Live TV Flicker/Flash (1 Viewer)

[aspik]

I'm one of the people who experience the "black frame" problem. I disabled before the weekend the VideoEffectChanger and since then I did not have any black frame. I think @Palm_Maniac had also this problem, could you please disable VideoEffectChanger and report back?

@morpheus_xx
"as you the author of this plugin" (this should sound familiar to you ) do you have any idea what can be the reason for this?

From what I read, this plugin checks every 1 sec the resolution of the played video and applies a shader filter if the resolution is lower then by default 576px. Can those periodic checks cause this black frame?

 

[morpheus_xx]

Hmm, could be, but it is not logical.

Some background info (from memory without looking into code):
Every single video frame is processed (or better rendered) by the shader (normal, sharpen complex etc.). The VideoEffectChanger checks every second for the current video resolution and selects a shader depending on preferences.
This selection just sets a name of shader (file part), which will be included in render pass. This process should be atomic, so changing the shader at any time should not affect the current frame rendering.
And the 1 second interval is much higher than the random occurence of the "black frame".

If it is the cause, only idea would be to force sync with the render pass before changing the shader.

I'm really curious if disabling the plugin helps for other users.

 

[Palm_Maniac]

Hello,

I'm testing this tonight and will report.

 

[aspik]

I'm testing this tonight and will report.

any results to report?

 

[Palm_Maniac]

Oh yeah. I have since Monday evening on various stations in HD and SD, encrypted and unencrypted, from the HDD and with TV recordings, tested and observed. The black frames are gone, no more occurred !!! Only in an older recording there were 2 black-frame effects, which were possibly synonymous with recorded. In the live TV or the HDD there was no more since the shutdown of the VideoEffectChangers.

Much more surprised, I was, however, that the stutterers are almost completely gone, which still occurred to me sporadically. I now have an almost perfect TV and movie pleasure. Finally look without disturbances.

Thanks for the hint @aspik.

 

[aspik]

Thanks for reporting back!

Thanks for the hint @aspik.

You have to thank @karniemi, he found it

@morpheus_xx
given the test result, I would disable the VideoEffectChanger by default and make a note in the release notes to make everyone aware of the potential issue by enabling it.

 

[Palm_Maniac]

When I think about what I've done ... I even upgraded GT-1030s to the HTPCs 2 months ago to get rid of these problems, and in the end it was a "small" feature in MP2 that gave the picture quality to low-resolution videos to improve.

The two now stay in it, however, since they can better deal with h.265 videos.

Great.

 

[morpheus_xx]

Thanks for feedback! I will look further into code and possible causes.
Disabling this feature could be an option, but would affect only fresh installations (we don't change existing settings in updates). Also I'd like to check the next Windows 10 update, as my feeling is that the issue appeared after Creators Update was released (while it improved other things).

 

[Palm_Maniac]

No, the problem existed already before the Win10 Creators Update and became by the update even somewhat better. In some, the Black Fames probably disappeared, with me they were only slightly less.

What pleases me the most is that the stutterers are finally almost completely gone, on both clients.

 

[morpheus_xx]

I have added some checks and logging to the VideoEffectChanger. I hope we might find some issues, like unintended switching of the selected effect. I now only set the effect override property if the shader changes by rule, and log it in this moment.

More details:

• For <= 576 px video height the "sharpen complex" effect will be used.
• For > 576 no special shader override is set, so the "default" shader will be used.

In the MP2-Client log you will find entries in this way:

[2017-09-30 20:29:05,453] [26002 ] [46 ] [INFO ] - VideoEffectChanger: Selected effect 'effects\sharpen_complex', video height: 576px
...
[2017-09-30 20:29:11,485] [32033 ] [117 ] [INFO ] - VideoEffectChanger: Selected effect '', video height: 720px

This I got when tuning a TV SD channel (sharpen complex) and then switching over to a 720p channel (no effect, default).

Could you copy the attached plugin to MP2-Client plugins, enable the video effect changer, watch our for black frames and please attach log files (DEBUG mode).