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Am I the only one that sees the frame skipping?

It has improved but the stutter is still there just less.

This is simply not good enough. Especially when the ATV1 can play the same content perfectly.
 
NiklasK said:
I still get stutters on rented movies and my localized movie library. I did however try an episode of the BBC series Sherlock and the file was in 720P@50Hz and it was smooth, no stutter at all. All other material in 23.98fps for example displays the micro stutter, no matter if its non-buffered or buffered.

Another thing, is anybody experience the picture of movies and TV-shows as kind of video-ish compared to the more "normal" film-ish. The effect can also be achieved by turning on different smoothness filters in TVs. No other devices in my setup (xbmc, blu-ray, DVR) shows this issue so I´m certain there is something up with how the appletv handles video.

I´m sticking to my xbmc-box for now but I´d like Apple to fix this so I could use Apple TV instead.
Click to expand...

What you've described with the movies appearing "video-ish" I've seen on 120hz LCDs from multiple sources (not just the AppleTV). Some people call it the soap opera effect. You can see it on a Sony LCD if you enable MotionFlow (the setting for 120hz smoothing) and set CineMode to Auto 1. It disappears if you disable CineMode or set it to Auto2 (it also disappears if you turn off motionflow, but that setting controls whether the tv ups the refresh rate to 120hz, so I prefer to leave it on).
 
Got my new Apple TV the other day.

Set it up and rented Iron Man 2.

Worked like a charm, great DD 5.1 sound, took around 30 seconds to start and there was no frame skipping on my LG 50PK760 Plasma buffered or unbuffered.

PQ looked great too.
 
benoitgphoto said:
I'm still not sure it has not been fixed. I watched 3 HD Tv shows since I updated and I haven't seen frame skipping...that's a record since I was able to replicate that every single time I watch HD content either from iTunes store or my iTunes library.

Strangely, last saturday, an Apple tech advisor called me and he was looking to book an appointment with a Genius at my local Apple store to have my aTV tested over there. I asked him if they were able to replicate the issue in their lab and apparently they were not able. If it's fixed, it's like the right hand doesn't know what the left foot is doing...We'll see...I will run other tests on it in the next few days.
Click to expand...

OK...watched a few more HD Tv episodes and I don't see frame skipping anymore. I use to see it every time I use the aTV on iTunes HD rentals or HD streaming from iTunes but since the update, I don't see it anymore. I'm canceling the appointment at the Genius Bar. For me, the issue is resolved.:)
 
musicman0725: All these settings have been turned off in my TV (LG 60PK550, nordic version). I use my XBMC-box, DVR and Bluray player connected to my Denon amp and then 1 HDMI to the TV and no other source show this issue. Weird, I´ll try and do a factory restore and see if anything gets better.

musicman0725 said:
What you've described with the movies appearing "video-ish" I've seen on 120hz LCDs from multiple sources (not just the AppleTV). Some people call it the soap opera effect. You can see it on a Sony LCD if you enable MotionFlow (the setting for 120hz smoothing) and set CineMode to Auto 1. It disappears if you disable CineMode or set it to Auto2 (it also disappears if you turn off motionflow, but that setting controls whether the tv ups the refresh rate to 120hz, so I prefer to leave it on).
Click to expand...
 
I don't have issues with frame skipping but do have issues with files getting stuck or quitting.

I have a lot of DVDs that were ripped in handbrake at 720p (why not lol).
Some of them get to a chapter marker I think and get stuck (repeating every half second, quite funny actually). Stopping the video and resuming works fine, till the next stutter.

However this only happens on a few files....perhaps it's an encode issue....?

Now, my 1080p rips of my star trek blu rays play perfectly for about ten minutes, then stop and return to menu...

It could just be encode issues.
The ATV 1 was a more mature device. Built on x86 processor with OSX in the background. As someone quoted earlier it has more support for output resolution and refresh rates.
ATV2 is new, possibly rushed out the door (hence the quick copy of the look of ATV1 instead of something new) and has not caught up yet.

I'm sure with further updates and support it will get better.

