Some video/3d/2d applications don't refresh (SOLVED)

UFOKatarn · 2011-07-06 12:53:50

Dear fellow Archers!

I've searched the Arch, Debian, Gentoo, Ubintu and other forums and found similar problems to mine, but sadly not similar enough. That's the reason for making a new thread here.

I update Arch about once a week, so I more or less always have it set-up up to date. The only deprecated thing I'm still using is the /etc/rc.d/network to start the network daemon. My desktop environment is XFCE, latest of course.

I'm running the system on a Thinkpad X61 Tablet with the Intel GMA965 graphic chipset and xf86-video-intel driver.

The problems I have are:

1.)
Flash streaming video from YouTube stops refreshing the video stream but the sound continues to play. The video apparently also runs forward as it is supposed to, but the little YouTube window doesn't refresh until I move the mouse cursor to the open window list in the taskbar. If I keep the mouse on the taskbar, video playback stops again after a few seconds. Then I have to move the mouse cursor off the browser open window icon and onto it again - and the video refreshes again.

So, to watch a video nicely, I have to constantly keep moving the mouse onto and off the taskbar browser-open-window-icon. Moving the mouse around the screen doesn't have any effect. The only other thing that does have the same good effect is changing focus to some other window and then back to the browser window, either vith the mouse or by the use of alt+tab.

This happens in Firefox, Chrome and Opera. I haven't tried other browsers, but the time needed for the video playback to freeze is longer in Chrome than in Firefox.

In addition, these problems do not occur with all streaming video sites. YouTube, as said, is affected, while surpsisingly, Vimeo isn't.

VLC player, playing local video files, on the other hand never freezes.

2.)
To make to problems worse, I also have random video freezes, similar to the YouTube problem in some games. In ZDoom and GZDoom and even in ZDoom for windows ran in Wine all freeze video output after playing for about 3-5 seconds, browsing the menus included. The sound, again, is not affected at all. When ran fullscreen, I can make the screen refresh again by pressing ctrl+alt+F1 to go to virtual console No1 and then ctrl+alt+F7 to take me back to the Xorg environment. The video portion of the game then continues to work again for about 5 seconds and then freezes again, without affecting the sound in any way.

Sometimes, Doom resumes video playback after about half a minute of waiting in front of a frozen screen, but sadly freezes afterwards yet again after a few seconds.

(Spontaneous video-playback resume does never happen with Youtube though.)

When running OpenArena, there are absolutely no problems.

3.)
The last similar problem is Xournal, a handwriting application which can also annotate pdf files.

When the screen is rotated landscape or landscape-inverted, the handwriting line which "comes out from" my digitizer pen, continues to draw for only about 5 seconds of handwriting, but from that point onward, I can lift the pen up and then start sketching again as many times as I want, but the line won't be drawn. When I scroll up or down however, all the lines that I have "blindly" sketched, appear.

To make things more interesting, after each scrolling action is finished, there is a time window in which any new handwritten lines appear. So, If I press down and then immediately start writing onto the screen, the new lines continue appearing for about 5 seconds, but the lines written after those 5 seconds don't apper until the next scrolling action.

If I press down and then start writing onto the screen after, let's say 10 seconds, none of the newly-drawn lines appear. Similarly, they become visible after I scroll again.

In Xournal, similarly to YouTube, spontaneous refreshing resume does not happen unless I "intervene".

When the screen is rotated portrait-left or portrait-right, there are no, absolutely no such problems.

4.)
Sometimes, these refresh problems disappear for a while, an hour at the most, but appear again afterwards. Sometimes, refresh gets better immediately after system startup, at other times however the problems are present just after restart and disappear after a day or more after having put the laptop on standby each time it is not needed.

Therefore, I can provide no information as to what might trigger the problems and what corrects them, because I so far haven't found a single pattern.

May I add that all other applications give me no such problems, including Blender and XFCE itself, which runs as smoothly as ever.

-------

Could you please help me somehow? If you need some command outputs posted, just let me know.

Thank you very very much,
UFOKatarn

Last edited by UFOKatarn (2011-09-07 10:43:20)

UFOKatarn · 2011-07-09 14:18:58

Anyone?

Last edited by UFOKatarn (2011-07-09 14:19:31)

tacostick · 2011-07-28 03:25:46

I also have weird problems with flash & xournal. Although I can't offer any concrete help right now, rest assured I (and, I expect, many others) will let you know as I figure things out. (Lenovo X22OT user here)

Oh, and I managed to fix a problem I had with choppy fullscreen flash video by switching WMs from Openbox to Compiz. YMMV.

Also, this was all written with Cellwriter and a pen, so in spite of all the little bugs, this shit is SO usable!

kokoko3k · 2011-07-28 07:20:19

try to disable vsync:
comment 34
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30364
here's my ~/.drirc

<driconf>
    <device screen="0" driver="dri2">
        <application name="Default">
            <option name="vblank_mode" value="0" />
        </application>
    </device>
    <device screen="0" driver="i915">
        <application name="Default">
            <option name="force_s3tc_enable" value="true" />
            <option name="no_rast" value="false" />
            <option name="fthrottle_mode" value="2" />
            <option name="always_flush_cache" value="false" />
            <option name="early_z" value="false" />
            <option name="stub_occlusion_query" value="false" />
            <option name="always_flush_batch" value="false" />
            <option name="bo_reuse" value="1" />
            <option name="texture_tiling" value="false" />
            <option name="vblank_mode" value="0" />
            <option name="allow_large_textures" value="2" />
            <option name="fragment_shader" value="true" />
        </application>
    </device>
</driconf>

UFOKatarn · 2011-09-07 10:42:45

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts!

kokoko: When I first saw your message a month ago, I did what you suggested but sadly nothing has changed. Since then I have been playing with several driconf settings, ... but, ... no success.

However: As I updated the system a few days ago (maybe a week ago), the problem has totally disappeared in both streaming flash videos and Doom. I haven't had a chance to extensively use Xournal yet, so I cannot yet tell whether the problem still persistes or not.

In case problems in Xournal do reoccur, I will let the Arch community know here in this post.

But until then, consider the matter SOLVED!

Arch Linux

#1 2011-07-06 12:53:50

Some video/3d/2d applications don't refresh (SOLVED)

#2 2011-07-09 14:18:58

Re: Some video/3d/2d applications don't refresh (SOLVED)

#3 2011-07-28 03:25:46

Re: Some video/3d/2d applications don't refresh (SOLVED)

#4 2011-07-28 07:20:19

Re: Some video/3d/2d applications don't refresh (SOLVED)

#5 2011-09-07 10:42:45

Re: Some video/3d/2d applications don't refresh (SOLVED)

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