30fps vs. 60fps videos

[Moonfane]

I actually don't like motion blur in many games when I'm actually playing (with racing ones being an exception), but for video watching, I definitely prefer it. And yeah, as others have suggested, I think you mean "subjectively."

 

I wrote objectively on purpose, actually. It was a joke though. I'd never -actually- be so crass as to imply my opinion is the definitive opinion. Even though it totally is and my opinion is the far superior one. Obviously.

[nickreaper]

Am I the only one who hates how 60 FPS looks? It's too smooth an unnatural looking. When it comes to live action films it looks downright uncanny.

[Mr. Nestlé]

First of all, I can't say anything about the framerate, since my computer actually is too slow to display the 720p video at more than 30fps. So I'll just leave that to everyone else.

 

Secondly, I was intrigued by this statement:

As for Chrome, I hear you, I actually can't run Chrome with my custom UI because it's REQUIRED to hook into explorer.exe. If you don't have that running as your shell, Chrome won't work. Kind of insane since Google tries to be platform-independent and that's strictly a Windows UI thing, all I can figure is they're using it to track how you use your own computer.

I wasn't aware that you could even replace explorer.exe and use an alternative shell, but that's beside the point. What matters is that Chrome apparently can't run without explorer.exe. So I did some research, partly because of the novelty the concept held for me, partly because I wanted to see whether there was an explanation for this behavior and partly because of the tracking accusation.

 

I was able to locate a bug report for this exact problem fairly quickly. Following this bug report, it seems that the issue has been fixed since version 29 from mid-2013. So Ross, if you haven't tried to use Chrome since then, you may want to try it once more if you're interested.

Concerning the cause of the issue, one of the developers gives an explanation right here (This is an answer to the bug report, which can be found here without the direct link to the response). Basically, the browser seems to have tried to load the website renderer using the shell, which would only work with the default explorer.exe shell. They changed it so that it doesn't depend on the default shell. I'd say that there was no user tracking involved.

 

Concerning tracking in general, the Wikipedia article on Chrome has a section describing the major components of Chrome which can send data to Google. Most of them are optional and can be disabled. Those which aren't optional are usually only sent once or contain no personal information. If you're interested in further details, Google has published a whitepaper which lists and explains all components that communicate with Google and if and how they can be disabled.

I'm writing this because I don't believe that Google Chrome is a botnet or otherwise a program designed to compromise a user's privacy. I suppose that the skepticism is justified and it is true that Chrome can send quite some data to Google, but I think that Chrome in itself is a great browser and can be used in a way that doesn't put a user's privacy at a substantially higher risk than any other common browser. It is also still based on the open-source Chromium, so everyone can look at that code.

 

I'll add that I'm pretty surely biased since I use Chrome and am even signed in to synchronize my settings and such over Google's servers. This obviously should be avoided if you don't want them to have your data. Although the synchronized data can be encrypted with a personal passphrase which will be stored locally and not send to Google, if you prefer. In that case, Google definitely won't be able to access your data.

[Ross Scott]

I was able to locate a bug report for this exact problem fairly quickly. Following this bug report, it seems that the issue has been fixed since version 29 from mid-2013. So Ross, if you haven't tried to use Chrome since then, you may want to try it once more if you're interested.

I checked, the last time I was trying to use it was in April of 2013. I tried a whole bunch to get it working, using alternatives like Chromium and nightly builds, but simply nothing would work. I can look into it, but what made me especially wary is that this didn't use to be an issue, it was a problem they introduced, then left unfixed for at least 6+ months, possibly a lot longer, I read some threads saying that it had been fixed and broken multiple times, kind of reminds me of Valve. Behavior like that from a developer makes me want to avoid them like the plague, but if they're actually treating alternative shells seriously and not something that can be broken every other release, I could maybe look into it again.

 

One thing I will say is that Firefox has been EXTREMELY stable with me, I seriously can't remember it crashing whatsoever in the past 6 months, maybe longer. I don't know if Chrome has that kind of reputation now or not, but it's not something to be undervalued. My biggest complaint with browsing has mostly been flash video performance, but I don't know how much that plays into the browser so much as Adobe. After I did the Last Stand, I heard some reports of people saying older games were running slower than they used to on modern Flash, wouldn't surprise me.

[BTGBullseye]

Yeah, Chrome has massively improved since v29... I recommend trying it if you haven't already.

