Can you guys fix choppy playback please? Ever since I upgraded my phone to iPhone 16 Pro Max I get choppy playback on all videos. Latest infuse 8 and iOS 18.1. When I switch to Emby player, playback seems fine. This happens only on Infuse. Tried several earlier Infuse builds as well as the latest official 7 version and results are the same.
Can you send in a sample file you are seeing issues with?
James, that’s on every file I tried, every single one, the choppiness in specially visible on panning scenes… if you want though I can find something. Uploaded, please look closely at 9m50s to 9m52s where the camera is panning, look at the background sea. Every file I have has the same issue now. And as I said, other apps don’t have this effect, even though I’m pretty sure they don’t match the refresh rate to content fps too.
Isn’t it possible to use variable refresh rate when playing back video? Match the refresh to the video content fps?
Playback was never good, on any app… seems like the variable refresh rate on the iPhone is not utilized at all by video apps, the only fluid content I see is the one recorded in 60fps, 24fps is choppy, 25fps as well. Would be really good if this could be fixed.
The file is Wayward Pines, Season 1, episode 1
Exactly she same issue here, also in the TestFlight beta. iPhone 16 on iOS 18.1. On any file …
Finally someone with the same problem as me 
@james any news about the issue?
8.0.3 RC still has same issue. Any timeframe for resolving it?
@james any info would really be appreciated…
I just tried this on my old iPhone 11, and playback is fine.
I wonder if this is an issue on the 16 because it is the first Apple device to include a hardware decoder for newer video codecs, so maybe those devices use a slightly different API for decoding video?
Might be true, not negating that, but @james might be able to pass this info to Apple, and as a dev maybe figure something out…
Still nothing @james? That’s disappointing really. Sent the file more than a month ago and not even one response from you guys.
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Can you provide a bit more info on the issue you are seeing? Does the playback issue happen from the start? Does it appear infrequently at random points throughout the video? Does it always happen at the same point?
I tested your sample here on an iPhone 16 Pro and it seems to play well without any obvious issues.
You might try adjusting the ‘Streaming Cache’ option from Auto to Memory Only. There have been a few rare cases where unique devices have internal storage that performs below typical benchmarks, and this could have an impact on playback. Using Memory Only would prevent Infuse from using disk space for the playback cache.
Hi @james, thanks for your followup.
The problem is present always, it’s like the iPhone or Infuse has problems with synchronizing the refresh rate with the content FPS. When I play, for example a 60fps material, the playback is smooth as butter, when I play 23-25fps it’s choppy, if you want to observe the issue, play the file I uploaded at the time points I also gave you in one of my previous posts.
The problem is, I presume always, but more apparent on panning scenes, don’t know if I put it correctly, when most of the scene shifts from one side to another, the effect is like a Vsync issue, parts of the screen don’t keep up with the rest, thus I called it choppy playback.
It also happens at the same point always, it’s less apparent in static scenes where you have only faces talking, mostly panning scenes, not very slow panning, not very fast panning. You have to look precisely at the panning background of the scenes 
I really don’t know how to better explain this.
It might as well be an iOS problem, had this exact same issue on the iPhone XS, then it magically went away after some time. I can tell you that I can see even more problems with playback, but this is the most apparent. I have a very specific eyesight, and I guess I can see this effect a instantly, some people don’t see this at all, some need to look for it or just ignore.
This is why, I previously asked you if it’s possible to sync the refresh rate with the fps of the played content. None of these issues would be ever visible if that would be the case.
meaning that if the fps is 24 frames per second, the refresh rate of the display should be the multiplier of 24, so 24Hz, 48Hz, 72Hz, if the fps is 25, then 25Hz, 50Hz, 75Hz and so on. The idea is that every displayed frame lands on one screen refresh or multiple, so one frame is displayed exactly once, twice, thrice and so on. If this is not true, and apparently it isn’t the frames are torn, and the content only looks good when the display is static, when there is a lot of panning scenes the playback is choppy.
Basically when the refresh rate of the screen isn’t a multiplier of the FPS value then the content isn’t shown correctly.
I tried all the Streaming Cache options and the problem is exactly the same.
I would try to contact Apple, as I’m a beta user but I don’t know where to start even. I’m just a normal beta user, so maybe there is a way that you guys could contact Apple. I see similar problems with playback on the Emby player, or VLC, so it might not be a strict Infuse problem, or there are newer API’s which sync the refresh rate to the played content.
BTW, any way to show a refresh rate counter during playback? I have no means of testing this theory, but if I’m right then it’s an iOS issue. To be honest, I tried the same on the Mac, and while the Mac screen also has Variable Refresh Rate I was never able to get the same refresh (or a multiply of) of the played content, which should be obviously working to have the content displayed correctly. Like for example most modern TV’s and AppleTV which allows to match the TV’s refresh to the playing content FPS, and there are no display issues when this is activated.
What you are describing is known as Judder. It was very pronounced during panning scenes when playing 24 fps movies on older 60 Hz televisions.
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Updated the thread title.
In the past on some devices there were users who saw a similar issue when the auto-brightness feature was enabled on their device, and it would completely disappear with this option disabled. I don’t know if that is the case here, but it may be worth a try to see if it makes any difference.
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That was me too, on the iPhone Xs, but it’s not the case right now 
Hi, experiencing the same issue here on an iphone 16. Tried disabling auto-brightness but that didn’t help. For me it is only with x265 video’s. Could it be that it’s not properly HW decoding on the iphone 16 ? I also notice it in other apps (like Plex or Emby), and when I have the streaming server convert to x264 the playback is smooth …