[UrbanT]

I've just finished a session with Ian (Scotty Boy) and John (Drummerjohn) which was organised to test the 50hz settings on the HS50. As someone who is completely naive with Powerstrip, Ian and John came over to test the projector to see if 50hz could be achieved.

I have to state up front that I did not believe it would make any difference (assuming it worked), as I quite happily watched PAL discs at 60hz without ever noticing stuttering. The most recent PAL disc I have been using for setting colours etc, is LOTR ROTK, extended edition. Before Ian and John arrived, I watched the slow pan up Doom Mountain (chapter 34) several times without seeing any stuttering at all, even though I was looking hard for it.

John bought Fight Club and Monsters Inc as there are a couple of scenes that showed the stuttering well, I could see this clearly, although if it hadn't been pointed out, I would have lived in ignorant bliss for a while longer

To cut a long story short, the Sony accepted the 50hz setting using Powerstrip, and further it gave perfect 1:1 pixel mapping. The 50hz setting does not appear to change either the brightness of the picture, or the colours.

We now played my Doom Mountain scene at 50hz, and it still looked really smooth. Change back to 60hz, run the scene again. Now theres stutter in the pan. Where the hell did that come from? And thats the crux, it looked smooth at 60hz, until you see it at 50hz, when it really is a smooth pan. We also played the Fight Club and Monsters Inc scenes again, and they were now totally smooth as well.

So I'm converted.

Reclock was also loaded as this is most likely needed on most setups to prevent any stutters from the codecs.

I hope this also confirms to anyone who wanted the question answered, the Sony accepts 50hz for your PAL discs, with perfect pixel mapping.

Thanks to Ian and John for coming over and playing with the settings, its much appreciated. I feel another 2 HS50 owners are on the horizon

[Tempest]

This stuttering you mention......

Set my mind thinking.

I run a Pannie AE200 from my PC via powerstrip 1:1 pixel matching.

I always notice on BIG pans in films, things are not VERY smooth.
Nothing your would really notice unless looking for it, but often something big moves by and you can see there are steps in the movement.

Would this be the kind of thing you are talking about, or is this soemthing totally different?

I just always assumed it was something to do with the fact that film is not shot at a very high frames/sec.

[KraGorn]

I've never been sure if Reclock is needed for 50hz PAL, though I too include it because everyone else does. Tonight I was doing some fiddling with FFDSHOW and tried removing Reclock when playing PAL and didn't notice any difference, so now I'm wondering if what I read about Reclock only being useful for NTSC (to get that weird fractional refresh rate) is really the case.

My favourite test for judder is chapter 2 of FOTR which starts with that close-up pan of the map followed by the slower pull-back .. really ugly at 60Hz.

[drummerjohn]

Recolcks requirement varies from setup to setup.

I could watch a PAL movie @ 50hz on my system for almost 20 minutes before stutter kicked in without reclock. On UrbanTs it was probably 2 mins.

With reclock it vanished for ever on my system.

[UrbanT]

Originally Posted by Tempest

I always notice on BIG pans in films, things are not VERY smooth.
Nothing your would really notice unless looking for it, but often something big moves by and you can see there are steps in the movement.

Would this be the kind of thing you are talking about, or is this soemthing totally different?
.

Thats exactly how I would describe it. The scene from Monster Inc has a slow pan across a room, with a lamp on a table. The scene looks smooth except for the lamp, where you can see the steps in the movement.

[Comer]

Anybody who says they have perfectly smooth pans for PAL at 60Hz refresh rate is...mistaken.

I believe that the need for Reclock is system dependent, different combination of sound card/graphics card/drivers etc can result in the need for reclock. Without reclock on my system I get a stutter on PAL @50hz every twenty or so seconds as if the sound card and graphics card are going out of sync and the stutter is caused by one trying to catch up with the other. I do not, however, get the microstutter that this thread is refering to. At 60hz I get microstutter but not the stutter every 20 seconds.

The stutter caused at 60Hz on NTSC by 3:2 pulldown also drives me crazy, that's why I stopped buying R1 DVDs about six months ago.

[KraGorn]

Using Reclock last night I became a tad annoyed at the repeated frames, Reclock's count was over 450 after watching part 2 of FOTR:EE .. I may try twiddling with Powerstrip to try to get the 9600's timing a bit tighter to eliminate the need for it. I suppose another option is to try 75Hz and see if the timing is any better without twiddling.

