Increased "White Flash" in newest updates???

pjft

Just to clarify, the image size on the HD does not have any reflection in the actual GPU memory usage, but rather its size/resolution. Indeed merging the backgrounds with the SVGs could help.

In other news, I've submitted a PR to mitigate this.

Let's see. It's not really fixed per se, but I'm adding two options for users with heavier themes to exchange smooth navigation for little to no white screens. Well, except for VRAM related ones :)

@TMNTturtlguy - as usual, you may find it in my repository as well.

Best.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft if we select this option will we just get a blank(black) screen while the next image loads?

Edit: and I am gone for the weekend! Shoot! I will be testing this late Sunday night for sure! Thanks for your hard work!

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy It depends on the transition you have. If using "Fade", then yes, it'll just stay in the black screen for slightly longer.

If using slide, it may have a slight stutter.

I strongly recommend merging the SVG frames with the background PNGs, though. After you test your theme without the SVGs (by renaming them), you'll see the huge difference. Seriously.

Enjoy the weekend.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft the problem is the theme backgrounds will no longer look nice and will not adjust to larger screen sizes. The .svg allows the line work to resize to large HDTV screens and 4K resolutions while staying crisp. The line work as a .png will be very jagged at all angles lines. If you look at the video view game selection view and the angles lines by the box art closely, you will see the jaggy effect on a larger screen. Those are short lines so they are not supper noticeable and I chose to merge the line work. One option would be to create a separate .png with the black lines, but that file size will need to be larger so that when upscale it stays clear. Any idea how using a secon .png would affect it?

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy I suspect that'll be a non-factor for the Pi, as its max output resolution is 1920x1080 via the HDMI port. However, for PC that may certainly be a factor.

As I mentioned, a second image will take up as much memory as its resolution - refer to my earlier post with the formula.

If you want to, my best recommendation would be to make a Pi theme with the backgrounds merged, and - if you then feel, after testing at higher resolution, that it loses a lot - an HD version where you'd have the separate SVG files. It's a bigger burden for maintenance, though, so I wouldn't take that decision lightly. That being said, if you still have everything in Photoshop format, together with the borders, maybe you can just batch process all and generate both versions easily though?

Anyway, you'll be able to judge by yourself later, but the Pi is an impressive, yet severely constrained device in terms of hardware, let's not forget :)

We can't have our Pie and eat it too. (Bad pun intended).

And I'll take a moment and say, after so much time going through the code, what an amazing job @fieldofcows did with the texture manager. Really, asides from not failing gracefully if it does run out of memory, it is truly an excellent, fantastic piece of work.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft as always your knowledge and service is absolutely wonderful and so very much appreciated. I have re-read your posts and have a few questions, or confirmations. Per your formula you suggest that 720x1280 should take up 4mb. My backgrounds are all 720x1280, but your testing shows the .png is using 6mb. Where are the extra 2mb coming from? The system logos?

Also, from what I now understand, the file size does not matter? Would a 512kb .png perform the same as a 5mb .png if both are 720x1280? Not that I want my files that large but just asking. @Nismo has previously indicated that as the file sizes increase the amount of memory increases. Under 512 uses 256mb and above uses 1024 I think? Can't remember the exacts and I am on my phone now!

Edit: found the great posts from @Nismo which related to everything @pjft is talking about and also references @fieldofcows work as well. Yes, I know.....@Nismo suggested the .svg are bad as well! 10 days ago!!! But it looks so much better! As @pjft suggested, I want to eat my pie too! Here is the link to the post link to Nismo post

I will try to merge and see what happens. If I merge the black lines over the already compressed background and flatten, it might be ok.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft Ok, so i don't have my pi with me, but i do have my computer and photoshop. Family went to bed and i have spent a few hours trying different ways to get the black boarder to appear clean and crisp and still compress down below 512kb. I think I have done it, but I can't test it from here. If you have time this weekend. I have uploaded a few of the backgrounds i have created. If you would copy these into the theme and name them comic in their corresponding folders. Also rename the .svg file so it does not show up anymore.

If you would want to, you could put these into the theme and then scroll back and forth between these and the other systems that would still have the .svg and let me know what you think? You have a great eye and a great screen to see little details, so I am confident in your opinion. If you don't have time to test, that is ok as well. You have pushed me to keep improving so I will definitely test on Sunday evening. Thank you - Link to github test backgrounds: TempThemeBackground

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy Thanks.

I tested them, and effectively they look more jagged than ideal.

