Q: What is driving the effort behind ClearMR?

A: VESA and many users anticipated the need to quantify motion-edge blur in a meaningful and complete way that considers all aspects contributing to blur, including frame rate, edge rate and non-linearity evident when a display often changes from one luminance to another. In developing the ClearMR specification, VESA established a methodology to fairly test edge-motion blur independent of underlying technology and in the same fashion across products. ClearMR is the latest program by VESA that certifies key aspects of display quality.

Q: Is ClearMR solely for gaming, or is it beneficial for other applications?

A: ClearMR will find initial usage in gaming, but it is beneficial for any application where users want to compare motion-induced blur.

Q: What is the impact of display technology on ClearMR rating?

A: ClearMR is designed to characterize the end-user-facing motion blur, independent of hardware. Each display technology will have different Clear Motion Ratio (CMR) values that are well-defined across known conditions, unlike Motion Picture Response Time (MPRT) where simplifying assumptions, such as testing only between 10% and 90%, detracts from MPRT’s ability to correlate to visual performance.

Self-emissive displays like OLED have advantages with blur-edge speed, while LCD often has an advantage with frame rate, and there are also numerous other variables that are combined into the end-user-facing blur performance measured by ClearMR. ClearMR evaluates blur quality holistically, thus the CMR measure from ClearMR is the fairest comparison across display-driving technologies without favoring one technology over another.

Q: What is the impact of refresh rate on ClearMR rating? Shouldn’t higher refresh rates lead to a higher tier rating?

A: CMR’s fundamental benefit is to consider all aspects contributing to blur, including frame rate, edge rate and non-linearity arising from luminance changes, not just one aspect. If all other factors are the same, a higher refresh rate display would yield a higher CMR, but displays are rarely the same with regard to all the employed technologies and OEM tuning.

Q: Why did VESA set 3000 as the lowest CMR tier?

A: VESA anticipates that most displays used for video and gaming will require at least ClearMR 3000, which represents an entry point for displays useful for gaming and video rendering. For example, most 60 Hz office displays would not qualify, but as frame rate, edge rate and linearity performance increase, displays begin to qualify.

Q: Does VESA have plans to add additional tiers?

A: Yes. Four new tiers from 10000 – 13000 were announced in December 2022. As technology progresses, higher grades will be considered.

Q: What products can be certified for ClearMR?

A: TVs, monitors, laptops, and all-in-ones. Even automotive displays can be certified if properly accessible for test.

Q: What’s new in ClearMR 1.1?

A: ClearMR 1.1 is a minor update to the original ClearMR test specification launched in August 2022 that contains improvements on the testing process conducted by VESA Authorized Test Centers (ATCs).

To the end-user, nothing has changed. The scoring and tier structure remain the same, and existing ClearMR certified products remain valid.

For ATCs, this update provides several much-desired upgrades with focus on compatibility, consistency, ease of use and fairness. In particular, the new CTS contains the following updates:

• Integrated a new statistical model called ensemble averaging into the workflow, which provides a more consistent score (improved CV) while using the same fundamental blur profile concept in ClearMR
• Deprecated previous workflow without ensemble averaging and various debug plots
• Introduced PPF(test), which accommodates for imaging noise in higher PPI displays, as well as improving support for very fast displays where the ideal PPF is less than 1.0
• Updated the tiers to include previously adopted specification change requests (SCRs)
• Clarified the features in supported camera lens, supported image format types, default luminance during the warm-up, and factory-default power-up configurations
• Deprecated outlier exclusion
• Deprecated Matlab runtime executables with manual entry of parameters in a GUI
• Included various editorial corrections

Along with the updated specification, ClearMR 1.1 also released an upgraded version of the tools, making it easier and faster to test new display products against the specification. You can download ClearMR v1.1 and tools here.

• Pattern generator – incorporated new features based on the specification, including automatic calculation of various parameters such as the ideal magnification, the PPF(test), various UI improvements and improved error handling
• generation of multiple blur profiles from continuous image captures, progress indicators, better error handling, minor bugfix and improved runtime due to overall code optimizations
• Previous version of ClearMR tools are deprecated

Q: Are there changes to the ClearMR tiers or logo marking?

A: The current ClearMR tiers and logo remains the same – no designation between the certification version is used. Existing product ClearMR certification remains valid.

Q: What is the transition plan for ClearMR certification?