 

I personally can't use Chrome, because for some unknown reason it crashes every time I try and run it... Nobody can figure out the reason, even when I debugged it it didn't give any reason that should've caused it to crash. (it loaded a system font then crashed, it put up a transparency then crashed, it got to 56.35MB RAM used then crashed, and so on)

[Mr. Nestlé]

I checked, the last time I was trying to use it was in April of 2013. I tried a whole bunch to get it working, using alternatives like Chromium and nightly builds, but simply nothing would work. I can look into it, but what made me especially wary is that this didn't use to be an issue, it was a problem they introduced, then left unfixed for at least 6+ months, possibly a lot longer, I read some threads saying that it had been fixed and broken multiple times, kind of reminds me of Valve. Behavior like that from a developer makes me want to avoid them like the plague, but if they're actually treating alternative shells seriously and not something that can be broken every other release, I could maybe look into it again.

Judging from what I read in the bug report, that's pretty much what happened. It used to work until they changed something and complaints started. Then they went back and forth for several months with temporary workarounds until in May or June 2013 the actual issue was located and fixed. The bug report has no posts of issues after the fix, so I suppose that it has been working since then.

 

One thing I will say is that Firefox has been EXTREMELY stable with me, I seriously can't remember it crashing whatsoever in the past 6 months, maybe longer. I don't know if Chrome has that kind of reputation now or not, but it's not something to be undervalued. My biggest complaint with browsing has mostly been flash video performance, but I don't know how much that plays into the browser so much as Adobe. After I did the Last Stand, I heard some reports of people saying older games were running slower than they used to on modern Flash, wouldn't surprise me.

Chrome has usually been very stable on my system, every once in a while one tab will crash or hang but that's about it.

Concerning Flash, it's probably mostly Adobe. Although it should be noted that Chrome has a built-in Flash Player that is updated together with the browser. The reason for this is that Adobe and Google partnered to develop Flash for Chrome's new plugin interface (PPAPI) which allows plugins to be sandboxed, in opposition to the rather old NPAPI which is used by other browsers (and Chrome, but it is being deprecated in Chrome). I've read that bundling the Flash Player with Chrome has reduced Flash crashes by 20%, but I don't think it affected performance that much.

Google Chrome is also the only way to get a current version of Flash under Linux (WINE could work, but that's not really a native solution).

[Ross Scott]

Well I may test Chrome then, again, flash video is the only area I've been less than thrilled with for Firefox. I could try and "benchmark" some Youtube videos between the two browsers to see if there would be any difference in dropped frames if I get some time later on (though people are welcome to try themselves also).

[Mr. Nestlé]

Well I may test Chrome then, again, flash video is the only area I've been less than thrilled with for Firefox. I could try and "benchmark" some Youtube videos between the two browsers to see if there would be any difference in dropped frames if I get some time later on (though people are welcome to try themselves also).

Benchmarks would definitely be interesting, but Chrome uses the HTML5 player on YouTube by default nowadays, so I'm not sure whether you'll get any Flash there at all. The HTML5 player works very well, though. And a benchmark between Flash and HTML5 should be interesting, too. Good thing YouTube provides those statistics natively.

 

I might do some tests later on, but I doubt my old system is going to amount for anything.

 

From experience and a quick test, I can say that HTML5 videos tend to drop less frames when I'm in full screen mode. I also just ran a video in Firefox (which uses Flash for some reason, but version 12 since I'm on GNU/Linux) which dropped frames like crazy, but I didn't close everything else, so those weren't ideal testing conditions. I did some Flash/HTML5 testing some months back when I got a 'new' GPU and if I remember correctly, I found the HTML5 player on Chrome to be the best option for me, but I could be wrong since I was going to use Chrome anyways, which may have skewed my memory.

 

Speaking of GPUs: Once you've installed Chrome, you should go to Settings and check 'Always enable hardware rendering' or whatever it says in the advanced settings all the way down if it isn't already. After restarting, you should then check chrome://gpu (just put it into the address bar) to see whether Chrome enables all hardware rendering capabilities on your GPU (Hardware accelerated should be written in green after every feature under 'Graphic Feature Status'). If that isn't the case, you probably should go to chrome://flags and enable 'Override software rendering list' (Should be one of the first ones, with the '#ignore-gpu-blacklist' flag). Restart and check chrome://gpu again. This makes sure that Chrome uses your GPU to help with Flash & HTML5 rendering and other stuff. Obviously, if you don't want this, don't enable it, but it was a huge improvement for me for content supporting GPU-accelerated rendering (partly because of the already mentioned old system. The CPU is just to weak to do this alone).

