BenQ XL2740 - 27” 1080p - 240hz - Should I wait?

[Chief Blur Buster]

Was my hand wave sufficient? I do wish I could get more straight and proper tracking for clearer results. However on the ones I’ve highlighted, I do believe I can see a slight forward ghost and a blue edge.

Yes! It's imperfect (ladder is jagged due to camera exposure-length varying but that's okay for amateur approximations). Your handwave attempt gave me more educational infoirmation. I see the familiar BenQ AMA artifact.
Both the static and the handwave can give separate information that is useful for troubleshooting.

BenQ's AMA is only 3-setting, so you have to do the Falkentyne OD Gain trick to get access to a 128-setting overdrive.

[saw141]

Saw141, are you not getting any obvious blue trails on default "High" AMA setting? Sort of like in this pic: https://imgur.com/S6UVxbv
For me, I have to edit the OD gain value to remove them. But this setting does not save, and seems to change to a different default value depending if a game is running on the screen or if it's just on desktop which seems odd. But it makes editing this value useless as it just resets between starting games or just alt-tabbing.

Nope, it seems really crisp with AMA on High - and OD gain kept at the default I showed in my picture "4C" I believe. I did enable Blur Reduction, though.

[Chief Blur Buster]

So I've been fiddling with this some, and I have to say. I've read a lot on this site, but after reading https://www.blurbusters.com/motion-test ... it-camera/ some serious kudos are in order. The amount of work that has gone into this research is astounding, and that it's free is beautiful. Thank you so much Mark, and everyone who is involved, I really mean it. I don't mean to be overly sentimental but science is fascinating, and this is science, great work.

Thank you for the compliment!

FYI, the Easy Pursuit Camera Instructions (end user pursuit camera) are in that thread. The video version rather than the still-photo version.

The old professional-site instruction tell you to use photography (still camera + rail) but for end users using hand waved iPhones should use video recording instead because it's easier. Then just grabbing the clearest video freeze-frames since video is simply like 100-shot burst-shooting.

So that gives you literally 100 chances to find a clear shot in all the shaky-handwaves. That's what makes the hand-wave technique suitable for some end-user troubleshoot purposes. Instead of 1 still photo, video can contain hundreds of still frames, and that's why video makes rail-less pursuit camera easier for end users. The overkill number of shots compensates for the lack of rail!

I'm going to post a new BlurBusters HOWTO for end user pursuit camera soon
(rail-less hand waved smartphone via video recording + screenshotting the clearest freezeframe).

Here is one of the most clear lines I could achieve with my iPhone 6s, set to 1080p@30fps.

I see each frame capturing 6 refresh cycles. Try a 1/60sec-per-frame camera exposure for video-filming 240Hz blur reduction. To do that, you could just do 60fps video. Or use a third party camera app such as Pro Cam+ or another app that can let you program camera exposure per video frame. But not everyone wants to bother.

Right now, you can just use still photography to capture strobe crosstalk. Just set exposure to one refresh cycle (1/240sec) and the resulting photograph will look almost perfectly WYSIWYG. This is because brief strobing (sub-1ms) actually point-samples the motion (no handwave blur for a strobed refresh cycle) and thus almost eliminates the photographic difference between pursuit camera and still camera.

So as a rule of thumb, to make it easy for users:
Strobe backlight: For WYISIWYG strobe crosstalk photography, it is okay to use a still camera, exposure set to 1 refresh cycle
Non-Strobed: For WYSIWYG motion blur photography, pursuit is better. The current Ghosting track has four tickmark levels, which means it prefers you set camera exposure at four refresh cycles. So you may have to reduce to 1/60sec instead of 1/30sec because of the way I designed the old Ghosting track in the pre-240Hz days. Or just simply use a 60fps video filmrate. The count of refresh cycle exposued should be greater than 2 in all situations, and it's okay to have more than 4, but the Ghosting track was designed to only stack-capture up to 4 refresh cycles accurately.

Maybe we should post a separate thread if we're going to do a massive number of end-user strobe photographs or pursuit camera photographs. I'll probably create a thread once I create an Easy Pursuit Camera FAQ on the Blur Busters website.

[troubleperson]

Saw141, are you not getting any obvious blue trails on default "High" AMA setting? Sort of like in this pic: https://imgur.com/S6UVxbv
For me, I have to edit the OD gain value to remove them. But this setting does not save, and seems to change to a different default value depending if a game is running on the screen or if it's just on desktop which seems odd. But it makes editing this value useless as it just resets between starting games or just alt-tabbing.

Nope, it seems really crisp with AMA on High - and OD gain kept at the default I showed in my picture "4C" I believe. I did enable Blur Reduction, though.