Does PAL want an exact multiple of 25 or is it like NTSC which needs a shade under 60 (59.94 or something isn't it?).

[drummerjohn]

Kragorn - 450 repeated frames? Something very wrong there. What does reclock say about how it adapted?

PAL wants multiple of 25. I find that to make reclocks life easier I have to adjust the latencies of the video card and sound card.

[KraGorn]

I only glanced at the numbers and only the repeat count registered with me. I do recall it had settled the refresh at 49.939.

I'm using on-bard S/PDIF as I've never found a need to question it, should I be now? I once fiddled with the latency of the AGP when I had the 6800GT, not tried since putting back the ATI .. when I did play I never could perceive any difference I have to say.

However, this discussion I've started is going OT and really belongs in the HTPC forum. I'll do some more playing and if I stil get what you indicate are bad results I'll post them there.

Cheers.

[Craig Armstrong]

UrbanT, I've spent the last week or so trying to mirror your software set up to get nice playback on 60hz When I fed a 50hz signal to my HS50 the picture became smaller and I thought I had a cropping issue (reference has been made somewhere to 50hz in input A having the problem as HDMI input) - I use powerstrip - can you post your settings page? Did you simply use the standard 50hz resloution show here:

PS I'm just about managing a 2x resize in FFDSHOW on my XP 2600+ now that I've changed to the latest Sonic DVD codec (bought this morning) from the nvidia codec. I've got a Radeon 9700 Pro and this is presumably why the nvidia codec took 10% more CPU usage.

[UrbanT]

Craig, when we first put the 50hz setting into the Sony, it also showed the blanking issues. However, you need to go into the Sony's menu, and change Input A from 'auto' to 'computer', and that solved the problem. Its nothing to do with Powerstrip settings.

I use the ATI 9800 pro with the Nvidia codecs of Theatertek, and prefer them to the old Sonic decoders, but thats just my preference

Even though I have the CPU power to to resize 2.5x, I only resize to 1280 x 720, with Lanczos 2. I couldn't see any improvement by going higher, and I played for hours to see if it made a difference.

Originally Posted by Craig Armstrong

UrbanT, I've spent the last week or so trying to mirror your software set up to get nice playback on 60hz When I fed a 50hz signal to my HS50 the picture became smaller and I thought I had a cropping issue (reference has been made somewhere to 50hz in input A having the problem as HDMI input) - I use powerstrip - can you post your settings page? Did you simply use the standard 50hz resloution show here:

PS I'm just about managing a 2x resize in FFDSHOW on my XP 2600+ now that I've changed to the latest Sonic DVD codec (bought this morning) from the nvidia codec. I've got a Radeon 9700 Pro and this is presumably why the nvidia codec took 10% more CPU usage.

[Craig Armstrong]

Ah! Thanks UrbanT, made that change. However, the 720p custom resolution I selected from the menu puts the picture on the far left - it seems that if I change the front and back porch figures that I get the picture centred, although the image doesn't fill my widescreen pj screen properly, the picture is too narrow in essence. Could you post your front and back porch figures etc on the Advanced timings page? Thanks for your help. Here are mine for reference:

http://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php...=si&img=203217

[Craig Armstrong]

Hmmm, and now its reading the signal at a computer input, my zoomplayer playback doesn't take up the whole projector screen, even if full screen mode. Hmmm, what devilish setting do I need to change?...

EDIT: Am I supposed to use the zoom function using my mouse wheel?

[UrbanT]

Here sare the settings I have:

37.400
1280
72
128
1664

50.000
720
3
5
20
748

Pixel clock 62.234

As far as I remember, these are just the settings that appeared after typing in 50.000 on that page.

[Craig Armstrong]

I think there's a figure missing from the above but as soon as I start changing one figure, the other change! I've selected 720p for LCD screens from powerstrip list and then knocked refresh from 60hz down to 50hz. It looked fine expect I notice that there is a final line of green pixels down the right hand edge of the image. Obviously one of my figures isn't right.

EDIT: A ha! Got it

the missing number is 184 below 128

So our settings are:

37.400
1280
72
128
184
1664

50.000
720
3
5
20
748

Pixel clock 62.234

[UrbanT]

Apologies Craig, you are right, its 184. Have you got it working now?

