[lmyllari]

Smooth motion use frame blending and should only be use when your display couldn't match the framerate of your video.

Yes, that makes sense.. But can anyone explain to me why it looks significantly better ON rather than when refresh and framerate matching?

Probably an issue with your TV or player settings. I would try researching the correct settings for your TV - game mode may make assumptions that do not hold for video playback.

I polled about 30 of my friends that have come over to watch movies and they all agree. Not only that, but 11 of my friends have HTPC's with XBMC and they have all chosen to use MPC-HT as their external player to get Smooth Motion. All of our displays can match refresh, but it just doesn't look as good.

I tested MadVR's Smooth Motion on a loaner laptop and was quite impressed with it on the laptop LCD screen. I didn't think it would work at all. It was a pretty good approximation of 24fps playback, without any of the problems that come with motion compensated interpolation ("soap opera effect", motion compensation errors).

The results were worse on my TV (Panasonic ZT60 plasma). You can see the ghosts from blending. Real 24fps (at 96Hz) is much cleaner.

[TylerD004]

Probably an issue with your TV or player settings. I would try researching the correct settings for your TV - game mode may make assumptions that do not hold for video playback.

Very unlikely. On all sets they are showing in info as 24Hz. This is also the case will all of my friends that are running the same set up. This many people don't just agree on the same thing for a reason.

Don't test Smooth Motion in MPC with MadVR, btw. You have to try it in MediaBrowser Theater with Smooth Motion enabled. Our typical test is Avatar bluray. We watch the Fox intro for smoothness (especially when a spotlight is passing the frame from right to left and also when flying over the forest in the beginning). Those two are really great references to detect smoothness.

[Kib]

Yes, as said it appears nice on faster moving stuff, and worse on slow moving shots.

+1 for real 24Hz playback,
-1 for 'Game Mode' and added 'smoothers'.

I'm just saying - if you want it, you implement it and create a pull request.
After doing that you will most likely be invited to join the team and are now the sole person responsible for maintaining that code.

[TylerD004]

if you want it, you implement it and create a pull request.

I would love to join the team, but I don't know how to implement it. Believe me, I would have if I could. Someone implemented MadVR in a fork of XBMC a while ago (Frodo?). I wonder if that guy would be interested.

You guys should at least try out MediaPlayer Theater to see what I'm talking about. A large group of us can't be wrong about what we're seeing. No one has weird TV settings; we all know what we're doing. It would be great if this could at least be an option (not default) that can be enabled for those that like it.

[lmyllari]

Don't test Smooth Motion in MPC with MadVR, btw. You have to try it in MediaBrowser Theater with Smooth Motion enabled. Our typical test is Avatar bluray. We watch the Fox intro for smoothness (especially when a spotlight is passing the frame from right to left and also when flying over the forest in the beginning). Those two are really great references to detect smoothness.

I was getting the smooth motion - it was a surprisingly good imitation of real 24fps playback. The problem is that MadVR outputs blended frames between the original ones, and the plasma is fast enough to show those clearly. See http://i2.minus.com/ifQIl8vKfENOJ.png for an example of blended frames and the kind of ghosting that I saw (of course it's not quite that obvious, but it does definitely degrade quality compared to true 24fps).

Outputting just the original clean frames lets my TV show only those with 4:4 pulldown, giving both the smooth motion and no ghosting from blending the frames.

I still think that

a good TV and real 24p is the only way to go.

[Ned Scott]

A large group of us can't be wrong about what we're seeing.

Yes they can. Look at how many horrible TV shows are popular. Look at all the diet pill scams. Look at Beats headphones. Post production 3D. Curved TV screens. Fake breasts. It's easy to convince even an educated group of people that something is "better" simply because there is some noticeable change, along with some marketing.

[djfred93]

What TVs are you testing with?

I'm using 3. A Samsung UN65H7150, Vizio M652I-B2, and a Sony KDL65W950B. However, in all cases, I turn game mode on so that I can see the true output from the HTPCs.

It's probably because your game mode don't work well in 24hz. I think that your TV support RGB in 4:4:4 in 60hz but not in 24 hz. You can use this test image to know if your TV is 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 in 24hz. Make sure you display it with 1:1 pixel mapping, otherwise it won't work. And, test your image in 24hz.

PS : I forgot that MadVR can do the upscaling of image subtitle, like PGS, using the video scaling method algorithm.

[TylerD004]

A large group of us can't be wrong about what we're seeing.

Yes they can. Look at how many horrible TV shows are popular. Look at all the diet pill scams. Look at Beats headphones. Post production 3D. Curved TV screens. Fake breasts. It's easy to convince even an educated group of people that something is "better" simply because there is some noticeable change, along with some marketing.

LOL! Point taken!

---

I was getting the smooth motion

How? What app were you using to play the video?

---

It's probably because your game mode don't work well in 24hz.

I tried without game mode as well. Game mode is just a good test of raw input. 24Hz works perfectly with and without it. I'm not saying that 24Hz is bad. I thought it was best too until recently. It's just second to what I'm seeing at 60Hz in MediaBrowser Theater with Smooth Motion enabled.

