Let's set this straight - No one can do 24p consistently well - Page 29

Where is this code available for frame rate switching within WMC?

BDP-51FD, the 05FD does as well, it's called Source Direct. I believe the newer (and older for that matter) models do as well. Supposedly Sony's and the Oppos do as well.

That's kind of what I figured, I've never had good luck with resolution switching on the PC, there always seem to be significant negative side effects.

I will ask this question again, has anyone been able to get 23.XXX from Intel card in 3D frame packed, I have not been able to get anything other than 1080P24 which is causing all sorts of Havoc.

Lon, I beleive so. What player software is Vidabox using? I thought it was TMT, but I forget and dont' know which version.

It is using TotalMedia Theater 5..

http://babgvant.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/babgvant/DTBAddin/

Thanks, I'll have to check that out. I've played with some Sony BD players in the past and don't remember seeing that feature. It wouldn't surprise me if Oppo had it given their demographic, but I haven't had a chance to look personally.

Refresh rate changing works great in JMC (better than any app IMO). This is only a problem for managed applications and not a problem with the platform.

For how I use WMC (when I used WMC regularly) this wouldn't have been an issue. It's really only an issue for those who never want to close the UI, and iIt would be easy to write a tool (or use StandbyHelper) that would recycle the process to mask the problem.

Most video processors (including the ones inside TV's and Lumagen VPs) use 4:2:2 internally because it uses less resources. So ideally you want your source to send 4:2:2 to avoid extra scaling and/or color conversions. On a CE device, this is not a problem since their decoders can output directly to a 4:2:2 overlay.

On a PC, things get more complicated:

MadVR converts and scales 4:2:0/NV12 decoded frames into a full resolution RGB frame buffer. Video card then converts this full-res RGB data back to downsampled 4:2:2 for HDMI output. The extra RGB stage often causes mismatched black-levels and/or aliasing artifacts from poor chroma down-scaling by the video card. If you set your PC HDMI output to RGB, then this extra conversion will just happen inside the TV or processor. It's just not as clean of a path as you get from a CE device.

When you add the whole de-interlacing aspect to all of the above issues, things only get worse.

Regarding the clock issue.... If you time your audio sample playback, you will notice that the frequency is almost never perfectly 48 Khz. Consumer grade audio often has high jitter. So even if the PC could do perfect 23.976. video, there is no guarantee that your audio card will have the same precision. CE devices are not precise either, but because of the common clock both audio and video have the same error and thus stay in sync. Best you can do on a PC is to change the speed of your video or audio to get them to match up. This entire thread is actually a bit misleading because one's goal should not be perfect 23.976 but instead one should try for a video rate that matches their sound output rate (which may be slightly faster than 48 Khz for example).

My crappy FIOS 7216 DVR also does native output and automatic resolution switching just fine.

Edit: I forgot to mention that if you're using your TV as a giant computer monitor and your TV supports native full-resolution pixel-mapped RGB display, then you won't care about these issues since you're not using the TV's processing at all. Unfortunately, not all TV's have such a mode. Take Panasonic plasmas as an example.
Edited by Wizziwig - 8/17/12 at 8:17am

Yeah, 23 Hz should result in 23.976 but depends also on the graphics cards ability - 23.973 is the best Intel can do at the moment.

AND/BUT, you will only be able to select the 23 or 59 Hz in the graphics cards control panels if the TV previously (via EDID) has told your graphics card that he is able to perform those frequencies (yes, they are speaking..!).

So if i.e. only 24 and/or 60 Hz are selectable you would need another TV to receive the most accurate timing...
...but only the most accurate timing your graphics card can do. Too sad..



"lip sync" needs the two devices to support "lip sync", the AVR + TV. Only then the AVR will switch to another fixed audio delay by TV reporting via HDMI 1.4 that he needs longer to process the incoming signal.

-> of course fixed audio delay has nothing to do with audio drift (if there were any). I'm also still searching for..

To find dropped/repeated frames is much easier - load the 23.976-Slices video and stare long enough on the ticker. If after 2-3 minutes you don't see any slight jump you will have MUCH more difficulties to notice them in "average" movies.. The jumps right after the start do not count.



Dunno frame packed 3D (no appropriate projector) but what I can tell you is the only soft to perform really good hi quality 3D Blu-ray via Intel HD3000 to my Samsung TV at the moment is PowerDVD Pro/Ultra 12.

TMT5 or Stereoscopic Player (.SSIF) no chance - they're still working on it.

