KDL-42W705B Media Player - random frame skip/drop

[garfield100]

I bought this TV earlier this week.  It has firmware PKG2.263EUA installed.

When I play SD (typically 1,000 Kbps) quality MKV from USB, I may notice frame skipping infrequently. There is no interuption to the audio.  It occurs randomly, perhaps may be once or twice in a minute at worst and only lasts only a split second in duration.  If I rewind the video a few seconds and play it again, there is no frame dropping at the same time index.  It seems to be worse with MKVs than MP4 files.

I've tried both USB sockets and using different pen drives.

The issue also appears over DLNA (no transcoding) too.

My EX723 doesn't exhibit this issue when playing the same MP4 files via USB.  It can't play MKV files.

The MKV files play back perfectly smoothly using WD TV Live Media Player (24p mode) connected to the EX723 and W705 TVs (which reports 1080/24p when I press the 'i' button)

However, it does remind me of similar random dropped frame issue I witnessed when I incorrectly set the WD TV Live Media Player to 'Auto' instead of '24p' output mode when viewing on my old EX723 TV.

A search in this forum revealed this similar case but it is for W905.

http://community.sony.co.uk/t5/televisions/kdl-55w905a-stuttering-random-frame-drop-s/m-p/1488492/hi...

I've tried different scene modes, Auto (24P), General and Cinema.

[Anonymous]

Hi there

Since you have updated to the latest firmware, have you tried a factory reset of the TV - sometimes this cures many weird and irregular problems? 

Now as the video file is 24p (24fps progressive) and the tv is 23.976 you will need to put the TV in 24p mode [Auto (24p Sync)] - which I note that you have tried anyhow.

If this fails to cure the problem, can you install a program called Mediainfo : HERE and run the file through that and ensure that it actually is 24p. 

You could try converting the file to 23.976 using handbrake : HERE and see if that cures the problem.  Even just a test.

Oh, you also said SD quality.  What about HD?  Also, is the video file/s at a high-bit rate or...?

Give those a go and see ?

Cheers

[garfield100]

The SD files I tried are all 23.976 fps.

I can confirm it does also happen over DLNA so it is not due to defective USB hardware, and so I won't need to return the TV for replacement.

I've noticed with a couple of MKV video files, the first sign of a stutter may occur about 15 seconds after pressing the Play button, particularly when playing from the start of the SD video.

An old 23.976 fps 870Kbps Xvid AVI file plays smoothly with no random stutter.

MP4 files also seem to be mostly okay.

The stutter in MKVs is so subtle, I guess most ppl may not even notice it particularly if they have never seen the same MKV videos played correctly without this random stutter on a different device.

I've factory reset the TV. Sadly no improvement when MKV retested. It looks like a software bug/feature.

[garfield100]

This is just an update on the problem.

I managed to find some  5mbps 1080/24p MKV and MP4 of some short TV shows.   These play back smoothly without any evidence of the random stutter reported in first post.

fwiw, here is the Mediainfo report for one of the many low bit MKV files which suffer from random split second stutter, noticeable once or twice a minute.  It was originally created with MKVmerge 6.x.  I remuxed it using MKVmerge 3.0.0 but it didn't solve the stutter problem.  The stutter can be replicated from USB and over DLNA (no transcoding).

The only workaround is to simply avoid using the built in Media Player app (it also has other issues such as crashing the TV) and to use an external player such as WD TV Media Player - The WD box is not without its own issues, but in general it does play everything far more smoothly.

General
Unique ID : **************
Complete name : *****
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 645 MiB
Duration : 1h 29mn
Overall bit rate : 1 009 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2014-11-22 05:25:29
Writing application : mkvmerge v3.0.0 ('Hang up your Hang-Ups') built on Dec 12 2009 15:20:35
Writing library : libebml v0.7.9 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1h 29mn
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 302 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Title : X264
Writing library : x264 core 142 r2479 dd79a61
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:-2:-2 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=0.90:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=18 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=19.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Color range : Limited

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : A_AAC
Duration : 1h 29mn
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Title : English-Forced
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : Yes

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Our other Samsung TV doesn't exhibit any random stutter issues playing back these low bit rate SD MKV files.

[goggio88]

I have the same problem but with 50w705. Solutions?

[garfield100]

Just installed PKG2.291EUA.

Sadly issue still exists.   

Back to continue to using WD TV media player for stutter free play back.