I tested creating 1080p images, and they looked crisper, but the navigation appears to have become as bad as like the version with SVGs. It appears the bottleneck is not as much the memory (even though it does affect performance when we need to start unloading and loading them from memory), but rendering speed.

I got logs from them, but haven't really spent time looking at them in detail. Here's the link, just for curious people:

https://pastebin.com/ureadR50

I suspect that, if the PR I submitted goes through, you may be able just to keep the theme as is for the time being, and then we'll see if it does need to be optimized further or not. I'd still recommend getting all the individual system themes to point to the shared SVG for the borders, though, in order to save memory (i.e. in individual systems, instead of pointing to ./art/border_4-3Outline.svgpoint to ./../art/border_4-3Outline.svg.

Other than that, you do want the theme to look crisp so let's not worry about that for now :)

I'm uploading the themes I used for testing - a full 1080p-noSVG version, a full 720p-noSVG version, and your regular SVG one, pointing to the same SVG border files (I think). You can test these 3, just for a feel, both with the current ES you have, as well as with the one from my repository if you want to update. There'll be two options in the "Other Settings" menu - you'll want to turn off Multithreaded images, to get rid of the white screens, and then test the 4 themes to see the difference.

Here's the link.

If you choose to select the "Re-Use SVG images" (I think that's the name), you may need to re-load ES/the theme, so that it only loads one copy in memory.

That's it!

Have a great weekend, and do enjoy your time off - it's precious as well. Plenty of time for tinkering when you're back :)

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy actually, just made a new change that solves the white screen problem for good.

I won't describe what it was, as it would almost sound like a punchline for comedic effect, but update from my repository and try it out before changing any other options.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft really! Now I am super excited! Thanks for all the hard work and testing. Disappointing the new backgrounds are still jagged but I expected that. Those angled lines are just to hard to render.

Again, so excited to test the new update! Thanks and you need to take some time off for the family as well!

pjft

@TMNTturtlguy thanks. I ended up putting up a set of videos of the changes, using TronkyFran, for the PR.

Apologies for any baby sounds in the background. :)

Hopefully can give you an idea of what to expect. Unfortunately the theme does not have all my systems (or did not when I got it) so that's why done screens are just fully white/black.

Enjoy your weekend!

herb_fargus

@pjft reminds me I need to update the theme with a few more systems... I'll try and do that today

DarkWolf

@pjft Looks great, these flashing white screens were annoying as hell

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft I just watched all of your videos on the pull request and they look amazing! I didn't read through all the code on the pull request, will there be options for single and multithreaded or from your descriptions on the PR are you getting rid of the single thread now that we have the black background color! Those videos look really nice, the slide transitions with the black are so clean now! Can't wait to get this pulled down! And another excuse to update from you experimental menu script! Love it

herb_fargus

@TMNTturtlguy and with any luck we can change the boot splash to a black instead of the blinding white! And in theory if we use the no splash flag it won't have that annoying white fade when ES loads either.

TMNTturtlguy

@herb_fargus YES! If we can do that all this is going to be one of the best updates yet! (Well there have been alot of those like video etc. but....awesome!) I have been following you posts and a few others looking for when that White ES splash might get fixed...I finally just made a custom video that runs about 1 second longer than my boot time so I never see that darn thing....but then after my black fade video ends, I still flash white when loading the first image of systems selection. I am so happy today! @pjft you rock!

pjft

@herb_fargus oh, so is that all that the other PR is all about? Would you want a black ES splash screen? Like the inverse of the current one (black background, white letters)?

Edit: I tested both old and new build and can't find any noticeable difference on startup. Is it with the splash screen on or off that you see that fade from white you were mentioning?

herb_fargus

@pjft it shows up on both as far as I know.

I have the black splash screen already compiled, I just need to test it with your changes

pjft

@herb_fargus Ok. Do let me know, as I'm struggling to exactly visualize what it is you're experiencing, and what it is you're trying to achieve, but I'm more than happy to try to help materialize it!

By the way, I just updated the PR. No significant changes if you're testing - just removed the options from the menu, and forced the SVGs to be re-used on the Pi, for better memory management. Multi-threaded image loading is still the default, as it currently is - even though one can explicitly disable it via the settings file, I assume.

TMNTturtlguy

@pjft you are working overtime this weekend! Are all these modifications to the PR part of the merged ES that the retropie experimental menus script builds from? Thanks for all of you hard work and time. I need to stop checking my phone....everyupdate I see makes me want to test is that much more. That being said, I am loving the updates!