 

Oh, and make sure you install Chrome directly from the Chrome page at http://www.google.com/chrome to make sure you get the version without a RLZ identifier, just so that you have a bit less data to send.

[Box Tactics]

Wonder if we'll see our first Xen episode tomorrow for HL2's 10th anniversary...

[ScottD.Betson]

i think 30 fps is better for YT.....60 would be better for movies.....

[Ap2000]

 

Concerning tracking in general, the Wikipedia article on Chrome has a section describing the major components of Chrome which can send data to Google. Most of them are optional and can be disabled. Those which aren't optional are usually only sent once or contain no personal information. If you're interested in further details, Google has published a whitepaper which lists and explains all components that communicate with Google and if and how they can be disabled.

I'm writing this because I don't believe that Google Chrome is a botnet or otherwise a program designed to compromise a user's privacy. I suppose that the skepticism is justified and it is true that Chrome can send quite some data to Google, but I think that Chrome in itself is a great browser and can be used in a way that doesn't put a user's privacy at a substantially higher risk than any other common browser. It is also still based on the open-source Chromium, so everyone can look at that code.

 

Yeah, but do you want Google to have even more power and influence?

I personally don't.

I don't want to be every service controlled by one company and I'm never going to be a fan of that.

 

 

One thing I will say is that Firefox has been EXTREMELY stable with me, I seriously can't remember it crashing whatsoever in the past 6 months, maybe longer. I don't know if Chrome has that kind of reputation now or not, but it's not something to be undervalued. My biggest complaint with browsing has mostly been flash video performance, but I don't know how much that plays into the browser so much as Adobe. After I did the Last Stand, I heard some reports of people saying older games were running slower than they used to on modern Flash, wouldn't surprise me.

 

Flash has been a mess ever since Adobe took over Macromedia, which was are far more likeable, competent and consumer-oriented company.

 

However, Flash is especially finicky with AMD's Catalyst driver (the CCC, to be more precise) and that's been an issue since more than 2 years now (hundreds of threads in various forums about it). I had to disable hardware acceleration for ALL flash things for it to not constantly crash FF while I have CCC running (which is necessary since I have a custom color scheme set up).

Not much of a problem now that I got an i5 4690, which runs 4K flash videos perfectly, but it was extremely annoying for a very long time and the reason why my next graphics card will be form nVidia.

[Zeth]

60 FPS in a game does feel better and more responsive, that's proven. But for a video where you sit and stare at the screen, I don't see any reason for it other than artificially inflating the size of the file to be streamed which might result in buffering and stuff...

 

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

[BTGBullseye]

60 FPS in a game does feel better and more responsive, that's proven. But for a video where you sit and stare at the screen, I don't see any reason for it other than artificially inflating the size of the file to be streamed which might result in buffering and stuff...

 

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

6.84MB vs 7.86MB for the difference between '30FPS' and '60FPS alternate' in that 17 second demo. (60FPS regular is 7.68MB)

[Rocket Propelled Gordon]

So, uh, any update on freeman's mind?

Not to rush, of course.

[Ross Scott]

So, uh, any update on freeman's mind?

Not to rush, of course.

Otto has disappeared, was waiting on sound editing help and recently got some from elsewhere. I'll have voicework done on the next 3 episodes by the end of today.

[McFirson]

next 3 episodes by the end of today.

 

I think this section of the sentence caused a minor explosion of pleasure in minds of a lot of people . Or was it an implosion caused by anticipation?

[Ross Scott]

next 3 episodes by the end of today.

 

I think this section of the sentence caused a minor explosion of pleasure in minds of a lot of people . Or was it an implosion caused by anticipation?

I should clarify I didn't do all 3 in one day. I've been working nonstop ever since my move pretty much.

[Box Tactics]

Currently wondering why there's no drooling emoticon.

 

Xen, here we come!

[VeryShyPerson]

next 3 episodes by the end of today.

 

I think this section of the sentence caused a minor explosion of pleasure in minds of a lot of people . Or was it an implosion caused by anticipation?

I should clarify I didn't do all 3 in one day. I've been working nonstop ever since my move pretty much.

 

Dont make yourself sick!!

[Box Tactics]

 

I think this section of the sentence caused a minor explosion of pleasure in minds of a lot of people . Or was it an implosion caused by anticipation?

I should clarify I didn't do all 3 in one day. I've been working nonstop ever since my move pretty much.

 

Dont make yourself sick!!

 

Oh, yeah, shit, this too.