Lots of people reported that the 4.2 update fixed some playback issues while bring more issues for others.

Sadly, it's just a waiting game.

One thing I did notice was that with my ATV2 in my living room, trailers played instantly, whereas with the ATV2 in my bedroom they play after buffering for about a minute. Both rooms have an Airport Express nearby, extending my Extreme 5ghz network, and 20mb Internet so it won't be a network issue (especially when my xbox 360 instantly streams a 1080p rental from zune..)
 
Just thought I would bump this thread to see if anyone has resolved this issue or know of a work around until Apple gets it fixed... :)
 
Annoying video stutter

Just bought Mad Man season 4 episode 1 from iTunes, downloaded completely (560MB) to my hard drive (Mac Pro 2.26 Ghz quad core Nehalem), opened in Quicktime 10, it played with annoying stutters every 30 sec or so. My wife and I are ticked off. It's protected so VLC & Mpegstreamclip won't play it. It also stutters when I play it within iTunes. I'm using a 60Hz HDMI monitor. Quicktime 10 has grayed out Preferences, so I can't seem to change any settings. Disabling "Use high quality video settings when available" using QT 7 had no effect.

Hopefully there will be a fix soon! What an annoying issue!
 
Anyone having stuttering streaming content from their computer has a setup problem with their router.
 
TV are to blame

Frame skipping – I think that problem is mainly due to TVs. I found out that to get rid of frame skipping the simple solution is to set your TV in so called „game mode“. This mode switches off all processing being performed by TV. It is used for game consoles as the processing does a lot of stuff to the picture thus sometimes something there is delayed, or skipped (for ex between time you push joystick button and reaction you see on the screen). Obviously it is temporary solution and I think the real problem needs to be fixed by Apple and TV manufactures. I do suspect that the problem comes from the some stupid standard in flat TVs nowadays that 720p has to be 60/50Hz and not 23,976/24/25 frames. So Apple TV sends 720p/24 and TV is struggling to upgrade it to 60/50 and from this unusual calculation it is trying to compensate for the audio by dropping frames. But I let more tech people to comment on that. Game mode works for now but you loose all the nice processing of the picture. Quick solution is to bring back upscaling to 1080 in Apple TV – then all TV understand so called Film Mode and accept 23.976/24/25 progressive frames. Or TV needs to allow 24 frames on 720p. Frame skipping occurs in my Samsung series 8 (bed room). My Leaving room Panasonic does not have this problem. But the same problem had Philips, which was replaced by Panasonic.
 
I've tried streaming the same file using ATV2 and my PS3. On the PS3 it works perfectly. On the ATV2 I get the occasional frame judder!
Both are going to the same tv with the same settings and both are hard wired on a gigabit ethernet. The problem is with the ATV2.
 
martinh32 said:
I've tried streaming the same file using ATV2 and my PS3. On the PS3 it works perfectly. On the ATV2 I get the occasional frame judder!
Both are going to the same tv with the same settings and both are hard wired on a gigabit ethernet. The problem is with the ATV2.
Click to expand...

You probably have your PS3 set to do all the conversion and upconverting instead of the TV. The problem is not the ATV it is your TV or the settings in your TV. Many TVs nowadays can handle content in 720p/24 without changing the frame rate with funky interpolation schemes and/or inventing frames. Other TVs are only able to run at 60hz. Movies are in 24fps and that does not multiply into 60 easily requiring what's called 3:2 pulldown and that's what introduces the judder. And some TVs do the 3:2 pulldown better than others. But that's what's so good about the 120 and 240 hz TVs. All three common frame rates (24/30/60) are all easily converted into the TV's native frequency because they all multiply into 120 and 240 evenly so they don't require the 3:2 pulldown of 24fps material at all.

