Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4

George Spiggott

Was this added to the weekly update (4.5.19) because all my screen tearing symptoms seem to have gone?

pbohannon

@saccublenda said in Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4:

@Brunnis I guess it is an overscan problem. Removing the overscan settings from /boot/config.txt makes the artifacts disappear.

Hi there! I'm having the exact visual artifact you posted in the your initial reply to the thread. However, I have no overscan options set in my config.txt. The only active settings I have are:

dtparam=audio=on

[pi4]
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
dtoverlay=rpivid-v4l2
max_framebuffers=2
arm_freq=2100
gpu_freq=700
over_voltage=6
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
gpi_mem=320

Do you, or anyone else monitoring, have any ideas as to where the described artifact comes from and how to prevent it? Am using 5.4.44-vl7l+ on a rpi4b 4GB. Kodi is installed, using ffmpeg 4.2.2, and I have made no changes to Mesa. Any ideas would be very much appreciated! Thanks very much.

saccublenda

@pbohannon The differences with my settings would be

dtparam=audio=on
disable_overscan=1
hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16

[pi4]
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
#dtoverlay=rpivid-v4l2
max_framebuffers=2
#arm_freq=2100
#gpu_freq=700
#over_voltage=6
#hdmi_force_hotplug=1
#gpi_mem=320

Try adding/commenting the new lines and see if you can get rid of the artifact.

joyrider3774

about video's, RPI0-3 supports H264, H263, MPEG4, MPEG2 and VL1 hardware decoding with the last 2 with payed unlock. Raspberry pi 4 only supports H264 hardware decoding and HEVC see post of raspberry pi engineer https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=268356#p1628856 Al formats do still work fine in software decoding.

Also if your wondering if rpi4 will ever get such support again ... the answer is no see post here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=268356#p1650804

joyrider3774

i had the same visual artifcat on kms/drm version of attract on the intro video, disable_overscan fixed it for me i think in attract, artifcat is gone althouhg i also added hdm_group1 & mode 16

PhoenixJedi

@Rascas Is it possible to install Kodi 19 on the Pi4?

Rascas

@PhoenixJedi It is possible to compile it yourself and install it yes. But there is still some problems and nothing really new or different so in my opininnion it isn't really worth to mess with it. Python 3 only is something pulling it back in my opinion. Until there is proper HDR and HD audio bitstreaming support, I don't really see a need to go into it.

PhoenixJedi

@Rascas Dang, cause thats the only thing keeping me from going to the 5.4 KMS driver.

PhoenixJedi

@Rascas So i have no idea how to get/compile kodi 19 for the pi4... im guessing theres no way youd be willing to walk me through it?

Rascas

This is getting of topic... but if you don't have an idea about it, don't bother with it, it is not something easy to do. If you want more information open a new topic or search Kodi forums, there is some information about it there already.

Jimi007

@saccublenda Hi I just wanted to find out hat theme is this that you are using. I like it

saccublenda

@Jimi007 It's the Snes mini theme

akamming

@cellux said in Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4:

I got a nice tip though. It is possible to use the old sound driver:
dtparam=audio=on
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4,audio=off
(and the old vc4-hdmi.conf)

Dit you get this to work? i cannot get audio (also not with this tip)

I only see the BCM2835 headphones driver, but i need either the 2835 HDMI 1 driver to work or the new kms audio driver. Can't get both to work...

I tried

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4,audio=off (with dtparam=audio=on and old vc4-hdmi.conf)
and dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4 with new vc4-hdmi.conf

on both no audio. Does anyone have a tip?

Beretta9

I'm in the same situation. I can get the KMS driver to work but cannot get audio.

Rascas

Kernel 5.4 is still in testing and KMS isn't ready yet so issues may occur. For more information about it's current state check this thread:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=269769

bluestang

@akamming said in Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4:

@cellux said in Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4:

I got a nice tip though. It is possible to use the old sound driver:
dtparam=audio=on
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4,audio=off
(and the old vc4-hdmi.conf)

Dit you get this to work? i cannot get audio (also not with this tip)

I only see the BCM2835 headphones driver, but i need either the 2835 HDMI 1 driver to work or the new kms audio driver. Can't get both to work...

I tried

dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4,audio=off (with dtparam=audio=on and old vc4-hdmi.conf)

and dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d-pi4 with new vc4-hdmi.conf

on both no audio. Does anyone have a tip?

It is not possible to use the BCM2835 and the vc4hdmi drivers at the same time.
What is your output when you type in aplay -l in the cmd line?

SeraphisCain

So I did a normal apt update today and apparently we're officially on 5.4 now? Using the KMS driver and new audio driver and everything seems to be working as intended, save for a "failed to find mixer elements" error with ES that's probably related to the new audio driver, but that's not much of a problem.

EDIT: Hm, maybe it's not working quite as intended after all. I'm getting audio dropouts on more demanding stuff (Dreamcast with Redream, some games that require MAME 2016) using the new audio driver). Think I'll go back to FKMS/old audio driver until the new stuff has been tested a bit more.

bluestang

@SeraphisCain said in Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4:

So I did a normal apt update today and apparently we're officially on 5.4 now? Using the KMS driver and new audio driver and everything seems to be working as intended, save for a "failed to find mixer elements" error with ES that's probably related to the new audio driver, but that's not much of a problem.

EDIT: Hm, maybe it's not working quite as intended after all. I'm getting audio dropouts on more demanding stuff (Dreamcast with Redream, some games that require MAME 2016) using the new audio driver). Think I'll go back to FKMS/old audio driver until the new stuff has been tested a bit more.

I just confirmed this as well about the kernel update.

So in order to use the vc4hdmi audio driver, you need to disable the broadcom2835 one in your config.txt

Using both is not possible, or at least that is what was mentioned before. It was said that both drivers are fighting for the same resources hence why one of them needs to be disabled.

The vc4hdmi audio driver is a WIP, so results will vary.

Also, for the vc4hdmi driver you need to use an updated vc4hdmi.conf in the /usr/share/alsa/cards folder:

https://github.com/LibreELEC/LibreELEC.tv/blob/master/projects/RPi/filesystem/usr/share/alsa/cards/vc4-hdmi.conf

I am surprised that this file was not replaced with the new one with the kernel update.

SeraphisCain

For the moment I'm using dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,noaudio along with dtparam=audio=on to use the new video driver along with the old audio driver until things get ironed out with the new HDMI audio driver.

bluestang

@SeraphisCain said in Good news regarding tearing and low EmulationStation performance on Pi 4:

For the moment I'm using dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,noaudio along with dtparam=audio=on to use the new video driver along with the old audio driver until things get ironed out with the new HDMI audio driver.

The correct usage is dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,noaudio=on

You can verify by typing aplay -l in the cmdline and the vc4hdmi devices will not be present.