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Author Topic: black frame insertion causes burn-in on some LCD monitors  (Read 2793 times)

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druroh

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black frame insertion causes burn-in on some LCD monitors
« on: January 09, 2019, 03:27:59 am »
I'm using black frame insertion at 120Hz. It works great, but I get burnin when I exit to desktop (lots of flickering and image retention).
My monitor is an Acer XF270HUA.

I found this information on blurbuster.com forums. It would be possible to implement this technique for preventing burnin?
Maybe a -black_frame_insertion_swap "seconds"  parameter?

Thank you very much!

Quote
Burn In Prevention in software-based BFI
This will reduce or fix flicker problems after exiting game
You should swap phases once every few seconds. Basically you need to make sure (over the period of one minute) that all even-numbered refresh cycles and odd-numbered refresh cycles have the same number of black frames. That means even-numbered blackframe insertion needs compensation to rebalance things. Also, frameskips will make it hard to resync, but you could monitor the timing of pageflips and try to detect dropped frames. So that you can correctly guess how many black frames occured during odd refresh cycles, and how many black frames occured during even refresh cycles. That will prevent burn-in. You could keep a counter of black frames for even refresh cycles and a counter of black frames for odd refresh cycles. When one counter becomes massively too big compared to other, automatically adding 1 extra black frame to force the rebalancing. I'd suggest swapping phases once every few seconds. Some monitors don't mind a phase-swap every 60 seconds, but some monitors will do better with a phase-wap every 5 or 10 seconds. Make this configurable.

The separate phases (positive, negative -- even/odd numbered refresh cycles) of inversion essentially have independent image retention, so that's why you see flickering after you exit the game -- one inversion phase is burnt-in with bright images and the other inversion phase is burnt-in with dark images. Fixing this flicker (caused by inversion-logic-defeating software-based BFI) upon game exit can also be done by playing a very high-action full-screen YouTube (no letterbox bars). That resets all the pixels. But if you add an occasional phase-swap (extraneous black frame) you'll reduce or eliminate the flicker that you get upon game exit!
« Last Edit: January 10, 2019, 05:41:59 am by druroh »

schmerzkaufen

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Re: black frame insertion causes burn-in on some LCD monitors
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2019, 01:59:04 pm »
Not saying that doesn't sound interesting, but like many of the brillant ideas we can read over at blrubusters, it also sounds quite difficult to materialize.
In short it requires a brave developer with the knowledge, time and will.

Note that even for normal use (just 60Hz w/out BFI) a software burn-in prevention feature would be useful too.
At least for some games that have screens with contiuously flickering portions that can leave burns, for instance the title screen of Progear; once I've left it running for like 20 minutes and when I came back the logo was pretty much imprinted on the display and flickering like crazy. Had to run a pixels 'cleaning' video for like 3hrs to fix it completely.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2019, 02:02:55 pm by schmerzkaufen »

Torkyo

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Re: black frame insertion causes burn-in on some LCD monitors
« Reply #2 on: January 12, 2019, 08:02:52 pm »
Hi, I also tried the BFI in past and I had very good results but it was nothing compared to a good use of Ultra Low Motion Blur.
with my AOC AG251FG (240Hz G-Sync monitor) with an hack I read on blurbaster, using the CRU I was able to reach ULMB at very low refresh rates like 60 Hz or 50Hz and even less.
if you use BFI at 120Hz to run 60 Hz game, you know perfectly how good is the like CRT scrolling.
With the ULMB to 60Hz you get the perfect CRT scrolling without the burn in that you see with the BFI. and you know the burn in is also noticeable in-game.
the other advantage to use the ULMB is that it is done hardware by the monitor, no weight on the CPU, just to enable it when necessary
if you are interested, read this: https://www.blurbusters.com/60hz-ulmb-hack-howto/