Frame skipping with Vero 4k+ when Auto Motion Plus activated

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

Hi,

I’m a complete noob with vero 4k+ and kodi - sorry in advance. I had a WDTV box for years and switched a couple of weeks ago together with the TV. For the most part I love the vero. I was able to setup everything quickly and enjoy my movies and series.

But, there is a problem. If I activate auto motion plus, I know, most of you hate it, on my samsung TV (QU65Q70R), it starts skipping frames. Maybe every 20-30 seconds. Sometimes more, sometimes less. I’d like to use this feature.

I only watch movies from my NAS (synology), no streaming services or live tv. I always thought it was the TV and got a bit disappointed. So I tried DS Video. No skipping! So it has to be the vero. The vero is wired to a 1GB network, so it should be fine, right?

I set my GUI to 720p, because I do have most of my series in 720p and want them to be upscaled by the TV. I tried to set the GUI to 1080p without any change.

Is there something I could do?

I saw a lot of “post your log” posts in the forum. I’m very sorry, I have no idea how to do that (yet) :smiley:

I hope you got the patience to help a new kodi/vero user.

Cheers, Stefan

2

Hi.
I’m new with Vero myself but my Samsung tv is better without auto motion plus enabled, I get frame skips with certain apps on it especially sport.

3

I’m assuming if this undesirable behavior is only happening when you have that extra Video processing turning on with your TV it is not actually frames getting skipped, at least not on the Vero side. I am curious to see what settings your using so if you could go to the MyOSMC add-on>log uploader>(enable all configs and logs)>upload selected logs now, and then post the url given in this thread. Just as a FYI (please upload logs before changing anything) the following are what we recommend for Video output…

We recommend people with 4K TV’s set their user interface (UI) to 1080p. Kodi’s UI is not optimized for 4K yet and this can put unnecessary demands on your device and can lead to a suboptimal picture quality, as well as potentially cause other issues.

The settings we recommend are as follows…

Settings>System>Display>Resolution> 1920x1080p
Settings>System>Display>Whitelist> (empty)
Settings>Player>Videos>Adjust display refresh rate> On start/stop

Some televisions may also need, or benefit from, the following being set…

System>Display>Force 4:2:2 colour subsampling> (enable)

With the above settings your UI will be output in Full HD and your 4K content will be output in 4K. If you have any doubt, feel free to upload some logs so we can verify that your settings are indeed correct.

4

But I like auto motion plus - I really want it enabled. Why should I disable something the TV has and works with DS Video…Before I disable it, I’m gonna change box :wink: But maybe there is a fix - or a wrong setting I made ^^

5

First, thank you very much.

Here is the link BEFORE the changes:

https://paste.osmc.tv/icudofivif

Do I have to set the resolution to 1080p? I thought I read somewhere in the forum I should put it to 720p if I have a lot of 720p content. I got around 50 series in 720p and I really want the TV to upscale it, not the Vero box. If I put it to 1080p, isn’t the Vero going to upscale 720p content?
And most of the movies (around 550 of 570) are still 1080p.

Sorry, I don’t know if its frame skipping. It just lagging or stuttering for 1-2 frames it seems.

I’m gonna do the settings you recommend and try it out. I will let you know if something changed :slight_smile:

6

Okey the only thing I didn’t have the way you said was Adjust display refresh rate. (changed the GUI to 1080p prior to this thread). Now its on start/stop and I think its fixed!!! I have to test more, but think I didn’t see one jidder/lag since. I will keep testing and come back again.

7

The way you had it set before the output was sending a fixed resolution and frame rate to your TV. So what was probably going on is you started with a source file at 50fps, then Kodi had to convert that to 60 fps and then the soap opera filter on your TV then converted that again up to ??? and with the setting of adjust refresh rate Kodi then sends out the original 50fps and then your TV’s processor does not get confused by the extra frame rate conversion.

As far as the resolution is concerned you want your UI at 1080p as that is the best quality you can get without a speed hit. If you want Kodi to send out original resolution for video’s to allow your TV to do all the upscaling then you would need to set a whitelist to accomplish this. With the settings I posted above (no whitelist) Kodi will upscale to 1080p and any 4K content will be sent out as 4K. If you set a whitelist then Kodi will switch to both higher and lower resolution on playback BUT it will only use the UI resolution and what is set in the whitelist, so make sure you put in all the resolutions and frame rates that you want it to switch to. You may find some are not advantageous and decide to remove them from the list. This will also likely make things a bit wonky with the menus during playback and zoom modes on your TV. Once you play with it a bit you will probably see why it is not a default option.

8

Ah I see. That makes sense. I didn’t have a lag since. I really think it’s gone! Awsome! Thank you very much.

