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yochaigal

Member

From: Boston

Registered: 2011-02-06

Posts: 202

[SOLVED] Flickering, Tearing/Lines in XBMC with Nvidia GPU

Hello! 

The problem: When playing videos, any fast activity makes long, horizontal lines appear (flicker) up and down my screen.
I use a 32" 720p capable Dynex TV with HDMI.  XBMC is 12.3-12 (Frodo).

First, let me say that I am aware of the other threads on this topic, such as this one.  That does not apply to me, as I my nvidia version is 334.21-2.
I have tried everything suggested in other threads (and forums, like the official xbmc forum, among others) regarding tearing; I've disabled compositing in xorg.conf as well as in my desktop environment (XFCE) and I've enabled/disabled vertical sync in both the nvidia settings AND XBMC - to no avail. 

Note: The problem does not occur with VLC, though it used to - but then I changed the VLC hardware renderer and it stopped happening.

Specs:
CPU~Dual core Intel Core2 CPU 6420
Kernel~3.13.7-1-ARCH x86_64
Nvidia GT218 [GeForce 210] - again, my nvidia version is 334.21-2, nvidia-libgl is 334.21-7 and nvidia-libgl is 334.21-7. 
The output of X - verbose 6 is here. This should show the monitor capabilities.
My xorg.conf (rebuilt many, many times): here.  Note that I've added the "disable composite" option to no avail so I removed it.

I've noticed that when I set the desktop resolution to 1368x768, and XBMC to another resolution (like 1920x1080), the tearing stops; unfortunately those settings disappear on every reboot, regardless of what I put in nvidia-settings or xorg.conf.  And yes, I have added "nvidia-settings --load-config-only" to .xinitrc - but that made no difference.

At first I thought it was a vsync issue, but no. Then, a refresh issue - no. Then, a resolution issue - sort of. 
What can I do? How can I fix this dang flickering/lines?  What am I not understanding?  Should I install compton (which uses compositing, which I don't have enabled) and use their tearfree option? Or the BackStore option?

Thanks for any help you guys can offer!

EDIT: So somehow, I got it to work.  I added:

Section "Extensions"
   Option         "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

To xorg.conf, set refresh rate to "auto" and vertical sync on both nvidia-settings and XBMC (see updated xorg.conf here) and made my desktop resolution 1360x768 and XBMC at 1920x1080.

Somehow, there is no more flickering!

Last edited by yochaigal (2014-10-28 17:38:11)