is not up to snuff... as well as some models of TV exhibiting a film like "flickering" which some find distracting.

Alternatively you can play the content back at 60fps. The 60fps conversion should result in no dropped frames, but does result in what is referred to as 3:2 pulldown judder in which there can be a perceived strobing or image "tearing" that happens when the camera pans around... it is typically very noticeable on static shots with a slow pan, such as the one in which there is a flyover of the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid in the movie I am Legend... it can also often be seen during fast action shots in which the video appears to "rip" or tear due to the 3:2 pulldown effect.

These problems are not new to HTPC. People have been complaining about 3:2 pulldown judder since the VHS days. The problem is more apparent these days due to the increasing sizes of televisions.

Many people though will never notice these problems even if they are pointed out to them. Part of this might be lifetime conditioning of judder from watching 3:2 pulldown material.
Edited by jmpage2 - 8/1/12 at 2:17pm

How would the average consumer know in order to take steps to improve things?

I've read that some HDTVs can display 24/23.976 fps and have a "Cinema" setting or similar to select this function. If a consumer plays a DVD on his stand alone DVD player, or even an HTPC, how would he know if the HDTV should be set to 24 fps?

I understand some TV programs are shot with 24 fps film and some in digital. If watching an OTA HD program, either with an HTPC tuner or the HDTV tuner, how does someone know if the "Cinema" setting should be selected on the HDTV?

The cinema setting on the TV does not necessarily have anything whatsoever with the Television preferred frame-rate. On many manufacturer models, cinema will simply try to set the contrast, color, sharpness to levels that make film content look more pleasing.

As to "how would consumers know".... well, why would manufacturers want to confuse their customers? Customers find these things out because they care enough to read the manual, read a forum, or, in some cases they just aren't happy with the picture and begin the trek of trying to find ways to improve it.

If you have a TV that is good enough to warrant the cost you have your TV calibrated by a professional that knows what they are doing, then you will start to appreciate just how good blu-ray content can look on a decent TV.

Also with a true 120hz lcd (do they make tv's with real 120hz?) you should never need to switch the refresh rate.24 and 60 both go into 120 so they should both be smooth.

Im looking for some input. Gonna buy a laptop with HDMI output and intel i3 cpu that has HD3000 gpu. im gonna use a special ffdshow decoder made to use the HD3000 to hardware accell the video. Question is now how does it handle 24p mode?

No. You misunderstand. A multiple of 24P won't fix the issue if the video card is dropping frames. Remember that BD is 23.976 not 24.00 it does not matter what refresh rate your tv is. It is true that motion smothers and all the other garbage can mask the problem.... To some degree.... At the expense of picture quality.

Well I wasn't referring to dropped frames but 3:2 judder from doing 24 to 60.

I agree about motion smoothers I hate them. Thats why I asked if they make real 120hz tv's like they do pc monitors.

If you had an HDTV that gave the option for 24/23.976 fps, how would a consumer know if the content on a DVD was 24/23.976 fps?

Lots of that info is on the package of the disc. These days I believe its pretty standard for blu ray players to automatically send out a 1080p24 signal. So the consumer wouldn't need to mess with anything.

If a person cares about using 24p playback. And bought gear that can support it. Then they know or can figure out what their media was filmed at. For the people that don't really know the details of their TV and what everything means. They normally don't care or know about proper playback anyways so no big deal.

..I was too busy with the main prob but now thinking back and explaining to myself - of course the reason is,
to have equal viewing distances in both directions - too fast / too slow (| <) I had to set the 50ms beep to start 25 ms before the edge point and end 25ms after.

So my screenshot shows the reality and you have to subtract 25ms from your measures for the last edge square.

On my Samsung B6000, it "seems" to detect automatically and display 24fps content with 5:5 pulldown on it's own.

How do you know it is 5:5 pulldown? Doesn't the display switch refresh rate? Mine goes black fo 500 millisecs or so and then says 1920x1080 24p ina box in the upper corner. Is it actually doing 5:5 pulldown at 120Hz?

Sure, they make 120hz LCDs and even 240hz LCDs... and 96hz or 120hz Plasma look better than both, for film content.

DVDs are never 24/23.976, re-read what I posted. 24.00/23.976 is for BD content only.