Okey, so Right now I have no whitelist. Say I play a 1080p movie - Kodi will send the original file without changes 1080p to the TV where the 1080p get upscaled. Right? Playing 720p, Kodi upscales it to 1080p and the TV to 4k? Would it not be better to let the TV do all the upscaling? I only mention it , because I read that that TV has better upscaling than the vero.

Could you help me with a example for the whitelist? I got a series that is:

1280x720p
25fps
bitrate: 2798kBit/s
whole bitrate: 3568 kBit/s

Let’s say I’d like to let the TV upscale it to 4k. What setting should I use in Kodi?
720p 60hz?

Oh man, I already have so much more fun with the box!! :smiley:

9

You get the gist of it. The difference with the upscaling would be on a case by case, and person by person basis. In a nutshell you would just need to try and see for yourself, and then decide which way you prefer it. To get started you would probably be best served by selecting every single combination available in the whitelist menu. If you find some particular file that is suboptimal, then just remove the resolution/frame rate of that file from your whitelist. Or perhaps you like native 720p output but don’t dig what happens to the OSD on 480i content, then maybe just whitelist 720p and higher only. There is not a good writeup on it that I am aware of and I think it is probably something that really has to be played with to understand the pro’s and con’s of.

10

Ah, I see. Like you said, I will add 720p and up. 720p is the lowest quality I got. It will take some time, but I hope it will be worth it. I’m already happy that the studdering is no longer an issue :smiley:

I got an other question that maybe can sorted out here.

I did not name my movies and tv shows in english. I named all of them correctly in german and for 90% it worked out. But for the TV shows, there is a slight problem. All the episodes are renamed in english. Kodi found all of them, but the names were changed to english, even though I had german in the scraper. It’s not a big problem, but I was just wondering why this would happen, when the scraper found the correct names, even for the few I let in english.

For example:
My folder Name: The Sopranos
Kodi found it and changed it to the german “Die Sopranos”. But the episode names are now in english :slight_smile: I have no idea why it would change the name to german but switch the episodes to english.

11

That is actually pretty simple. Your using TheMovieDB as your scaper and so far nobody has added German translations for the individual episodes. If you want to fix this you can either add them yourself on their website, and then rescrape, or you can add thetvdb scraper add-on and then go to Videos>Files>[path to Sopranos]> context menu on that folder>set content> and change the scraper to tvdb making sure you set the default language to de in the advanced settings. Thetvdb happens to have the translated episode data for this particular show, others may not. You can just go to their respective web sites and see for yourself before bothering tweaking things in Kodi.

12

I have a Samsung TV in my bedroom with a non-Vero device. With MCFI enabled (“Motion Plus” on Samsung TVs) the playback of a 23.976fps source is actually smoother with a 60Hz signal than with a 23.976/24Hz signal. You could try that.

13

@darwindesign, thank you very much! I will try it tonight. I assume I have to rescrape it if I add the thetvdb? At the beginning I didnt change it to German, so all movies were english, so I had to delete it, change it to german and rescape. Took 3-4 hours each time :smiley:

@HDRpotato, I did try yesterday and had some ghosting with large objects, when the camera and the object were fast moving, so I disabled all 720p :smiley: But I will turn on the 60fps again. Thanks for the tip!

I really appreciate the support here! Makes me enjoy the vero more and more.

Is there maybe a list/log where I can see all the movies the scraper found? It would be easier this way to check which ones are missing, so I could add them.

14

Hmmm, did I make my post a bit unclear? I am not suggesting doing a bulk change to your library. I’m saying that if there happens to be a series that tvdb has the desired language that themoviedb is lacking then you can change the scraper on an individual path source to get you to where you want to be. If you switch a scraper like I described it will ask you if you want to rescrape that path and you can tell it yes. If you ever need to force a rescrape for an individual movie or TV show you can just pull up the information window in the library and select the “refresh” option in there. It is pretty common that there will be some media that will not add exactly as intended, there is a number of ways to fix them without having to mess with the rest of your library.

The ones it found are shown in the library view :grin: but to see what wasn’t added you can either read Kodi’s log after a library update or install an add-on called “Missing Movies” (in the Video add-on section of the repository) which will show both movies and TV shows in your sources that are not in your library. Just be aware that it can give some false positives under some circumstances, but for the most part it works well.

15

No no, I just didn’t want to do it for every series by itself. All Series are wrong, so I would have to do it for all :smiley: Luckely, you offered me a solution fot that aswell :slight_smile:

Yes :smiley: But I dont want to walk to the PC and back to the TV all the time. I’ll check the addon out. That sounds like what I need. Thanks again for all the help!

16

I have a Samsung QLED TV and encountered similar issues with the “Motion Plus” tech that is turned on by default. When it works, it works great. When it doesn’t – which is disappointingly often if you watch fast-moving content – it’s awful. Watching the jet fighter sequences in Top Gun where the jets would almost disappear sometimes was the final straw for me. I turned it off and now I don’t miss it.

