Rapidly dropping frames, but only with certain TV series (1 Viewer)

[FireAza]

Hi there Team MediaPortal,
I've got this odd issue with some DVD rips of Animaniacs which I'm playing through the MP-TV Series plugin. Now most of my TV series play fine, barely a dropped frame to be seen. But when I play an episode of these Animaniacs DVD rips and press shift+1, I can see frames being dropped at a rapid pace. Why is this? I've tried all manner of MPEG-2 decoders, all have the dropped frame issue with this series (and again, not other series). Maybe the DVD rips are just crappy? I know the guy did a sloppy job of naming the files anyway

I'm using MP 1.1.3.0 and I've included a log, let me know if there's anything else you need!

 

[HomeY]

It seems to be related to a wrong refreshrate:

54.650380 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: RefreshRateChanger.SetRefreshRateBasedOnFPS: using internal win32 method for changing refreshrate. current is 60hz, desired is 29.97
2012-05-14 21:40:55.336420 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: g_Player.Play(G:\Videos\TV Series\Animaniacs\Season 1\Animaniacs - S01E30 - Hot, Bothered and Bedeviled.avi Video)

On start it reads the refreshrate and tries to change it to 29.97. Then when you stop the playback it returns to your default setting (60Hz)

11.308333 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: RefreshRateChanger.SetRefreshRateBasedOnFPS: current refreshrate is 24hz - changing it to 60hz
2012-05-14 21:41:11.308333 [Info.][MPMain(1)]: RefreshRateChanger.SetRefreshRateBasedOnFPS: using internal win32 method for changing refreshrate. current is 24hz, desired is 60

Try to add (or change) the Dynamic Refreshrate to the following:
Name: NTSCFILM (or whatever you like)
Framerates: 29.97
Refreshrate: 59

I think that might fix it

 

[FireAza]

Okay, I'll give that a try, thanks! Curious, I would have thought that I would need to exactly match the refresh rate to the video's frame rate in order to prevent dropped frames, not set it higher!

 

[FireAza]

Yep, that's solved the issue, thanks for that!

 

[HomeY]

Curious, I would have thought that I would need to exactly match the refresh rate to the video's frame rate in order to prevent dropped frames, not set it higher!

You are correct They goal is to set the actual refreshrate or a multiple of that. Since the refreshrate of the video is 29.97, the closest match would be 59.94Hz. You can only enter whole numbers so for both ATi & Nvidia goes that if you set the refreshrate to 59Hz, it'll do 59.94Hz. Same goes when you set it to 23Hz, it'll do 23.976Hz where 24Hz will do exactly 24Hz.

 

[FireAza]

In that case, I should change my other settings that are using un-whole numbers. I've got:

CINEMA 23.976
NTSC 59.94

What would be suitable replacement figures?

 

[HomeY]

Take a look @ the Stuttering Playback Wiki and use the first table in there, but change these values:

CINEMA: set refreshrate to 23Hz
NTSC: set refreshrate to 59Hz
NTSCFILM: set refreshrate to 59Hz

 

[FireAza]

Thanks for that! Yeah, the Stuttering Playback Wiki is where I got my figures from to begin with, if both ATI and nVidia can't display non-whole number refresh rates, shouldn't the wiki be edited to correct this?

 

[HomeY]

Thanks for that! Yeah, the Stuttering Playback Wiki is where I got my figures from to begin with, if both ATI and nVidia can't display non-whole number refresh rates, shouldn't the wiki be edited to correct this?

Yes, you are right about this, the team is looking into it.

 

[RicoHTPC]

Hey guys
just having a similar problem of stuttering but without dropped frames are being shown on shift+1.
Played around with the refresh rates yesterday but didn't find a solution. The funny thing is that I have this problem at
SD TV content which should be the most unproblematic type of all I think...
Can the refresh rate be my problem when I have stuutering at 25 frames with 50 Hz refresh rate?