[sialivi]

Yes they can. Look at how many horrible TV shows are popular. Look at all the diet pill scams. Look at Beats headphones. Post production 3D. Curved TV screens. Fake breasts. It's easy to convince even an educated group of people that something is "better" simply because there is some noticeable change, along with some marketing.

Curved screens actually make total sense, but -only- if viewed from the proper distance for its size, since it will then counteract the color-shift LCD displays suffer from. If you view a large LCD tv that fill your entire field of view, you will find that the colors at the center of the screen will be different from the colors at the far edges of the screen due to the viewing angles, the bane of LCDs, being different.

[da-anda]

Curved screens to me only make sense if I get an 160° view angle with them - so it has to be a huge curved screen in a cinema (iMax ftw). For anything else I prefer a future OLED wallpaper that covers the entire wall

[madshi]

I was getting the smooth motion - it was a surprisingly good imitation of real 24fps playback. The problem is that MadVR outputs blended frames between the original ones, and the plasma is fast enough to show those clearly. See http://i2.minus.com/ifQIl8vKfENOJ.png for an example of blended frames and the kind of ghosting that I saw (of course it's not quite that obvious, but it does definitely degrade quality compared to true 24fps).

Outputting just the original clean frames lets my TV show only those with 4:4 pulldown, giving both the smooth motion and no ghosting from blending the frames.

I still think that a good TV and real 24p is the only way to go.

I fully agree that a display with a good 24p implementation is a better solution than madVR's smooth motion FRC. There are quite a large number of users, though, who seem to have displays with not-so-good 24p implementations. I'm not sure why. Maybe many displays internally implement 24p by doing a simple 3:2 pulldown and then internally refresh at 60p? I don't know.

I do wonder why you're seeing the blended frames on your plasma. Especially at 96Hz the blended frames should only be displayed/visible for a VERY short time. The higher the refresh rate the larger the percentage of unblended frames. E.g. with 24fps and 25Hz, almost every frame will have to be blended. And each blended frame is shown for a long time (1000ms / 25 = 40ms). But with 24fps and 96Hz, only one out of maybe 4 frames needs to blended, and the blended frame is only shown for a very short time (1000ms / 96 ~= 10ms). I'm wondering whether maybe something goes wrong when doing madVR playback with 96Hz on your plasma? E.g. maybe blended frames are shown longer than they should be? It could be a problem with madVR or Direct3D. Or it could be a problem with the plasma. Have you tested madVR in fullscreen exclusive mode? If not, I'd suggest that you try that, because it's simply more reliable, especially when using high refresh rates and smooth motion FRC. When using FSE mode, are there any frame drops/repeats or presentation glitches? And does madVR detect the 96Hz properly? (See debug OSD, Ctrl+J).

P.S: Just now I'm realizing that you probably tested this on your plasma with 60Hz, right? Can you try with some higher mismatching refresh rate, e.g. 80Hz or 100Hz or something like that, just to double check that the problem is reduced with a higher refresh rate? At least it should be...

[wpbpete]

^^^^^ C'mon madshi... make it happen
maybe an option to toggle madvr on/off in video settings and make it available thru the repo as a program/service addon..

if you want it, you implement it and create a pull request.

I would love to join the team, but I don't know how to implement it. Believe me, I would have if I could. Someone implemented MadVR in a fork of XBMC a while ago (Frodo?). I wonder if that guy would be interested.

You guys should at least try out MediaPlayer Theater to see what I'm talking about. A large group of us can't be wrong about what we're seeing. No one has weird TV settings; we all know what we're doing. It would be great if this could at least be an option (not default) that can be enabled for those that like it.

[madshi]

I have more than enough on my hands developing madVR. I don't have the resources to work on media players, on top of that.

[Warner306]

I did a Google search on madVR and Kodi and came up with this topic. After using MPC-HC with madVR for sometime now with a card capable of doing at least Jinc3+AR, debanding, dithering, gamma control, etc; yes, there is a difference. But for most users who are not picture quality snobs, the difference probably won't spur anyone to add very complex code to the internal player just for Windows users. I tried Media Browser 3's Theatre Mode with madVR and it is terribly glitchy and still doesn't work properly after a full public release. At least, it does not work as well as MPC-HC. JRiver Media Center is ok, but it isn't Kodi, and it isn't Media Browser.

So, if you like the interface of Kodi, you are left with launching MPC-HC as an external player, which is moderately complicated and time-consuming. But I can live with it an be happy, for now. Again, only the true picture snobs need apply. But if they do, I wrote a guide on how to do it:

Kodi with madVR via MPC-HC: 1843499 (post)

[ichkriegediekri]

I have tested media browser theater, mediaportal, Jr medicenter and kodi. All if them have good picture quality.

The only advantage of madvr is the much better upscaling when having good hardware (at least jinc3).
Most obvious was the difference in media browser as it offers lav and madvr.

Improving upscaling quality would be great and will become even more important when 4k HDMI output is available as the upscaling from 576i 720p and 1080p will not be done by the TV hardware optimized which is optimized for that but by the htpc software/filter because it will directly output 4k then.

Soi think there is need for improvement in the future

As for smooth playback etc. there is frame rate matching which works great when set up correctly matching TV and avr capabilities.