Looking for testers for ES Video Preview on Raspberry Pi

MWGemini

@fieldofcows I haven't yet had time to replicate what @pjft posted earlier, but I'm hoping to get to that today. Do you want me to do a before and after test, or just test one or the other?

fieldofcows

@MWGemini before and after would be fantastic.

MWGemini

@fieldofcows You got it. I'll see if I can do the "before" test now. Give me an hour or so to get it reconfigured, and I'll report back.

pjft

@MWGemini I suspect that a before and after test may help, not because of replicating the overheating issue necessarily, but to be able to compare and validate the improved temperature performance with @fieldofcows 's tentative fix by comparing temperature progression and plateaus for the same videos.

I'll only be back in the weekend, so I'm sure to try it out then.

Thanks all!

MWGemini

@pjft @fieldofcows Having trouble getting the watch command to work (still figuring out why), so I'm manually running it every few seconds with bash, but here's some initial reports:

With my open case and fan on, my Pi was idling at the carousel view with:
CPU Speed: 600 MHz - CPU Temp: 43.4°C - GPU Temp: 42.9'C

As soon as I started playing a video, temps jumped approx 10°C. After about 3 minutes on a video, they were at:
CPU Speed: 1200 MHz - CPU Temp: 62.3°C - GPU Temp: 62.3'C
Max I saw, after about 7 minutes of letting a video loop, was:
CPU Speed: 1200 MHz - CPU Temp: 63.3°C - GPU Temp: 63.4'C

It seemed to stabilize at these numbers. Specs for this video ('88 games): 640x480, 59 frames per second, 942kbps data rate, 1036kbps total bit rate, 94kbps audio bit rate, 2 channels, 48kHz, 38seconds in length.

I switched to another video, one that has always appeared graphically glitchy (I assumed it was a bad video, but it looks to be decoding issue, since it plays fine on my PC), and let it run for another 5-7 minutes. Max temps I saw there:
CPU Speed: 1200 MHz - CPU Temp: 65.5°C - GPU Temp: 65.0'C
I also noticed additional graphical glitches that were inconsistent with each loop of the video, so there's definitely something going on.
Specs on that particular video (19xx): 640x480, 59 frames per second, 1646kbps data rate, 1802kbps total bitrate, 156kbps audio bit rate, 2 channels, 48kHz, 35seconds in length.

I have not yet had a chance to put in the videos that @pjft linked me to earlier or reconfigure my gamelists to show them, but wanted to get some initial data out there. I'll pull my fan and close up the case and repeat these tests.

pjft

@MWGemini thanks. Yes, sorry - in my last tests I just put together a small self-invoking script of

Thanks for testing. Yes, 60fps videos I found that they end up glitching at different stages in different loops. Sometimes they are not very noticeable but glad you confirmed that.

These are good results with the fan - it took me a bit to understand that you had the fan on - but great nonetheless. I'll be curious with the new build in regards to:

potentially better temperatures;
60fps video performance becoming non-glitchy

Thanks!

MWGemini

My Pi idles in the low 50s with the screensaver off, but not doing anything. It's in the low to mid 40s with the screensaver on (this is with the fan on).

With the fan removed and the case closed up a bit, those numbers become low 60s (i.e. 61/62) and 49/50, respectively. These numbers are rough, since I was waiting a while for a steady state to be achieved (or fairly close to it- I only waited about 10-15 minutes max for each trial, often more like 5).

After another ~3 minutes on '88 games (the "good" video), max temps I saw were:
CPU Speed: 1200 MHz - CPU Temp: 75.7°C - GPU Temp: 75.8'C
I also noticed a few graphical glitches (black sections of the video on some frames, or the entire video darkened for a few frames). At 5 minutes in, I saw the temperatur warning, briefly, and had the following measurements:
CPU Speed: 1200 MHz - CPU Temp: 79.5°C - GPU Temp: 80.1'C

I switched over the the "bad" video (19xx) for another minute, and temps rose up to:
CPU Speed: 1200 MHz - CPU Temp: 81.1°C - GPU Temp: 81.1'C
At this point, the temperature warning indicator was steadily on, so I opened up the case and reconnected the fan.