What about with blur reduction off? Makes me think I've got a faulty monitor somehow and maybe I should return/swap it. The blurring is pretty bad, probably worst out of all monitors I've had.

[Chief Blur Buster]

You need headroom below max Hz for good blur reduction.
NVIDIA limited strobing to 144Hz on 240Hz monitors, while BenQ unlocked it. But if you want ULMB quality, it takes intentional lowering of Hz combined with Large Vertical Totals, and some tuning with Strobe Utility. See animations

You may want to use the Large Vertical Totals trick found in Appendix A of www.blurbusters.com/crosstalk

[troubleperson]

It appears that Saws monitor had no blurring and looked good even with just defaults (or AMA premium) at 240hz while mine has the blurring. Which I don't think should be normal.

[saw141]

I do have a DSLR that I can try to take some properly exposed still shots with.

It appears that Saws monitor had no blurring and looked good even with just defaults (or AMA premium) at 240hz while mine has the blurring. Which I don't think should be normal.

Did you edit your "OD Gain" in the service menu described by Falkentyne? Try setting it to 4C or whatever your default was, that's what I'm using. Also in my original shared video/photos; I was using AMA Premium, 4C OD Gain, and no Blur Reduction. In those tests there was a visible ghost and blue edge behind the proper UFO. I believe that using AMA at High and the Blue Reduction is what fixed it because I didn't change OD Gain so..Also after reading about AMA, the ghosting is stronger for Premium, I believe. The tradeoff from high to premium is more ghosting for slightly faster G2G.

tl;dr - Try OD Gain of 4C, with AMA High, make sure your browser is synced with the ufotest properly too that may be a problem, idk.

[A Solid lad]

I was planning to make a huge review video (45 min+) covering every aspect of the xl2740, from every OSD option, to res. timings strobed/non strobed, pursuit video, strobed/non strobed on multiple AMA and OD gain presets... the service and factory menu, all the tricks related to them... and how Chief's Benq strobe utility is not worth using ATM, as it doesn't let you access the brightest intensity setting. (Which should be used, as the option doesn't affect motion clarity, just brightness.)
It would have been the most competitive minded and thorough review on youtube, about any 240hz monitor so far, but I lost motivation halfway thru...
I have a small load of unedited footage,
in case anyone is curious about the monitor, I could upload it to youtube as an unlisted video, in which one could scavenge information.

Could do the same with the xl2540, now that I have it, but that monitor has so many reviews done by mainstream youtubers (who by the way don't seem know anything about the monitor, beyond marketing material) that mine wouldn't even show up in search results.
Not worth the time investment, just to have it sitting at 150 views for a lifetime.

[saw141]

I’d like that.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Strobe Utility Adjustment Ranges Are Customizable
Strobe Utility can be customized by editing the ranges in BlurBustersStrobeUtility.ini for wider slider ranges if you need to access brighter intensity settings, I have not gotten all the ranges correctly but the ranges is user editable at C:\Program Files (x86)\Blur Busters\Strobe Util\BlurBustersStrobeUtility.ini

That said, Strobe Utility is indeed more useful for 1080p 144Hz veraions of XL2411 / XL2420 / XL2430 / XL2720 series than the 240Hz monitors. However, since I do not (yet) have any 240Hz BenQ ZOWIEs, I need beta testers to tweak the ranges in the INI file to match the Factory Menu. If you mention it in future videos, ensure a mention of "Strobe Utility was originally optimized for the 144Hz BenQs"

Please send corrected versions of INI files to me at [email protected]
And any feature requests.

Recruiting Future Blur Busters YouTube Partner
P.S. I have 250,000 views on the high speed video of LightBoost at http://www.blurbusters.com/lightboost/video .... I am looking for a YouTuber partner for Blur Busters under the Blur Busters channel and logo. Channel is still mainly used for embeds for my articles so only short clips thst are useless without articles -- but I'd like to turn it into a real YouTube channel sometime by the early 2020s or sooner! I need a partner who is an excellent talking-head and ideally excellent experience with ultra-fancy graphics overlay and animations. I'm an okay looking ginger head in pics and video, but -- because I am a deafie -- my voice is not good enough for YouTube so I need a video partner in the coming months or years. Grow an eSports subscriber base. The industry is predicted to grow 7x between 2019 and 2029. The Blur Busters brand can bring views. Revenue split. Helps pay for more Blur Busters research! Who knows? Reach out to me privately with samples of your graphicswork and talkinghead work (even if you have to learn/practice/take courses and then come back to read this many months later). [email protected]

Thank you!