Note: This guide will be outdated pretty quickly I'm sure, and AH posts can't be edited after 6 hours. If you are reaching this guide via a Google search and it is not reasonably near May 2014, you probably ought to keep Googling for something newer.
Some higher-end displays have a motion compensation feature which provides frame interpolation. This feature adds intermediate frames, shifting moving objects to the half way point between the previous frame and the next, and artificially bumps up framerate. A 23.976fps source becomes 60fps, with all the moving objects in the scene artificially shifted for seamless movement. The result is smoother playback, and it's a mesmerizing effect.
For systems that don't offer this feature by hardware, there is a Windows software project called the
SmoothVideo Project. The SmoothVideo Project is primarily built for use with Media Player Classic Home Cinema.
But it is possible to teach XBMC to use the same technology. Beware that not only does it require a stout video card, but also lots of CPU power if you intend to use it for videos >= 720p. If your computer has some age on it, you'll probably end up thoroughly dissatisfied with the slow performance warnings and dropped frames. I ended up uninstalling and reverting most of these changes, but your mileage may vary.
If you're feeling adventurous, this is fun to play with at least for a couple of hours regardless, and you might decide the improvement is worth keeping if your hardware is better than mine.
I used
this guide to help me figure out how to make it work. It's a bit vague in spots and not entirely easy to follow, so I'll attempt to recall the steps I followed with a little more clarity here.
Cheat sheet:
1. Download and install
LAVFilters. At the end of the installation, open the video configuration window. Set the hardware acceleration option to the NVidia acceleration and check mark the MP4 hardware check box if you have an NVidia video card, or DXVA (copy) otherwise.
2. Download and install
SVP, the fully bloated one, not the core. During install, be sure to check mark the LAV settings hook. If you don't already have ffdshow installed, you can choose to have the SVP installer load that up for you as well. You'll need it.
3. Download and install one of these
patched XBMC + DSPlayer packages. The 13.1 RC1 package worked well for me. If you currently have an official build of XBMC installed, you can overwrite without uninstalling your current version with no adverse effects if you're lazy. After install, launch XBMC and go to Settings --> Video --> DSPlayer. Verify that the settings there match the recommended settings on the "Basic Settings" section of the
SVP Team Wiki. Mine matched by default.
4. Download the minimal configuration files from the bottom of this
SVP Team Wiki page. After unzipping the zip file, copy the extracted XML files to C:\Program Files (x86)\XBMC\system\players\dsplayer\ (or wherever you have XBMC installed), overwriting the existing XML files.
5. Try a video or two. If playback stutters, you can tweak some options by right-clicking the SVP Manager icon in your systray and going to Profiles --> whatever is bolded (which will be the most recent profile used).
Unfortunately, for my 7-year-old Athlon 64 X2 CPU, I didn't get much out of 1080p or even 720p video without occasional OSD warnings and dropped frames, regardless of lowered settings. For me the software was more trouble than it's worth for normal use with XBMC. So as follows are steps for how to revert your changes.
Undo:
Go to Start --> Control Panel --> Programs and Features. Uninstall LAVFilters. If you don't use ffdshow for an other software, uninstall that as well. If you don't want to keep SVP + MPCHC to play with smaller video files, uninstall SVP. Then reinstall an official release of XBMC (
stable or
Beta / RC). You can overwrite the current XBMC install with no adverse effects. The official XBMC build has no support for DSPlayer, and thus will revert to the default behavior of playing videos with its internal DVDPlayer method without your having to hunt down and modify any more XML files.