My HTPC is connected to a 720p HDTV. The Intel integrated graphics control panel lets me choose 59 or 60 Hz when using 1280x720 resolution, and 29 or 30 Hz when using 1920x1080 resolution. I never tried the 30/1920x1080 combination, but the other 3 variations all work.

Is a graphics card going to make much of difference if I have to convert from 23.976 to 59.94 Hz? Or will there still be problems because of 3:2 pulldown in addition to dealing with the 23.976 Hz bug?

29 or 30 won't help you playing a 23.976 video you need 23 Hz to set.

There is the other myst - Samsungs "motion plus". Other TV's may give it ohter names. On my TV only "motion plus" is able to synchronize the AMD graphics card's 59 Hz setting to smooth playing a 23.976 video. Trying that on an Intel HD3000 - jerking ticker.

"Auto motion plus" Where's the puke smiley.

To each is own but all that junk totally kills it for me. Just looks wrong.

Hi guys, while this question is not really about 24 Hz related, it fits on some of the late discussions on this thread. Basically, I just upgraded my TV, from an old 720p LED JVC to a new LG 1080p (47LM6700).

On my old TV I never experienced any dropped frames when watching Live TV on WMC - with either 720p or 1080i output from my Nvidia 430 card (Asus fanless). But with the new TV I get dropped frames all the time, specially when set the resolution to 1080p, 59Hz. I tried the various different modes of "soap opera effects" on the TV and none really fixed the issue. I do see a small improvement when I match the Nvidia output to the original content - for example 1080i for NBC, 720p for FOX, but I still see some dropped frames here and there.

Any recommendations here?

This is only affecting Live TV. I don't see this issue while watching DVDs (upscaling to 1080p) or Blu-Rays (didn't try them with 24 Hz output yet).

This sounds like the 29/59 bug to me. Hit 411 info on your remote and see what the frame rate is. You have to scroll through the pages to the last or second to last page to see what it is. If it is switching between 29 and 59, that's what the problem is.

Whoa never knew you could do that.

Just tried it my kids are watching an SD DVD rip of a gilligans island episode. All the audio and video codec info (including refresh rate) said "not specified".

No, not the 29/59 bug. That was the 1st thing I checked as well. But today I noticed that playing DVD with TMT5 also produces those frame rate drops, although very little ones when compared with live tv.

Isn't this only an issue if you output YUV?

Most MSO STB do. I wasn't really asking about those types of devices. Since this is a HTPC forum I assumed that everyone was using a PC for TV capture (if they did TV capture).
Edited by babgvant - 8/19/12 at 4:20pm

This is probably an issue w/ TMT. By default it chooses 24Hz for BDs, there's an INI setting that changes it but it doesn't seem to work for 3D.

I’m curious, have you actually done a per-frame comparison at high magnification?

I have yet to find any stand-alone device that can match the image quality of an HTPC running madVR. The only possible exception would be devices with dedicated deinterlacing hadware for video-based content, but that is of no concern to me as I don’t own any interlaced video content—I watch films, where deinterlacing is trivial, and I’m not aware of any stand-alone device that can even output 24p from an NTSC or PAL DVD for example.

In fact most of the high-end external video processors I have owned, only process the image in 10-bit 4:2:2 as the manufacturers do not consider there to be any benefit to 4:4:4/RGB when the video source is natively 4:2:0.

With madVR the image is processed with 16-bits of internal precision, and there absolutely is a distinct advantage outputting RGB compared to 4:2:2 chroma. Perhaps it is because these external video processors have to be fed a 4:2:2 signal (as far as I am aware, it is not possible to connect them to a 4:2:0 source) that they simply cannot do a good enough job, that they simply don’t bother to try.


Where an external video processor does have an advantage, is that it can pass on 10-bit data to the display, rather than being restricted to 8-bits precision. This is fine if you are simply outputting the final image, but if you are doing 3D LUT display calibration in the VP/HTPC, 8-bits is not enough. (there is noticeable degradation when using madVR’s 3D LUT option) HTPCs should be capable of outputting 10-bit data to the display though, it’s just a case of the software needing to support it.
Bitstreaming is no different from the decoded LPCM signal. With ReClock you can upsample the audio when adjusting it to keep it in sync, so there should be no perceivble quality loss. (and if you have spare CPU cycles, there is a replacement DLL for even higher quality upsampling options)

One could make the argument that playing back audio at the bitstreamed 24/1.001fps found on most US-released discs (for legacy compatibility with 60/1.001 displays) compared to the original 24.000fps of the original film source (as found on many European releases) is a far more noticeable change than anything ReClock is doing.
You should absolutely not be outputting YCC from your HTPC, it should be outputting RGB, or else you are undoing most of the work that madVR has done.