Summary: Closed case and no active cooling increases temperatures by about 20 °C. Difference between idling with screensaver on and screensaver off is about 10°C. Difference between idling with screensaver off and playing a video is about 10-20°C.

Based on my quick tests, I don't recommend that people keep their Pi in a tightly confined case with no ventilation or cooling. Mine was in a cardboard box about half the size of a shoe box (Amazon size A1, actually).

pjft

@MWGemini Thank you - that's great (even if unfortunate) to hear. I appreciate you taking the time to perform these thorough tests.

I'm now super excited about the same tests with the new build!

MWGemini

@pjft No problem, happy to help! All the credit goes to @fieldofcows, though, as he did all the hard work to write the software to make it work. I'm just trying to make his job a little easier by helping to test and debug it. If/when he posts an update, I'll repeat these tests and post new numbers.

Side note: while playing a SNES game, my temps were the same as idling in a menu (maybe a degree or two higher- ~53-54). While playing an N64 game, my temps were about 58. Those numbers are with open case and fan on, by the way.

pjft

@MWGemini the only time I had temperature problems playing any games was with Hat Trick Hero 93/Euro Champ 92 on MAME. Other than that, no other game or system gives me trouble - psx, n64, arcade, dreamcast all run well.

Thanks for checking!

MWGemini

@pjft No problem.

I also forgot to mention, and this is mostly for @fieldofcows : I performed these tests using your latest release (v4 I believe) of the WSOD fix.

fieldofcows

That took a bit longer than I hoped...

https://github.com/fieldofcows/EmulationStation/releases/tag/v0.3-RPi-5

Raspberry Pi 3 again (maybe 2 - I haven't tried it). This build launches an omxplayer process which then renders an overlay directly in the area of screen designated for video. So, we now get GPU acceleration.

It's not yet ready for general consumption. I haven't done much testing yet and there are at least these issues:

The video is always on top. Nothing at present can be rendered over the video. This includes marquees in pixel video theme and the scanlines in oldroom
The video is rendered on top of GUI menus

I'd appreciate some temperature numbers compared with the previous libvlc renderer from anyone that's willing to try, @MWGemini @pjft :D

MWGemini

@fieldofcows I'm on it. Will post numbers shortly.

fieldofcows

@MWGemini Great, thanks. It makes a big difference to the temperature on mine.

pjft

@fieldofcows Thanks! As I mentioned earlier, much to my chagrin I'm traveling for work this week so I have no access to my RPi :(

I'll definitely be on it during the weekend. So you found omxplayer to perform better than libvlc so far? That's great to hear. Looking forward to hearing about @MWGemini 's tests, in particular not only about temperature (though that's something I'm definitely interested in!), but also whether it can render those 640x480 60fps movies with no glitches. :)

MWGemini

@fieldofcows First series of tests repeats my first series of tests earlier (see post 115). Open case, fan on.

Idle temperatures seem unaffected, as I would expect.

When trying to play videos, no video is displayed. I quit ES using F4, and I see some comments printed to the console- "have a nice day ;)". Number of messages is roughly on par with how many videos I tried to watch (but I didn't keep a close count, so I might be wrong).

Perhaps I don't have omxplayer installed? Did I miss a step?

fieldofcows

@MWGemini omxplayer is installed because it's that that says 'have a nice day'. Maybe it doesn't support the format you are using? What theme are you using?

Try playing a video from the terminal and see if it works.

omxplayer ~/Videos/myvideo.mka

MWGemini

@fieldofcows My theme is a modified version of tronkyfran, which I haven't yet built video support into, but still plays the videos just fine.

I was able to successfully play videos (both the '88 games and 19xx I referenced earlier) from the command line with omxplayer.

MWGemini

As an added bit of info, I've been letting the 19xx video (the one that glitched previously) loop for the last 7 minutes and counting, and it's not showing any graphical glitches, and my temps are in the low to mid 40s (with fan on and case open). This is on par with my ES + screensaver temps, and lower than my ES idle (no screensaver) temps.

pjft

@MWGemini that's the one that plateaued around 63 in the previous tests, same conditions, correct? Those are promising results.

What do you mean by "haven't built video support in the theme yet it plays the videos" though?