Raspberry pi 4 using new official beta image, resolution issues?
-
Hi,
First off, thanks to the Retropie team! Love this OS, I used it for sometime on my Pi 2 and now I've finally upgraded to the pi 4 now that Retropie is available officially on your downloads page for the Pi 4.
But, on the set up of my Pi 4 I ran into some minor issues, not too sure if this is expected behaviour on any pi and I'm doing something wrong. Or if these are minor bugs related to the Pi 4. I had a little search on the forum but I couldnt really find anything like this specifically for the pi 4.
So, my issue. I have a 4K tv capable of 60hz which my pi is connected to. I'm connected to the HDMI port 0 (The one closest to the power source), As I read that's the port you use if you want 4k@60. So, I went into the retropie setting (Sorry I forget the name of it now, but when you go to the command line area to change certain settings for retropie). I go to Advanced and I see there is an option there to enable 4k@60. I Select that and click enable I then reboot the pi. It boots into emulationstation and the resolution hasn't changed, however emulationstation is now quite laggy when side scrolling the menu to different emulators etc, whereas before selecting enable 4K@60 it was not laggy at all. I hit F4 and check the terminal. Resolution hasn't changed there either. I go back into the retropie settings on that terminal like page and go to Advanced and then I go to choose the resolution, thinking I'll find 4K@60 there now it's enabled.. However it only gives me the option of all the other resolutions (CEA I believe is the one I need for TV's) all the way up to 4K but only at 30hz. Anyway just to test this resolution selection in the advanced settings, I chose 4K@30 and rebooted. Emulationstation res hasnt changed but still quite laggy but if I press F4 now to enter the terminal, I can see that this is 4K!!! So the resolution did change this time but not in emulation station, also booted to the pixel desktop and that was now 4K which previously it was not. However this is the 30hz option I picked. Would be nice if I could have 60hz working for when I watch certain videos via Kodi etc.
Wondering if someone could confirm for me if this is normal right now since retropie for the pi4 is in Beta and this isn't working yet but will in a future update? Or am I doing something wrong, or should this be working but it isn't for some reason? Any help on this would be appreciated. I'm guessing that the emulation station screen being laggy is due to it being beta and not optimised yet when I enabled 4k@60? or is there something I could to do improve this, or just wait for future updates that hopefully bring optimisations?
Thanks for any advice in advance :)
-
@Deltatash said in Raspberry pi 4 using new official beta image, resolution issues?:
But, on the set up of my Pi 4 I ran into some minor issues, not too sure if this is expected behaviour on any pi and I'm doing something wrong. Or if these are minor bugs related to the Pi 4. I had a little search on the forum but I couldnt really find anything like this specifically for the pi 4.
This is a known limitation - the 4K resolution is not recommended for the interface or emulators. You should configure your display in RetroPie to start in 1080p by default, you can still use 4k for the desktop or for watching media (Kodi).
-
@mitu
Hey! Thanks I wasn't aware that this was known limitation for the interface. Sorry if this is a noob question now though, but how can I set two seperate resolutions, one for my pixel desktop and one for the emulationstation interface? As I can only see one place to set the resolution. I'm happy to keep emulation station at 1080p and set my desktop to 4K (I believe Kodi resolution can be set independently inside of Kodi if I remember right?). I guess the 60hz refresh rate is a limitation also at the moment even when within kodi and the desktop and I should stick with 30hz or?Thanks again!
-
Use
raspi-config(available from the RetroPie system) to set your resolution. The desktop should work in 4k without any configuration. -
@mitu
Hi, When I change raspi-config resolution to 1080p, my emulationstation becomes smooth again when navigating the interface :) However it also changes my pixel desktop to 1080p. For now though I think it's fine like this as it's rather small I guess on 4K when doing things on the desktop. Within Kodi I managed to set the resolution to 4K, that was the main thing for watching my media :) However I'm not sure if Kodi is operating at 30hz or 60.It seems a bit choppy/unstable sometimes with 4k Playback but I guess that could be down to this being beta for the pi 4? I guess there's still a lot of improvements and optimisations to be done for software/video playback and gpu drivers on the pi 4 with retropie?
This is for another topic I guess since I made this one about the 4K resoltution but I noticed the PSX and N64 emulators can be quite sluggish/laggy at times and the second player controller via bluetooth was very slow and unresponsive the first time I ran a PSX game, whilst the firs tplayer controller via bluetooth was fine. I also noticed the dreamcast emulator doesn't seem to work at all for me unfortunately (Only tried one game so far though). I was a little surprised as I guess the Pi4 is a lot more poweful than my old Pi 2 which emulated the two games I tested fine for PSX and N64 (Crash team Racing and Mario Kart). I can look around the forums a bit and see what I can find about these emulators and the pi 4 and create a new topic if I can't resolve the issue.
Thanks for your answer so far! :)
-
@Deltatash said in Raspberry pi 4 using new official beta image, resolution issues?:
However I'm not sure if Kodi is operating at 30hz or 60.
I think you can check this by enabling the debug info overlay. For 4k@60Hz, you need to explicitly enable it from
raspi-config, by default 4k runs at 30Hz.By default, when connected to a 4K monitor, the Raspberry Pi 4B will select a 30hz refresh rate. Use this option to allow selection of 60Hz refresh rates. Note, this will increase power consumption and increase the temperature of the Raspberry Pi. It is not possible to output 4Kp60 on both micro HDMI ports simultaneously.
-
Ok thanks! I'll check the debug info and see what that gives me in Kodi :)
Hmm strange. I enabled the 4K@60 via the raspi-config but when I go to desktop it's in the same resolution I set manually in raspi-config for emulationstation interface and terminal etc. I'll give it another look tonight when I've finished work though, maybe I overlooked something.
-
Just an update for you and also in case any one else has similiar problems with resolution, hopefully this will help them. I originally had the option enabled for forcing 4K@60. When trying to play a 4K video in Kodi it seemed quite unstable, would stutter and lag and sometimes completely lock up the whole system and I'd have to pull the power to force a restart. (I was playing 4K via a USB 3 external hard drive btw). I then disabled the 4K@60 and just used regular 4K@30 and Kodi seems to be playing smoothly now, no noticable stutter for me and it didnt lock up my system :)
Hopefully this helps anyone else who may have been experiencing Kodi 4K playback issues on Retropie. Check if you have it forced to be 4K@60 or not. I'm guessing this is just due to the software side needing further optimisation and hopeully in future updates it will be a lot smoother/usable if we turn on the 4K@60. Until now though it works and is good enough :) I still have a few other small tweaks I feel I need to make to fix small issues but they are emulation side. I will open a new thread if I hit a brick wall and unable to find a solution to these minor inconveniences.
-
Contributions to the project are always appreciated, so if you would like to support us with a donation you can do so here.
Hosting provided by Mythic-Beasts. See the Hosting Information page for more information.