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MS Frame Duration Keyword

<MSFrameDuration N [emit]>
<msfd N [emit]>

    % switch and F parameter alternative. Unlike the traditional % switch or the <FrameDuration> keyword this keyword specifies a frame duration in milliseconds. On systems with high performance counters DMDX knows the retrace interval to within a few microseconds and this can be used to calculate frame durations in milliseconds. The result used to be (prior to version 4.1.3.0 of DMDX on 01/30/13) rounded up, however this could lead to some confusing scenarios given the perfidies of floating point arithmetic (see below) so now the result is rounded to the nearest whole retrace interval.  If the freesync modifier to the video mode is being used then no manipulations of the time are performed and DMDX will display the frame at the exact time requested (assuming it can of course, frame durations under the minimum retrace interval cannot be displayed as requested and will result in a warning from DMDX).   If the text "emit" follows the millisecond time then the retrace rate and the result will be emitted into the output data (so that remote testing installations that are trying to do tachistoscopic displays can determine exactly what a given machine might have done).  "emit" will not work if used in the parameters.
 
    NOTE:- Prior to version 4.1.3.0 of DMDX this was not an F parameter replacement, it is now.

    <msfd> is provided for one of three situations. Either you don't care about precise tachistoscopic presentations (for example you are specifying frame durations that are multiple seconds long) and you don't really want to be bothered figuring out just how many hundred ticks that's going to be, or you want an item file to work on multiple machines regardless of their refresh rates or you're using the freesync video modes and can therefore display frames for any duration over the minimum retrace interval.
 
    NOTE:- As mentioned above this keyword was never intended for use with tachistoscopic displays, however with the introduction of remote testing and auto mode it is now being used that way.  Because prior to version 4.1.3.0 of DMDX on 01/30/13 when <msfd> added the retrace interval to the requested millisecond frame duration before then dividing by the retrace interval in order to always round up asking for exactly the right frame duration could lead to the duration being one tick longer than desired.  For insurance, asking for a 50 millisecond frame duration on a machine that reports a 60 Hz display mode (with auto mode ) actually resulted in a 4 tick display (not the 3 ticks you might expect) whereas asking for a 100 milliseconds yielded a 6 tick display (as one might expect).  This is due to the perfidies of floating point binary arithmetic where the result of the 50 millisecond request is something like 4.000000001 and the result of the 100 millisecond request is 6.99999999 (which gets truncated to 6 for the integer frame duration).  So it was changed on 01/30/13, now it adds half the retrace interval before dividing by it producing a result taking the nearest number of retrace intervals.     

   



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