[BBD]

UrbanT - Thanks for the Powerstrip settings. I was having the same problems as Craig but I now have a 50hz display working okay. I'm still having problems with stutter though. I have only managed to achieve completely smooth playback on the HS50 with a 60Hz refresh and using Reclock to force the film to play at 30fps (not much use on a PAL disk!). I don't have the same problems on my G70 crt. Can you please let me know what setting you are using on Reclock.

PS This is not my own projector. KWB has very kindly let me use his HS50 whilst he's away over the weekend and I've been very impressed with it.

[UrbanT]

Originally Posted by BBD

UrbanT - Thanks for the Powerstrip settings. I was having the same problems as Craig but I now have a 50hz display working okay. I'm still having problems with stutter though. I have only managed to achieve completely smooth playback on the HS50 with a 60Hz refresh and using Reclock to force the film to play at 30fps (not much use on a PAL disk!). I don't have the same problems on my G70 crt. Can you please let me know what setting you are using on Reclock.

PS This is not my own projector. KWB has very kindly let me use his HS50 whilst he's away over the weekend and I've been very impressed with it.

As far as I know, its all pretty much standard settings. What software are you using?

PS You have John and Ian to thank for the settings

[KraGorn]

Originally Posted by drummerjohn

Kragorn - 450 repeated frames? Something very wrong there. What does reclock say about how it adapted?

PAL wants multiple of 25. I find that to make reclocks life easier I have to adjust the latencies of the video card and sound card.

I'll carry on in this thread.

I did some more playing and found that I'm getting groups of 3 repeats at a time, ie. the count goes up by 3 whenever it changes at all. I'm not sure which of the many figures you're asking about, it's adding c. 3,500Hz to the clock .. but it did that when I used 48Hz to play an NTSC DVD (I set up 60hz but Reclock said it wanted 48 for a 24fps film).

According to Reclock the video card is running at 49.939, even though I've set Powerstrip to 50.000 and it reports it as that. Without Powerstrip I get occasional groups of 3 stutters about 1/2 sec a part, each group is quite a long time apart and not really bothersome so I'm wondering whether it's worth pursuing, especially as (like FFDSHOW) I'm clueless really as to what's going on and what if anything I can twiddle with.

[BBD]

I had a play with Powerstrip and now it's perfect. I only changed the 'Back Porch' setting. Not sure how this sorts it but it has. I'm using ZP with DScaler5 codecs but I also tried TT2 which was even worse. Both now give good results although as with my CRT setup DScaler 5 is the smoothest.

[tjobbins]

Hey guys,

Was wondering how you guys handle switching from PAL to NTSC disks - do you have a batch file set up to tell Powerstrip to revert to back to 60hz settings?

Also am I right in thinking that normal PC material, e.g. playing games, would be best viewed at the default 60hz?


Tom

[KraGorn]

There are a few ways to do the switch. The klunky way is a desktop shortcut to a Powerstrip command line, I use this method, I don't feel the need for sophistication .

Alternatively, if you use software such as AnyDVD (which I also have but don't use this feature) then you can get it to automatically run a command when you insert a DVD. There's an old freebie utility written by Rob Screene (IIRC) that does the same thing, no idea where it'd be found but he's posted about it recently here and on TheaterTek's forum.

As for playing games, I don't think it matters to be honest. The problem with frame rates being discussed here stems from playing back a video stream with a pre-defined frame rate. I have no idea how/why normal PC video output differs but you can use any rate available. The best framerate for PC output (including games) on an LCD is the native rate (60hz), for a CRT it's usually something over 75hz to eliminate flicker.

[Craig Armstrong]

Originally Posted by UrbanT

Apologies Craig, you are right, its 184. Have you got it working now?

but zoom player now crashing every few minutes It may be simply that the CPU is under extreme load and I've just noticed my CPU diode temperature, I've done something stupid with my cooling and its been cooking the CPU Suffice to dsay, I've dropped the diode temp by 20oC and will try zoom player again today. I'm more concerned about the green line of pixels on the projector image (not read the responses overnight to my new thread yet).