But then even if your TV can handle 720p/24 without doing 3:2 pulldown, there are still settings on the TV that you can use that do it anyway so that's what you should be checking for. On my Sony it's called Motionflow, Cinemaview, Motion Enhancer, or something like that. I turned all that extra processing off a long time ago and can't remember.
 
newagemac said:
You probably have your PS3 set to do all the conversion and upconverting instead of the TV. The problem is not the ATV it is your TV or the settings in your TV. Many TVs nowadays can handle content in 720p/24 without changing the frame rate with funky interpolation schemes and/or inventing frames. Other TVs are only able to run at 60hz. Movies are in 24fps and that does not multiply into 60 easily requiring what's called 3:2 pulldown and that's what introduces the judder. And some TVs do the 3:2 pulldown better than others. But that's what's so good about the 120 and 240 hz TVs. All three common frame rates (24/30/60) are all easily converted into the TV's native frequency because they all multiply into 120 and 240 evenly so they don't require the 3:2 pulldown of 24fps material at all.

But then even if your TV can handle 720p/24 without doing 3:2 pulldown, there are still settings on the TV that you can use that do it anyway so that's what you should be checking for. On my Sony it's called Motionflow, Cinemaview, Motion Enhancer, or something like that. I turned all that extra processing off a long time ago and can't remember.
Click to expand...

No, the PS3 isn't doing the processing. The TV is set to do the processing on both the PS3 and ATV - it has a cinema mode which is converting the 24hz picture to a 72hz signal. The test I did was identical! The ATV isn't processing the files correctly!
 
Frameskipping and Samsung TVs

I see this thread is kind of dead, but I think I can throw a little bit of light to the frameskipping issue on the Apple TV 2G.
I had the same issues as described, either with movie trailers or with purchased HD movies. I also ripped a .mkv to .m4v to see if the problems were the same, and no good news either.
I tried the ATV on another TV (small 19" LG) and I had NO PROBLEMS AT ALL on that one. So, googling around I found this other guys referencing a problem with HDMI signal drops with Apple TV 1st gen and Samsung TVs. I know it is not related to this issue but I thought 'what the heck' and gave it a try:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20081207011101698

My problems disappeared... for a while. When I did what's mentioned on that post, I noticed that all the settings I had on my HDMI inputs (Dynamic contrast, DNIe, Movie stuff and so on) had been reset to defaults.
So, I started playing with the settings of the HDMI input. I still cannot tell which setting did what, but I can guarantee that the frameskipping totally depends on those settings. I have it now working like a charm. No frameskipping, no 'slowdowns'... If needed, I can post my settings of the input, but it will surelly depend on the TV model.

Apple definatelly has issues, at least, with Samsung TVs (mine is an LCD Series 6) but I think there's a little workaround by now until we get a firmware update.

Hope it helps. Please, let me know your results with this if you try any settings of the HDMI input where your ATV is connected.
 
Malimarek said:
Frame skipping – I think that problem is mainly due to TVs. I found out that to get rid of frame skipping the simple solution is to set your TV in so called „game mode“. This mode switches off all processing being performed by TV. It is used for game consoles as the processing does a lot of stuff to the picture thus sometimes something there is delayed, or skipped (for ex between time you push joystick button and reaction you see on the screen). Obviously it is temporary solution and I think the real problem needs to be fixed by Apple and TV manufactures. I do suspect that the problem comes from the some stupid standard in flat TVs nowadays that 720p has to be 60/50Hz and not 23,976/24/25 frames. So Apple TV sends 720p/24 and TV is struggling to upgrade it to 60/50 and from this unusual calculation it is trying to compensate for the audio by dropping frames. But I let more tech people to comment on that. Game mode works for now but you loose all the nice processing of the picture. Quick solution is to bring back upscaling to 1080 in Apple TV – then all TV understand so called Film Mode and accept 23.976/24/25 progressive frames. Or TV needs to allow 24 frames on 720p. Frame skipping occurs in my Samsung series 8 (bed room). My Leaving room Panasonic does not have this problem. But the same problem had Philips, which was replaced by Panasonic.
Click to expand...

Thank you so much! I have a Samsung LED TV and this problem has been persistent since I first got it.. But now it's working perfect after turning off "Game Mode." I love this TV but I've been using an older plasma with my Apple TV.. No more!
 
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