Bad tearing when streaming video (1 Viewer)

[AlexO]

Hello,

Apologies if it's the wrong subforum to post.

I repurposed an old Asus U35Jc laptop running Windows 7 to serve as a streaming video source (Netflix, Amazon Prime) to an LG 47LM8600 via HDMI. The TV is configured as the only output of the laptop at the native 1920x1080 resolution.

Unfortunately I get horrible tearing when streaming.

Is there any way to mitigate it?

Thank you!

 

[jcroy]

I don't know what program you're using to play video.

I have noticed when I'm using VLC to play rips of tv show dvds, the tearing is very noticable. The only way I've been able to eliminate the tearing subjectively, is to run software deinterlacing (such as yadif 2x) on the dvd video rips while watching.

 

[AlexO]

I am streaming Netflix and Amazon Prime content straight from the the browser (Firefox and Chrome seem to be equally bad in that regard)

 

[JohnRice]

I had to look that up. Probably @Sam Posten will be most likely to be able to help you. From what I can tell, the problem is most likely the refresh rate your video card is set to.

 

[Sam Posten]

Yup, more than likely. Post your device settings under windows.

 

[AlexO]

It is set up to use the TV as the only output (via HDMI), the resolution is 1920x1080, which is the native resolution of the TV, and the refresh rate is 60Hz. What other settings are needed?

 

[JohnRice]

Where are you located? The correct refresh for your TV might be 50Hz.

 

[AlexO]

Canada.

Could it be that the laptop's CPU is too weak to handle it?

 

[jcroy]

Canada.

Could it be that the laptop's CPU is too weak to handle it?

Are you actually seeing actual "tearing"?

Or is it actually frames being dropped by the video player (or plugin)?

Actual frames being dropped due to a slow cpu (or slow graphics gpu), would usually be seen as flickering in fast moving stuff on the screen.

 

[jcroy]

Looking more closely at the specs of your linked asus laptop page, the vintage of the quoted cpu models appear to date back to around 2010. I have an old desktop computer from around the same time period, which would probably have a similar cpu vintage + performance.

From what I remember of my old machine from 2009/2010 with Win7, I was only able to play flicker-free hd 1080p video rips (from bluray movie discs) with VLC without much additional processing. Basically minimally playing the 1080p video.

If I used more advanced video players (such as media player classic with or without madVR), the same 1080p hd video rips were basically not watchable due to too much flickering. When I ran "media player classic" to display the realtime statistics, it indicated lots of frames were being dropped.

 

[AlexO]

It looks like horizontal lines.

Can VLC display statistics?

 

[jcroy]

For VLC: Tools->Media Information->Statistics


In Media Player Classic HC (mpc-hc), the tearing test in the default EVR (custom presenter) renderer:

View->Renderer Settings->Tearing Test