TMT 5 Stuttering Blu-Ray playback

You could check your display manual to see what formats are supported. You could also check your display properties on your HTPC to see if the 23Hz and 24Hz options are available. They generally are not if the display doesn't support those formats.

I haven't played with the most recent iteration of TMT5, but there may be a configuration value that tells you whether the 24p capability is enabled. Your display may also tell you what input format it is receiving. You could also try checking the current display properties while content is playing back to see what the PC is configured for.

I've had some conflicts between my TV video processings and my PC video processings, like they were both trying to perform some kind of motion correction or whatever, which introduced some stuttering.

If you have a "game mode" on you tv, try this. It will disable all the video processing done by the tv.

I bought TMT5 and had similar issues.  Read their forums.  Their newest release fixed me. 

Beware-  It appeared on their site they were going to charge me to download the latest release for TMT5 even though I had just bought it.  It was not the case.  Read their forums about the most recent release.  It will spell it out for you.

 

Did you check for sure that your tv doesn't have a game mode? If your TV is a Panasonic, chances it has a gaming mode... You should try it

I'd love to revive this thread as I'm having the same problem as the OP.  The stuttering/juddering is not nearly as bad as his was, but it's definitely noticeable.  

I'm running Win7 MC with a core i3 550 CPU (clarksdale), using the onboard Intel Graphics via HDMI.  My TV is an LG LCD 120Hz.  (less than a year old)  I'm using TMT5 (the latest version, downloaded a few days ago) for blu-ray playback.  Playback of Live and Recorded TV is generally very smooth for me.  

I have my refresh rate set to 60Hz both in Windows as well as WMC.  (1920x1080)  I have the latest Intel driver for my graphics card, and supposedly this latest version includes some improvements for 24p.  (apparently it now supports 23.976hz instead of 24hz)  Regardless, bluray playback has never been particularly smooth for me no matter which driver I use.  When playing a bluray my CPU sits at about 32% so that's not the problem.  

Anyone have any ideas?  I'm kind of a noob when it comes to the nitty gritty details of refresh rates, 24p, etc, and frankly I don't really care that much if it's 24p or not - I just want it to look nice and smooth like it does when I playback blurays on my PS3. 

Wow, thanks a ton Aaron.  I think I need to re-read the 24p article a few more times before it sinks in, however, but great stuff nonetheless.  A few more questions/comments:

1.  I checked my BIOS version, and it appears as though I have the latest.  (dated 10/19/2011) 

2.  Are there some hidden settings in TMT somewhere that can adjust the framerate, or does it take care of all that automatically?  Furthermore, do the refresh rate settings in WMC even matter when playing back a bluray in TMT?  In other words, does TMT "take over" and assert it's own refresh rate?

3.  Wow, really 59.95hz?  And here this whole time I thought 60Hz was correct.  So I need to change that both in Windows as well as WMC right?

4.  I keep reading about disabling UAC.  I assume that's the user account control thing in windows?  What in the world would that have to do with the refresh rate on a graphics card?? 

Thanks again for the help!

Thanks again Aaron.  My board is an Intel board, specifically the DH57JG.  Keep in mind this is a Clarksdale board not a Sandy Bridge board.  I'm not sure if that matters as far as this 24p stuff is concerned??  (my impression is it's the same underlying bug in both architectures, but I could be wrong)  

I've started to read some threads over at the TMT5 site and I've seen their support guy tell people to use 60hz.  I'm not sure why that would matter if TMT is overriding that with it's own refresh rate.  

I'll check and see if my TV provides any info about the refresh rate getting displayed.  Does the TV need to have specific support for 24p for this all to work?  I didn't think that was the case..  Again, if I playback the same bluray on the same TV using my PS3 everything is smooth as butter.  I have no idea if it's in 24p or not, but that's really a secondary concern - the main goal is to get the judder to stop when playing bluray's on my HTPC.  

Note if you want to try the auto-refresh rate change in TMT, you need to add

Refresh23HZ=1

 under the [GENERAL] section to the [USER]\AppData\Roaming\ArcSoft\ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 5\5.2\PlayDVD.ini

And then make sure the "Automatic refresh rate switching" checkbox is checked in the video settings.    Note there's another PlayDVD.ini file if you are launching from Windows Media Center and I assume the feature works there as well.