17

There is also phone apps, and Kodi’s web interface. I keep my boxes bookmarked and when I add new content to my server I just open my browser, click a shortcut, click the update library button, and then refresh after a minute to make sure the content was scraped. TV doesn’t have to be on, and it happens in the background if someone is using the TV.

18

In that particular case you would want the Vero to output 720p50. This is visually indistinguishable from 720p25, and the TV would be doing all the scaling.

If you have some stuff that is encoded as 720p/24fps (or 720p/23.976fps) that can be a bit more complicated.

If you don’t mind my asking, DD, why do you recommend that instead of whitelisting everything except the 4096 resolutions? Doesn’t that mean that standard definition stuff will be scaled to 1080p instead of output at native resolution?

Also, if I make a suggestion, you might want to include in your defaults list setting “Display 4:3 videos as” to “Use HDMI AVI signalling” - that gives optimal (unscaled) image quality for most SD video.

19

I had to check that. It was fine on my TV. I’m not using the LED Clear Motion. Just the other two options. Both at 10. Works great and I don’t see a big Soap Opera effect, but smoother motion.

Now thats a great idea! I will set this up as well. I saw something on wiki how to access the Kodi web interface. I will try that. I really like to have a simple and more automatic and fast refresh. This sounds like it. To refresh all movies, it takes just so many hours. Even if I hit update libary, it scans all folders. Big oof.

I will def. try this. After I had everything on, I had some artefacts in fast movements, so I turned everything off because I couldn’t figure out what exactly was causing it. Without 720p on the list, the series was back to smooth and artefact free.
Does Kodi know when to put 50hz or 60hz out, when selected both? lets say I have 2 series. One is 25fps and the other is 23.976. How would Kodi choose?

20

A few things to say, here.

First, @darwindesign and I seem to have a difference of opinion about the whitelist setting. If I understand correctly, he thinks you shouldn’t whitelist anything. My suggestion would be to whitelist every resolution your TV supports - which, for most modern 4K TVs will be everything except for the modes that have a 4096 horizontal resolution. (Definitely don’t whitelist those).

If you aren’t using the whitelist I’m not entirely sure what the behaviour will be; in particular, I’m not sure if it will try to output 720p at native resolution, or upscale to 1080p. If you do use the whitelist it can definitely output 720p.

Second thing is, you don’t have to go with what Kodi chooses. Once the video is playing, if you click OK on the Vero remote, that brings up the On Screen Display (“OSD”). If you select the icon at the far right of the OSD that will allow you to manually select whichever output resolution you want.

If you’re using the whitelist and it is switching resolution automatically, and you’re playing a 720p/25 video, I would expect it to automatically select 720p/50. If you’re playing a 720p/24 video, then I’m not sure what the automatic choice is - it might go for 720p/60, or it might go for 1080p/24. I would guess maybe 720p/60, but I’m not certain.

As I said above, you don’t have to go with Kodi’s default choice if you don’t want to.

720p/24 videos are a problem, because there is no 720p/24 output mode. You might want to choose 720p/60, or 1080p/24, or 2160p/24.

720p/60 allows the TV to do all the scaling, but it will also introduce 60Hz judder - in each pair of frames, one is shown three times, and one only twice. So if you watch something moving slowly and steadily across the screen, the moment will seem to judder faster and slower as it moves.

It’s possible that the extra video processing you have turned on at the TV end (the Auto Motion thing) will eliminate the judder. Personally I can’t stand switching on that kind of processing, but if you like it, fine. :slightly_smiling_face:

If the TV processing doesn’t eliminate the judder, outputting 1080p/24 or 2160p/24 will fix it; but that also means the Vero is doing some or all of the upscaling, which is not optimal.

My own preferred option is to output 1080p/24, then go into the Video Settings menu in the OSD and change View Mode to “Original Size”; that gives no judder and no scaling by the Vero, but it also means the picture isn’t zoomed up to full screen, and subtitles can look a bit weird. (Subtitles can be fixed, but it’s a bit of a fiddle).

If you want the picture to fill the screen, then which will look better out of 1080p/24 and 2160p/24 is hard to predict - try both and see which you prefer. And I have no idea whether you would prefer some Vero scaling and no judder or judder but no Vero scaling - that’s up to you.

So, to summarise, for 720p/24:

  • If the TV processing eliminates 60Hz judder, use 720p/60.

  • If it doesn’t, and you don’t mind the picture not filling the screen, try 1080p/24 and Original Size.

  • If you want to fill the screen, and the TV’s processing doesn’t hide 60Hz judder, then you might want to use any of 720p/60,1080p/24 or 2160p/24 - try all three and see which you like best. 720p/60 will scale better, but may be juddery.