My television—and any high-end display—will display the full RGB source information. It is possibly converted to 4:4:4 YCC internally rather than remaining RGB, but if that is the case, then the display would be converting a 4:2:2 YCC input to that as well.
There is nothing “cleaner” about the signal chain of a CE device converting from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 and then having the display convert that to 4:4:4—if anything this is worse than going straight from 4:2:0 to RGB and then RGB to 4:4:4 YCC.

With the CE device chain, there are two image scaling steps, whereas there is a single image scaling step using the HTPC with madVR, and that step is performed with 16-bits of internal precision and high fidelity image scaling algorithms—who knows what your player or display is doing when converting from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2, and then 4:2:2 to 4:4:4.

Modern Sony BD players will output 24p from DVDs that are soft telecined.

Well if all you're watching is Blu-ray films, then you don't even need a video processor, I'm not surprised you'd not see a difference.

My AVM50V's Gennum (now Sigma) VXP video processor can IVTC DVDs to 24p and output them at 1080p24 (or any other resolution).

But of course you're really missing the point. Most of us with high-ish end video processors don't use only an HTPC, we use a number of devices. Good VPs have lots of advantages in such situations, not the least of which is providing excellent video processing for less than ideal sources.

And as far as madVR goes, madVR is great, but unfortunately only works in a very, very small subset of applications, and those applications are not sufficient/acceptable for all users in all situations. Now if I could use madVR in everything, to process all video that came out of my HTPC it might be a different story, but I can't, so I want to be able to use the top notch video processing in the other hardware I've already got rather than be stuck with "average" video processing in EVR or VMR, or whatever gets used in basically ever app but MPC-HC and JRMC.

Thanks for the correction, I was not aware of this feature. Is that something that’s only been introduced in the last year or so? I had one of their 3D Blu-ray players and I’m sure it didn’t offer this.

Sony definitely seem to be leading the pack when it comes to things like that. They have a number of unique technologies in their players that no-one else seems to be offering.

Still, I doubt we will see anything that offers to ReClock 25p to 24p, and I imagine there are a number of discs where this will not work correctly.
Chroma information is stored at 1/4 of luma information on Blu-ray. (or virtually any MPEG video) It all needs upsampled from 4:2:0. If you are using stand-alone hardware, then this upsampling is either being done partially, or entirely inside the player, at which point an external video processor is potentially going to further degrade that signal by processing it in 4:2:2 if the player upsampled to 4:4:4—as it should.
Other than display calibration functionality (which I found to be lacking on most devices due to their limited precision or 4:2:2 processing) the only feature I’ve found really useful was Anchor Bay Tech’s ability to re-deinterlace 480p/576p video, but I haven’t had a need for that in years.
Right, I don’t believe you can use madVR with TV tuners, but for DVD, Blu-ray, or other video sources it does better than any of the video processors I’ve owned.

If you want to use a different source for something (e.g. Netflix) and leverage the VXP for that, that is distinct from whether a HTPC can provide as good VP as the VXP for content which can be played from it.

VMR isn't great, but on the right HW I think EVR does much better than "average". Where these solutions stumble (and madVR excels) is being able to select the best VP for your tastes. The VMR only exists for backward compatibility in modern OS, and commercial players like PDVD and TMT use custom renderers that offer hybrid SW/HW VP capabilities so it might be worth your time to do another comparison.
Edited by babgvant - 8/19/12 at 5:26pm

I think it is a new feature, I don't remember seeing it on the player I reviewed a few years ago. We were on vacation last week and the property had a relatively new low-end model and while I was fixing the settings on the TV (torch mode ) I noticed that it was outputing 1080p24 for the DVD that was playing.

I find those players pretty much horrible to use.

Usability is yet another distinct issue. I pointed this out to highlight the [incorrect] assertion about what "basically ever app but MPC-HC and JRMC" use.

I understand that your preferences (which includes your use cases and opinions about usability) make a PC less desirable for you, but broad statements about the general suitability/performance of a solution should include some foundation for those statements to have merit beyond that context (i.e. your preferences).

I should have probably phrased it to say just about every app but JRMC and MPC-HC (probably Zoomplayer too) don't support madVR.

Exactly

I sent an email to a contact at ArcSoft to see if there's a separate setting, will update this thread when I hear back.

What resolutions do you use for MadVR to change from 1080p60? Should I use 1080p24 or 1080p23? I am using HD2000 graphics with latest drivers.