This blog post is for anyone who owns a PS3 and has discovered that *some* Blu-ray discs have stuttering/dropped frames playback.
I purchased a Playstation 3 back in April 2007, and received a free copy of Casino Royale on Blu-ray as part of a PS3 promotion. Needless to say, I opened the PS3 and stuck the blu-ray disc in to the drive to see what all the blu-ray fuss was about. The movie looked fantastic, even on my standard def TV. It looked even better on my brothers HDTV. Now you may be wondering why I’m saying this. Well, as I later found out, this initial experience was not indicative of the PS3’s blu-ray performance on every blu-ray disc.
Fast-forward ahead 8 months.
I decided to go halves in a brand new Samsung Full HDTV (1080p) for christmas. The picture quality of this baby is phenomenal on both HD FTA and PS3. As a present to myself, I went to JB-HIFI and purchased 3 blu-ray movies to try on the brand new tv. I bought Kingdom of Heaven, Gone in 60 Seconds and Behind Enemy Lines; all of which are fantastic movies. I tried out Behind Enemy Lines, and it looked spectacular. I then tried Kingdom of Heaven and had a similar reaction. Then, as you would have guessed, I tried Gone in 60 Seconds…
Arrrgghhhh! What the hell did they do to make this movie so painful to watch? The movie started out fine, but after about 40 seconds, the video started to stutter. It appeared as though video frames were being dropped as the audio wasn’t affected.
I continued to watch once the stuttering had stopped to see if it was a once off. But I was disappointed to find out that it continued to do it every 1 minute or so for about 10 seconds. I became very frustrated as blu-ray discs aren’t cheap. So I went back to JB-HIFI and swapped the disc for another copy of Gone in 60 Seconds so I could work out whether it was a disc problem or a PS3 problem.
I slid the disc into the console and held my breath…
Right on queue, it started to stutter. Argh! At this point I was very angry. I decided to have a hunt around in the BD/DVD settings section of the PS3. One option I found seemed like it fit the bill.
“BD 1080p 24Hz Output (HDMI) – Sets the playback method for BDs recorded at 24Hz (frames/second)”
By default this option is set to ‘Automatic’, so I decided to fiddle with this setting and set it to ‘Off’. I started the blu-ray disc up again and held my breath…
40 seconds passed…. 50 seconds passed… 5 minutes passed…
Nothing! Not a single stutter or anything! The problem was fixed. There is nothing on the blu-ray disc cover to suggest that the movie is in 24fps, so I guess its trial and error for each disc. But at least you now know how to fix the problem!
I’d like to hear from other people who have had the same problem.
EDIT: I have found a few resources on the net of other people experiencing the same problem, so if you wish to know the exact reason for this stuttering – read this thread.
Tags: 24fps, blu-ray, dropped frames, playstation, ps3, stuttering
Hah, nice find :D
I wonder what it actually tries to do on Automatic? Some kind of interpolation or something?
Yeah, that was my best guess. Strange behaviour though. I’m tempted to set it to yes and see if it goes back to dropping frames.
Good to know, for when I finally acquire a PS3. ;p
mine does the same thing on alot of movies…i will try this fix and if it works you are my hero…no country 4 old men was unwatchable
Let me know how it goes Jamie.
I’ve had this trouble on my PS3 as well, which is connected via HDMI to a 1080p HDTV, and am very glad to come across your fix. Some of my blu-ray discs drop frames, some don’t, and some that used to play fine now drop frames. I searched the settings and changed some without luck, but I don’t think I changed the setting you mentioned yet. I presume it will work as it has for others. Thanks!
@Erik
I have since purchased more Blu-ray movies with stutter, and this fix has solved them.
Let me know how you go. :)
I have a TV that supports 120Hz for movies, although I have the same problem when a BD movie pans a scene slowly. I’ve tested using a 2nd BD player, which also supports 24p (my friend’s Samsung BD-P1500). Surprisingly, no stutter what so ever. This looks like a PS3 problem… :(
It sure does make you go WTF when your top of the line PS3 won’t do exactly what it’s supposed to do. I haven’t tried this fix but sure hope it works. Thanks for taking the time to share a solution.
@Al: Hope it works for you :)
Thanks for your help. My story is kind of similar to yours & so your solution was extremely appreciated.
Let me divulge. I bought my PS3 some time ago but I was still using an old, non-HDReady Panasonic plasma. As such I had it connected up via component. I have to say that this was much better than expected. I still got high definition, if not the 1080i/p supported by the new tellies but enough to be a noticeable improvement over standard def. This improvement was especially obvious when playing Blu-Ray movies and so, over the next year, I purchased a whole pile of films to watch. Every single one looked great & played back with no issues whatsoever. I had Kingdom Of Heaven, AvP2, Beowulf, Black Hawk Down, Kiss Of The Dragon and Pirates Of The Caribbean to name a few.