[Craig Armstrong]

Originally Posted by BBD

UrbanT - Thanks for the Powerstrip settings. I was having the same problems as Craig but I now have a 50hz display working okay. I'm still having problems with stutter though. I have only managed to achieve completely smooth playback on the HS50 with a 60Hz refresh and using Reclock to force the film to play at 30fps (not much use on a PAL disk!). I don't have the same problems on my G70 crt. Can you please let me know what setting you are using on Reclock.

PS This is not my own projector. KWB has very kindly let me use his HS50 whilst he's away over the weekend and I've been very impressed with it.

I was playing with my latency timings for the video card and sound card yesterday with some success until zoom player started its constant crashing issues. I think my best success was withe the graphics card and the sound card with latencies both about 128, perhaps video card latency slightly lower.


EDIT: I've got my PC running stabily this morning and with my graphics card latency at 64 and sound card at 128 plus use of reclock, I appear from my first 30 mins of viewing of Blade to have smooth playback

[drummerjohn]

Excellent progress on this board. Its really good to see people resolving issues - apart from poor Craig and his "green line".

[Craig Armstrong]

Well, I hesitate to say this, but with some fiddling around with APA on the HS50 I seem to have reduced the problem. I also think the desktop wallpaper I was using was perhaps a poor example - I've been staring at my 17" LCD primary monitor and can see the same effect with the same desktop wallpaper if I look hard. Perhaps I'm a fussy bugger (hence two returned AE500s...). My CPU diode temp is still hitting 70oC when running zoomplayer (85-95% CPU load) but quickly backsdown to 64oC when I stop watching a DVD. Socket temp is only 43oC. More importantly, the stability issues (including problems with reclock) have disappeared now I've plugged the case fans back in...

[Tempest]

Can someone stop me before iI waste loads of time on this.

I was well impressed by the comments about the freeware util ReClock.

I have downloaded and run it, and all looks greek to me!!!!

Anyhow:

1: Does it work with WinDVD6 if so how?
2: Will it make any difference to my AE200 projector?
3: I'm running XP and Powerstrip with the 1:1 settings for my projector.

[drummerjohn]

Tempest - Reclock will work with WinDVD you force reclock as the default filter (tickbox). That may cause other problems for other apps that use sound though.

You need to remember though that the display refresh rate needs to equal that of the material for reclock to work at its best.

So for PAL material the display refresh rate needs to be a multiple of 25 (as PAL is 25fps)... 50Hz (ideal), 75Hz or 100Hz.

For NTSC (24fps after 3:2 pulldown) you would want the display refresh rate to be 48Hz, 72Hz. You can run NTSC at 60Hz and reclock will work with it but its not ideal.

[Tempest]

Originally Posted by drummerjohn

Tempest - Reclock will work with WinDVD you force reclock as the default filter (tickbox). That may cause other problems for other apps that use sound though.

You need to remember though that the display refresh rate needs to equal that of the material for reclock to work at its best.

So for PAL material the display refresh rate needs to be a multiple of 25 (as PAL is 25fps)... 50Hz (ideal), 75Hz or 100Hz.

For NTSC (24fps after 3:2 pulldown) you would want the display refresh rate to be 48Hz, 72Hz. You can run NTSC at 60Hz and reclock will work with it but its not ideal.

OK, I'll admit, I'm being a bit DIM here, but I don't get how RECLOCK actually runs.

I've installed it, and click on the configure icon for it to come on screen so you can adjust the settings, then what ?

Is it just ON the system all the time, or do I have to start it up somehow?

Ran WinDVD and I ssume you mean something in the audio setting, but there is nothing there.........

I just don'y really get how this actually works in conjunction with anything else.

[Craig Armstrong]

Originally Posted by Craig Armstrong

So our settings are:

37.400
1280
72
128
184
1664

50.000
720
3
5
20
748

Pixel clock 62.234

OK, just to cause confusion, and I didn't manually do this so not sure how its come about...but I've not got that damn green line of pixels any more so here are my current settings...

Scan Rate 37.500
Active 1280
front porch 88
Sync width 56
Back Porch 232
total 1656

Vertical refrsh rate 50.000
Active 720
Front porch 4
Sync width 6
Back porch 20
Total 750

Pixel clock 62.100

I'm going to upgrade my PC over the next week or so and therefore I'll need to come back here to get my settings again