Quote:but saying that I couldn't be more wrong is a little strong don't you think?
No, because you are completely wrong. I would say the same thing if you claimed acceleration and velocity were the same thing. Framerate and refresh rate are not the same thing, this is well known fact.
Quote:"Frame rate is most often expressed in frames per second (FPS), and is also expressed in progressive scan monitors as hertz (Hz)."
This is completely incorrect. In the context of a video game the framerate is how many frames per second the game is rendering. In the context of a movie the framerate is how many frames per second are in the video stream. Framerate measures the number of frames per second in the content, it has absolutely nothing to do with the number of refresh cycles the display uses per second. Also you can't use hertz to measure framerate since hertz is a unit of measurement for cycles per second, it implies the use of an electrical signal or sine wave.
Quote: Hz is how many "flickers" per second your TV is flashing.
I wouldn't use the word flicker if I were you. An LCD shouldn't flicker at all when it refreshes.
Quote:For every flicker, you want a frame. That's always the goal.
And you will always get one as long as the video signal uses a refresh rate supported by the display. If your game runs at 30 fps each frame will be scanned out twice producing a 60hz signal.
Quote: I switched it to 30Hz and now my 30 FPS second game runs perfectly smoothly, while at 60Hz it was rather choppy.
That shouldn't happen. Your display is doing something retarded. Either that or you were using 59.952hz mode instead of true 60hz mode.
Quote: You really do want your content FPS and your Hz on your TV to match to get the smoothest possible panning.
Although I agree with this statement I must point out that if the content is 30 fps the only difference between a 60hz output and 30hz output will be that each frame is scanned out twice instead of once. You shouldn't see any noticeable difference from this.
Quote:If they don't match, your TV does tricks to try and get them to line up.
No it doesn't, or it least it shouldn't unless it's some kind of bizarre display system. If the video signal is 60hz the display should run at 60hz, if the video signal is 24hz the display should run at 24hz. If the framerate of the content and the refresh rate of the desired video signal don't match it is the responsibility of the source hardware to perform any necessary adjustments. However usually this simply consists of scanning an image out to the display multiple times, which is what video games do. Your TV shouldn't have to do jack shit.
Quote: A common one is called 3:2 pull down (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3:2_pulldown#23pulldown) where they try and get a 24 FPS movie to play properly on a 60Hz TV.
3:2 pulldown it more specific than that. 3:2 pulldown was not designed to playback 24 fps content on 60hz displays, it was designed to for playback of
24p content on
interlaced display systems. And 3:2 pulldown is always done by the source device as far as I know, so it is not a "trick that the TV performs to get the frames to line up".
And what on earth do you mean by "get the frames to line up". Line up with what? If they didn't line up with the refresh cycles the system wouldn't work.
Quote:It's exactly these tricks that cause judder and stutter, though, since your TV can't do a perfect job of lining up 24 fps to 60Hz without losing some frames here and there.
The TV does not drop frames. It displays every image it receives. And as I said before if you select 24hz output the display will run at 24hz (most HDTVs support 24hz, if the display doesn't support 24hz the content will quickly become out of sync with the audio or it will not work at all). If you select 60hz output the display will run at 60hz. Your tv doesn't have to "line up 24fps with 60hz", it either gets a 24hz signal and displays it or it gets s 60hz signal and displays it.
Although uneven frame scanning does contribute to judder the primary cause of judder is the low framerate of the content.
The reason running the bluray player (or PC software) in 60hz mode will produce more judder than 24hz output mode is because in 60hz mode the even numbered frames will be scanned out 3 times while the odd numbered frames will be scanned out twice (3:2 frame scanning). This means that even frames are displayed for 50% longer than odd numbered frames, this inconsistancy is what produces the extra judder. The extra judder has nothing to do with dropped frames.
Quote:Movies are 24 FPS and when you stick in a blu-ray, your TV will automatically switch to 24Hz. Your screen will flicker and it will suddenly say 24Hz in the corner. That's because your TV is smart to try and match the FPS and Hz together. XBMC is a great media player that does this for you, and I wish Dolphin did. Since it doesn't, I had to go into my settings and manually switch them to 30Hz.
If a bluray movie is 24fps that is its framerate regardless of whether the display is running at 60hz, 30hz, or 24hz. The HDTV doesn't "try to match the fps and the Hz together", that makes no sense. If you set the output signal to 24hz the display will run at 24hz, it's as simple as that.
Quote:Getting back to my game, the reason there was stutter was because sometimes the game would push out a frame while my TV wasn't putting out a flicker. Since the flicker wasn't there to show the frame, the frame was skipped and I saw it in the stutter. Now did this stop the game from working? No, it's still playable and fine. It just has this annoying judder that I always notice. A lot of people don't even notice it, so they don't even recognize there's a problem.
Nope, that's completely wrong. No frames should have been skipped. In 60hz mode a 30 fps game will scan each frame out twice, thus producing a 60hz signal.
Quote:I could get into more details, and maybe I'm still confused about something, but I really don't think I couldn't be more wrong. After all, switching to 30Hz absolutely fixed my problem.
I could be wrong but from what I'm reading I don't think you completely understand the terms you're trying to use. And that's irrelevant to whether or not switching the video drivers to 30hz output (you haven't really told me exactly what you did but I'm guessing that was it) fixed your stuttering problem or not.