Then, the other week, my old plasma just suddenly packed in. I had been meaning to get myself a new telly for some time & so used this as the excuse I needed & went out & bought Panasonics new budget 42″ Viera (what a telly btw! If you’re looking for a new plasma but, like me, can’t pay more than £600 I implore you to check out the Panasonic TH-42PX80B. It is a stunning television for the price). I digress. I now had a proper HD telly & so I unplugged the component leads that had served me so well and excited connected up the HDMI (expecting something even better than the component had to be impressive). I wasn’t disappointed. The picture was simply stunning. I don’t know how Panasonic do it. Their contrast ratio isn’t the highest (but still good at 15000:1) and there is no 1080p output (although it accepts it as an input) but the picture just looks superb & actually better than other tellies which supposedly do play 1080p & have a higher contrast ratio (you can tell that I think I git a bargain!).
I had just bought Transformers on Blu-ray and wacked it straight in. It looked AMAZING! Over the next week I watched a couple more Blu-Rays without incident. Then, last night, I picked up my copy of Kiss Of The Dragon (which I had bought some time ago but not yet watched). It was great & there was no problem. I then unwraped a brand new copy of Black Hawk Down & pushed play. Ah. The main menu came up fine at 1st but it soon just began to stutter & the sound went. I played it anyhow & the film again started OK and then began to skip frames horrendously. It was totally unwatchable. I freaked out a little, his was a brand new disk after all. I decided to watch something else instead. I pulled out Kingdom Of Heaven because I knew this disk worked as I had watched it before, all be it some time ago. I was horrified when this too began to stutter when played back (odd as this is one of the movies you said you tried in your initial post & it worked OK). I could not think what was going on. I thought maybe it was a firmware issue with the PS3 but these were old disks & I was up to date. I decided to try a more recent release & put AvP2 into the drive. This had also worked no problem when I first watched it. This only had the same result and from there it only got worse. I tried Pirates & then Beowulf (which I had only watched the other week) & both failed with Beowulf actually giving me an error message which reappeared when I tried AvP2 a 2nd time! The weird thing was when I put Kiss Of The Dragon back on, it worked fine. I began to think that the disk had somehow corrupted my PS3, if that is even possible!
In the end I just switched off my PS3 & went to bed. In the morning I switched my PS3 back on & tried again but the same thing happened. I decided to look into the problem online & read about the 24Hz issue. Interestingly people said that their audio continued to work whereas mine completely went silent during any stutter & nobody mentioned any error messages. Nobody gave a solution either until I eventually came across this site where you give an extremely straight forward fix. Unsure as to whether it would apply to my own situation, I gave your suggestion a try & switched the 24Hz playback option from ‘Automatic to ‘Off’. I quickly tried AvP2 as it seemed to be one of the worst offenders. So far so good, so I thank you very much!
I apologize for my slightly long-winded response but my experience appears to be a little different to everyone else’s. I don’t know why my audio should drop-out while other people’s plays on without effect, maybe its something to do with me hooking it up via its analogue RCA output as opposed to its digital optical one. Also, nobody else says anything about this error message that I got. I didn’t get it every time but it did appear more than once & on several different disks. I haven’t tried them all again yet but, like I say, so far, so good. I’ll let you know if It rears its ugly head once more!
Thanks for saving my PS3!
Oh well, unfortunately my excitement has been short-lived as it seems this has not fixed my problem. black Hawk Down still stutters & drops audio & i don’t know what to try next!
YOU LEGEND !!!! I freaked when I played my brand new copy of “Casino Royale” on my brand new PS3 through my reasonably new Samsung 46″ Full HD LCD and it started stuttering every minute or so.
Not a frame rate thing as some may suggest. Just a random plain weird thing.
Anyway, your fix worked. So many thanks.
I tried this and it definitely worked, but the video quality seemed to be worse than when it was on. Here are a few of the specifics of my problem, and a solution that I found:
First, I had the stuttering problem, but only for the first few minutes or so when the BR was in. I would just wait for it to stop stuttering, and then it wouldn’t do it at all during the movie.
Through random chance, I discovered that when I started the BR, if I then immediately stopped it, and then started it again, (as in quit playback, then restarting the movie) the problem would go away.
Again, the trick on this website worked, but I believe I lost video quality. My method, while annoying, won’t have you lose video quality if your problem is the same as mine.
I hope Sony can send some sort of update for this issue, because at first, I thought I was the only one with this problem, now I’m realizing a lot of people have it.
I’ve noticed that sometimes when I get a system update for the PS3, it changes all my settings too. Once, I totally had to go in and redo the audio because it changed it.
I was having the same above issue with Silence of the Lambs… did what you said and fixed. Awesome!
I was having the same problem with Silence of the Lambs and did what you said and it is fixed.
I also notice that sometimes when I get system updates from PS3 that it changes my settings. Had to redo the audio setting a while back also.