[old thread] Concepts for optimal frame rates & refresh rates in SVP

Only if the source content is 29.97fps rather than 30.00fps, but even then the difference is quite minor since it doesn't actually change anything with the interpolation unlike the difference between 24fps--to->60Hz and 24fps--to->72Hz.

But that's just it - on PC displays, 60.00Hz is the standard, not 59.94Hz.

Also the key point is that SVP treats 30.00fps and 29.97fps the exact same because by default SVP puts the difference between the two framerates within its margin of error. Therefore, even if you set SVP to use "to screen refresh" and your display is set to 90.00Hz, it will still automatically choose to do exactly 3x to 89.91fps for 29.97fps content - this is the biggest reason I made no mention of drop-frame framerates, because my whole point was trying to lay out the differences in interpolation results that you get with different refresh rates, and in the case of this example the interpolation is literally the exact same.

There's also the issues that, depending on your PC configuration, Windows can actually label something like 47.952Hz as 48Hz which kind of makes it difficult to actually know what the true refresh rate is.  And don't forget that a good chunk of displays are actually completely incapable of running at exactly 59.94Hz (my laptop is one of them!).

Lastly, newer players like mpv are built around the idea of basically doing what Reclock does because you can never guarantee that the display on every PC will be running at exactly 60.00Hz or 59.94Hz, so in such cases it's arguably expected that the user already will be slightly altering the source video frame rate in order to more accurately match their refresh rate (relevant mpv article).

...this is already addressed in the opening post; I distinctly mentioned that many TVs can't handle custom refresh rates and therefore it may be of interest to try to actually speed up 24fps (and yes, 23.976fps) content to 25fps and display them at 50Hz.

But even then, I still included things like 24fps--to->60Hz in my first post under the "fast but not quite as smooth" category, so it's not like I didn't acknowledge that there are situations where you may be stuck with using that (older Intel graphics that don't support 50Hz output comes to mind).

I realize that it's not your intention, but I just want you to know that some of the things your saying are a bit too close to FUD-like, so you may want to be a bit more careful with what you're trying to convey in the future; the last thing any PC enthusiast would want to happen is to scare someone from tinkering with their own PC seeing how that's how many of us got to where we are with our PC enthusiasm in the first place.

But this is simply not true - 29.97fps content turns into 59.94 while 30.00fps content turns into 60.00, and this occurs regardless of whether your refresh rate is 59.94Hz or 60.00Hz; SVP does not use 59.94 for both 29.97 and 30.00fps.

But any flat panel TV that doesn't support 60.00fps is in fact out of spec because both ATSC and DVB specs list support for not only 59.94Hz but 60.00Hz as well.

This to me sounds like you're saying that 60.00Hz doesn't exist on TVs, which is completely wrong considering that even old pre-color black and white content was broadcast in 60.00fps interlaced.

A TV's EDID wouldn't list 60.00Hz if it didn't work - that's the point of an EDID after all!

The result is literally as I state it to be - something like 25fps--to->60Hz feels faster but less smooth than 25fps--to->50fps.

PC monitors have supported multiple refresh rates for literally decades; 75Hz was/is actually quite common and only fell out of use around the late 2000s when CRTs become uncommon enough that it was assumed that the display was always LCD, and LCDs don't result in crazy flicker at 60Hz like CRTs do so 75Hz was no longer necessary leading to a lot of things only using 60Hz; by comparison an LCD monitor being capable of 75Hz in 2005 wasn't unheard of at all since 75Hz was much more common then due to CRTs.  This was all without the use of custom resolutions and simply selecting different refresh rates via the normal Windows "Monitor" tab under "Advanced settings" (which itself simply lists the values provided by the display's EDID).

Besides, never in my entire 10 years using custom resolutions have I actually damaged a display (CRT, LCD, laptop, and TV) even when running outside of the EDID's spec, so I'm not about to start telling people that changing their refresh rate to something that's already listed in their EDID is going to break their hardware.  But even when you're running outside of the display's EDID you should never be able to break anything because it's not like we're sending the display a non-standard video signal anyway - there's nothing about the digital video connections in use (internal or external) that restrict the ability to use a different refresh rate, otherwise you wouldn't be able to have TVs that support 24Hz, 50Hz, and 60Hz out-of-the-box (which is particularly important in Europe where all 3 refresh rates are common).

Basically the tone that I am interpreting from certain things you say feels close to FUD at times - fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

The way I see it, if I wanted to fully explain framerates and drop frames and fractional refresh rates and the like then I would have done so.  However, the purpose of this thread was never about matching your refresh rate exactly exactly to your framerate because then that gets into the mess of whether your "60.00Hz" is actually 60.000 and not 60.006Hz and the like.

My overall point that I was targeting was a general understanding that working with non-fractional multiple for your framerates works better than if you didn't, that is all.  The 24, 25, and 30fps examples were just that - examples to easily convey this idea.  If I were to cover a more complete explaination then I would have included things 20fps and HFR framerates like 48fps, 50fps, and yes the various drop-frame framerates like 30000/1001.

This statement of yours is really not clear at all to me; what are you referring to when you say that SVP will ask you to convert?  I say this because I've never had SVP ask me anything outside of the initial performance assessment - it just does whatever the according video profile is configured as.

Well then we'll just have to agree to disagree.  I already acknowledged that many TVs don't support custom resolutions, but even without them the EDID is a standardized function across any sort of digital display (TVs, monitors, projectors, etc).

Or are you trying to say that the user should not actually trust the EDID?

I point to my earlier statement in this post - this thread was never intended to get into the nitty-gritty because I wanted to provide the most bang-per-buck that I could among users.  In other words, if I typed up a term paper, then this would only benefit a small minority as the kind of person that would read and/or understand it would very likely already be familiar with everything I was already stating.

To use a business term, I was trying to reach the "blue ocean", and yes this did involve what some would call "dumbing it down", but you can't expect to have a toddler understand calculus, and teaching that toddler something a bit more than just basic addition or subtraction was my goal going in.

EDIT: I have edited the beginning of my opening post in an attempt to make it more clear what I was trying to convey with this thread.

EDIT 2: See the updated thread here:
http://www.svp-team.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=61595

You're lucky I randomly revisited this forum to post a question after pretty much a year or so of not being on here.

Nevertheless, your issue would probably be more appropriate to have its own thread, as that's quite a strange issue you have.  The only thing I can think of is that maybe it's the specific video clip you're testing with or maybe your hardware decoder can't quite do 30fps of whatever codec you're using.

Thing is, 5x interpolation of 24fps would be considerably more CPU and GPU intensive than 2x interpolation of 30fps except in terms of hardware decoding the actual source video stream.

Mhh yeah I admit that could be the issue that 24fps have been boosted to 30fps. However its with every 29,97fps video I encounter. No matter from where. Youtube for example. 29,97fps stuff is always stuttering whereas 23,976 always runs perfectly smooth.