Monitor refresh rate for 25 fps footage?

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Monitor refresh rate for 25 fps footage?

I am prepping video sequences for live performance. I'll be playing them off my current series MacBook Pro via Thunderbolt 3 - HDMI adapter. I'm playing them from Resolume VJ software. I bought a 4K monitor (Samsung UE590D 28") purely for the purpose of checking video playback from my laptop prior to performace. All the video seqs are at 25 fps PAL. However this monitor is locked at 60 Hz refresh rate unless changed with FreeSync which my MBP graphics card does not support.

The playback of these sequences is choppy using this setup. However, when I play out to my old Sony TV using the same MBP port and adapter I get smooth playback. I can set the TV to 50 Hz refesh rate within Mac Settings.

I've had this Samsung monitor too long now to return but I'm prepared to sell it and buy a better suited one but all the monitors I've looked at seem to have similar refresh rate setups. What should I do? Should I look at TVs instead? What is the best way to check the video output of my laptop?

Thank you 🙂 User uploaded file

MacBook Pro TouchBar and Touch ID, macOS High Sierra (10.13.4), 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD

Posted on May 8, 2018 8:24 AM

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Answer 1

May 8, 2018 8:35 AM in response to insch

System preferences > Displays > that samsung display ...

... hold down the Option key and see if any more settings appear.

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Answer 2

insch Author

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May 8, 2018 8:46 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

'Detect Displays' comes up in place of 'Gather Windows' but that doesn't give me any other options. Samsung told me that I couldn't change the refresh rate of this monitor manually.

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Answer 3

insch Author

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May 9, 2018 2:42 AM in response to insch

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this? Is no-one else grappling with the issue of playing 25 fps footage on a monitor that won't sync to 50Hz? It would be good to know if there is a solution.

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Answer 4

May 9, 2018 6:07 AM in response to insch

The "real solution" is to use a DisplayPort family display.

DisplayPort drops the "heartbeat" refresh entirely, and the screen refreshes from its own screen buffer instead of using the computer's re-painting of the screen. When display data stops changing, the link goes quiet.

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Answer 5

insch Author

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May 9, 2018 6:54 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks Grant. This Samsung monitor has a DisplayPort. The reason I have been using HDMI is that will generally be the connection type I will use in performance so I'm matching as closely as possible. I didn't quite understand your terminology re. DisplayPort but would I essentially bypass the monitor's fresh rate using DisplayPort and it would just refresh after each image?

Someone alerted me to SwitchResX http://www.madrau.com/index.html and I have now installed it, selected 1080p25 (PAL) and the playback is now stable. I had no idea there was a bit of software out there that did this. So far so good. This might save the monitor for me!

All the best.

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Monitor refresh rate for 25 fps footage?

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