VESA ATCs are trained and ready to transition to this new update at this time. As of October 17, 2023, ATCs can submit certifications using ClearMR 1.1, and must be used starting from November 1, 2023. Previously certified products will remain valid. For ATCs and compliance information, contact compliance@vesa.org.

Q: What is the technical setup of the testing process?

A: The preferred method employs the digital pursuit capture method using a high-speed camera as described by the International Display Measurement Standard (IDMS) v1.1, Chapter 12.3 [https://www.sid.org/Standards/ICDM#8271483-idms-download]. Captured pictures are processed following that method. VESA is preparing additional visualization and text for education and distribution.

Q: Why are ClearMR tiers spaced evenly at one thousand steps?

A:ClearMR tiers spaced at one thousand provides the user with a relative mark for choosing a display where VESA found significant improvement from tier to tier. One thousand is a convenient step and allows the user to forego worry between closely spaced CMR values, such as 4000 to 4100 where a visible difference is likely not evident.

Q: How did VESA derive the current overshoot/undershoot thresholds for CMR testing?

A: Overdrive limits were established by subjective testing and set at approximately one JND (just noticeable difference). Chart, numerous references and images and [D.H. Kelly (editor),) of Visual Science and Engineering, Taylor & Francis: New York. 1994], suggests the same where visual contrast sensitivity shows some dependence on luminance and spatial frequency. VESA’s subjective data experiment followed a blind, force choice paradigm so that viewers did not know the amount of overdrive that was applied in each trial.

Q: Why is the undershoot test limit different compared to the Adaptive-Sync Display CTS?

A: The overdrive test used by ClearMR applies a moving bar versus the Adaptive-Sync Display overdrive test, which applies a spatially fixed interleaving block pattern that strictly measures the block’s on-to-off or off-to-on time. Software analysis measures the amount of overdrive on both leading and trailing edges of the moving bar shown by the profile trace. VESA’s subjective testing for ClearMR identified differing thresholds because the test procedure is different compared to Adaptive-Sync Display.

Q: Will ClearMR test HDR displays in the future?

A: VESA is committed to quantifying motion-edge blur for any certified display, including those with HDR capabilities. Before adding HDR to the specification program, VESA will evaluate effects of different backlight technologies in conjunction with motion-edge blur performance and how to fairly position HDR versus SDR grading. Since HDR may often apply active dimming, spatio-temporal effects when traveling across dimming zones could become another variable that might adversely affect the CMR score. 

Q: When will HDR be added?

A: VESA recognizes the priority behind full evaluation of HDR (see above), and the technical committee plans to investigate HDR behaviors.

Q: Why do you test in monochrome instead of color? Does color have an impact on CMR rating?

A: Monochrome capture provides the most signal to the camera, which is important when testing at short camera exposure times (100 microseconds or less). Kelly and Norren [1977, DOI. 10.1364/JOSA.67.001081] suggested a two-band heterochromatic vision processing model, which shows a high-frequency sensitivity in their achromatic channel (monochrome) over the chromatic channel. In this case, chromatic components as illuminated simultaneously is not considered to be a major factor.

Q: Why is backlight strobing disabled during testing?

A: Strobing technology, while a known blur mitigation technology, is not switched on by default in a vast majority of displays. VESA tests displays in their factory default mode in order to ensure repeatable characterization. When sufficient products make their way to market utilizing backlight strobing in their factory default mode, VESA will re-evaluate the procedure in light of end usage and compliance with other VESA Display Panel Metric specifications. In the present ClearMR specification, if strobing is detected and required for display operation, the display is tested as presented in its default condition.

Q: Why is testing limited to factory default mode, maximum refresh and native resolution when users may prefer to take advantage of common features like overclocking, VRR, etc.?

A: ClearMR has no bias against overclocking or variable refresh rate, and testing in the default mode is simply following the OEM product recommendations.

Q: Why is VESA only allowing testing through third-parties rather than self-testing?

A: VESA’s standard practice is to establish Authorized Test Centers (ATCs) as impartial and accurate test centers first, then consider new testing opportunities in the future.

Q: Does VESA have a financial interest in testing?

A: VESA does not influence the outcome of the test results, nor receive any revenue from testing.

Q: Does the GPU model or selection affect ClearMR?

A: As long as the GPU can drive the monitor at its fastest frame rate, VESA has seen no influence.

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