EDEN BETA 3: Refresh Rate No Longer Changing

Since migrating from EDEN BETA 2 to BETA 3 the refresh rate no longer changes to match the movie fps. It seems to remain at 60fps no matter what the movie.

For example, in the debug log included, "Picture Perfect" reports 30fps for the opening and then reports to 23.95 as the movie starts. Refresh remains at 60 during the entire movie.

I've tried defining <measurerefresh> in advancedsettings, but it didn't change the symptoms.

http://pastebin.com/ns0VFQma

I've seen this on several movies and several tv episodes. "sync to display" is enabled.

This worked fine in Eden BETA 2.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Doug

Adjust refreshrate is working fine, the problem is you're playing an NTSC dvd which is reported as 59.94 fps, in the past XBMC would detect 23.976 fps video on an NTSC dvd by checking the video timestamps, but this was disabled because it caused too many problems.

bobo1on1 Wrote:Adjust refreshrate is working fine, the problem is you're playing an NTSC dvd which is reported as 59.94 fps, in the past XBMC would detect 23.976 fps video on an NTSC dvd by checking the video timestamps, but this was disabled because it caused too many problems.

That's interesting bobo1on1. Thanks for checking.

I can't say I completely understand it, though. I haven't noticed significant judder like I used to see when the refresh rate wasn't adjusted accordingly. I do notice some, though. Is this the trade-off, should I now expect some judder as a result, or am I still missing something?

BTW, is there a particular pull or trac request I could review that describes why this change was made?

Thanks,
Doug

While I can't judge why this change was induced for BETA 3, I am not entirely sure I'm now seeing the best results, certainly not comparable to what I "thought" I saw before.

Occasional judder is once again noticeable to me and now I don't seem to have a way of adjusting the display to compensate.

I think I now understand the NTSC comments, though.

Something is odd, here. Is anyone else experiencing a similar challenge?

Thanks,
Doug

Interesting statement made in the 24P Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p

Quote:24p on DVD

DVDs, however, are capable of storing the native 24p frames. Every Hollywood movie is laid to disc as a 24p (actually 23.976p – see below) stream. With a progressive-scan DVD player and a progressive display, such as an HDTV, only the progressive frames are displayed and there is no conversion to an interlaced format – eliminating the appearance of any interlace or de-interlacing artifacts. When displayed on a standard NTSC TV (which only displays 60i) the DVD player will add 3:2 pulldown to the signal.

In traditional television broadcast and VHS, the video stream has 3:2 pulldown added. This material cannot be displayed progressively without the resolution loss of de-interlacing, unless the de-interlacer has accurate cadence detection.

If this is indeed the case, it would give a reasonable explanation to the problems potentially being experienced.

When I check MediaInfo for the original movie I reported above (Picture Perfect), it reports the following:

[INDENT]Video
ID : 224 (0xE0)
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Duration : 1h 41mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Compression mode : Lossy [/INDENT]

It's showing 29.970, not 59.94, although I'm not sure this really matters entirely.

I'm continuing to flog this issue because I'm not entirely satisfied with the quality of the video playback in BETA 3. BETA 2 produced much more pleasing playback, for the most part (at least to me). Judder has crept back into the playback, or so it seems to me, and I would like to have the option of turning this back on. I am assuming "this" means that XBMC uses the timestamps of the encoded video to determine the fps instead of what the file reports.

The problem is if you have a dvd that switches between 23.976 fps and 59.94 fps, the fps calculation completely ruins the playback.

Quote:The problem is if you have a dvd that switches between 23.976 fps and 59.94 fps, the fps calculation completely ruins the playback.

Thanks, again, bobo1on1.

I have never seen such a condition. I have over 500 DVDs in my library and most all will shift to 24fps (under BETA 2) after a few seconds of playing. They used to remain at this fps and I've not seen a condition where it shifted back and forth. There are a few intros that have played at higher fps, but the main movie always was at 24fps.

All I can say is that playback in BETA 3 does not seem as good as it was in BETA 2 for these particular sources. I watched about 10 movies over the weekend and all exhibited some form of judder.

For BD sources, they shift to 24fps right away and play well throughout.

You guys can make the call, but I presently don't see a positive benefit to the change that was made between BETA 2 and BETA 3. I must be distracted.

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/commit/d73a...d43cc99795

You can now enable it again by putting this in advancedsettings.xml:

That's incredible, bobo1on1.

Thank you!

I'm very happy to have an option.

I'll await the change to make it's way into release.

+1 thanks for the option. I also recently discovered a couple of movies transcoded from DVD that won't switch framerates anymore.