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Isn't tearing exactly what Beam Sync prevents?
Authored by: Makosuke on Jul 06, '05 04:53:42PM

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the terminology here, but the "breakup" described in the post above appears to be describing tearing (I think that's the common term), an effect that happens, basically, when the monitor switches from drawing one frame to the next in the middle of a screen refresh--the top half of the image is one frame behind the bottom, basically.

I'm assuming that "Beam Sync" prevents exactly this--the same as the synch that can be done in some (most?) 3D games to eliminate tearing, so of course turning beam sync off would bring the tearing back.

Funny, because the screen redraw synching is probably my single favorite feature of Tiger, so disabling it seems crazy. It makes watching videos onscreen or dragging around windows vastly more attractive on an LCD monitor, where tearing problems (particularly with fullscreen video) were nasty with 10.3 and earlier.



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Isn't tearing exactly what Beam Sync prevents?
Authored by: slacks on Jul 06, '05 06:18:31PM

Thanks, I appreciate the informative response. The word "tearing" escaped me while I was posting. You make a good argument for leaving Beam Sync enabled. I do remember playing full screen videos in 10.3 and witnessing some tearing. I don't however remember window tearing being that drastic though. At least nothing compared to the tearing I used to see in X-windows under Linux, or after I turned off Beam Sync as described in the hint. Also I thought Double Buffering helped prevent window tearing?



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Isn't tearing exactly what Beam Sync prevents?
Authored by: Dirk! on Jul 07, '05 05:33:07AM

Yes, I second: beamsync prevents tearing. Double buffering only prevents tearing if the buffer is copied to the screen in sync with the refresh rate.

Did anyone notice that "Quartz Debug" has an menu item to enable/disable "beam sync". So why use the command line tool?

Dirk



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Isn't tearing exactly what Beam Sync prevents?
Authored by: slacks on Jul 07, '05 01:29:21PM

Using Quartz Debug was part of the original hint. Downside was you had to force quit the program in order for the settings to stick, otherwise they would revert.



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