That said, I have yet to ever see TMT play a BD without stuttering or losing audio sync somewhere along the line.    I strongly recommend having a standalone BD player as a backup for those times where all you really want to do is watch the movie...

@mike and @aaron

Thanks to both of you for the info.  I had some time this weekend to fiddle around with settings and watch some blurays.  I discovered that the "auto frame rate refresh" setting in TMT5 was NOT checked.  This was the source of my problems.  After checking that box, playback was almost perfect.  I watched Inception and Star Wars - Attack of the Clones over the weekend and both looked fantastic.  

I did not make that "Refresh23Hz=1" tweak, nor did I do the other thing mentioned on the arcsoft forum link for forcing 23.976 after playback begins.  To be honest, things looked good enough that I didn't feel like messing around any more.  I'm sure I'm getting the skipped frame every 40 seconds, but I don't recall even noticing it.  I'll have to watch another blurry this week and see if I can detect it.  Bottom line though, is that simply checking that "auto frame rate refresh" checkbox in TMT5 dramatically improved playback.  

As for my TV, I did some research and discovered that it actually does support 24p.  It's an LG set, and LG calls it "Real Cinema" mode.  Here's the blurb from the manual:  "Makes video clips recorded in film look more natural by eliminating judder effect.  DVD and Blu-Ray movies are filmed at 24 frames per second.  With LG Real Cinema, every frame is consistently processed 2 times in 1/24 of a second pro ducting 48fps, thus totaling eliminating the judder effect."  (apparently this is "2:2 pulldown"??)

Here's something interesting:  There's a setting in the TV's advanced menu which shows you if Real Cinema mode is enabled or not.  When watching a blu-ray disc, it automatically gets switched on.  (Tv must realize it's getting a 24 fps signal and turns on real cinema mode?)  However, when I watch some ripped blu-rays I have the TV is NOT turning on real cinema mode.  Hmmm.  The movies are actually not "ripped", they're uncompressed MKV's (using makemkv) that I then converted into WTV files using dvrmstoolbox.  So maybe somewhere along the line, the frame rate got messed up and the TV doesn't recognize it as 24p material??  This is lesser concern for me, but definitely something I need to do some research on.  

I set my desktop refresh rate to 23hz (I had a choice of 23 or 24, and I think 23 actually means 23.976) but it made no difference - the TV setup doesn't show real cinema mode as enabled.  But since I'm playing back these movies via media center, wouldn't I have to set my refresh rate in media center (not desktop) to 23hz?  I tried this, but of all the 38 modes, none of them had a refresh rate of 23.  (or 24 for that matter)  They were all either 60, 59.94, or 30.  Since the Intel graphics support 24 (and now 23hz), should't I see this as an option in media center?

I was not suggesting to play the content back--merely to set the desktop refresh rate to 23hz to understand if the Real Cinema option is there. If you did try that and it didn't work, perhaps the display requires YCbCr. As for WMC, I have not tried to use it for 24p playback as I use external players for that content. I wouldn't be surprised if WMC prevents it as it isn't compatible with TV standards.

RE #1: Yes. You've got it correct. Regarding what happens with broadcast encoding of movies, believe it or not, ATSC allows broadcasters to send 720/24p and 1080/24p though I am unaware of any that actually do. Most 24p content (this includes movies and many TV shows) just telecine the content to 720/59.94 frames/sec. or 1080i/59.94 fields/sec. Technically, the 24p could also potentially be recovered via Inverse Telecine algorithm and played back properly at 24p though it is rarely implemented. WMC is only responding to the content the way most devices out there that deal with TV broadcasts do.

As a side note, while it is well-known that BD films are always 24p, DVDs are also almost all 24p as well. Some DVDs were authored with a "hard telecine", but most just had MPEG flags that told the player to telecine. The "progressive" DVD players actually were capable of playing the DVD back at 24p and there are some software players on the PC that will allow this as well.

RE #2: Yes. MPC-HC is one such tool. It is actually an open-source software player. You can see  just about all the details of the renderer when playing back in MPC-HC.