Carbon Theme Jittery Movement

mediamogul

I've been experiencing a jittery motion in the newest Carbon theme on the outer-most menu when switching between systems with the 'Fade' animation enabled. This issue isn't quite as noticeable when the 'Slide' animation is active, but is still present. Is there anything that can be done to alleviate this and what might be causing it?

herb_fargus

@mediamogul there are technically more things being drawn on this carbon theme which affects performance somewhat. up your GPU split and it should help.

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

Very keen... Thanks.

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

Well, I doubled it to 512 and that didn't help. I'm afraid to go too much higher. Can you recommend a setting that might be more suitable?

herb_fargus

@mediamogul how many systems are you running and what version of pi are you on

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

I'm running 35 systems and seven ports on a Pi3 Model B.

herb_fargus

@mediamogul yeah idk, I suppose you could always disable the glow or other features that may be taking up vram but i havent the slightest. I dont have that many systems

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

I saw a couple of theme options with the 'Carbon' name in the theme selector. Which one of them represents the previous version? I suppose I'll just move back to that one if possible to keep things running smoothly.

herb_fargus

@mediamogul all of them are updated to the latest but you can always clone a previous commit instead

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

From negative experiences of maintaining an obsolete system component while every other part moves forward, I think I'll just live with the jittering. It might not look all that pretty, but at least I can say I'm pushing RetroPie/Rpi3b to the edge of it's limits. Thanks for your help here. I've also been enjoying the ability to read your documentation through the system itself. It can be a real time saver and it's invaluable when on the road.

herb_fargus

@mediamogul jools set up the framework, I just put in some text here and there. also with future iterations of the pi that will hopefully have more RAM hopefully the jittering will be addressed then.

mediamogul

@herb_fargus

A big thanks to jools ( @BuZz?) too then.

mediamogul

I bumped up the GPU split to 768 and it seems to be running pretty smooth. The Pi's GPU is also overdue for an upgrade, so here's hoping we see good things in what looks to be next year.

mediamogul

Wow... even with a768 ram split I was still dipping well below 50fps in Emulation Station, but when I disabled 'Onscreen Help', everything moved as smooth as glass and I never dipped below 60fps. I thought it might be a fluke, but I tried it off and on through several reboots with the same results every time. I don't know why the 'Onscreen Help' graphics are so intensive, but if anyone else happens to run into a stuttering problem themselves in the future, disabling this will do a world of good.

edmaul69

@mediamogul The emulationstation kids does this jittering for me on the pi i put it on. Another emulationstation i had did this too. I use the old carbon theme with it. I havent installed that new emulationstation to see if that causes the same issue for me.

GreenHawk84

I noticed this as well back when I started using 4.0 beta. I thought it was just something that would get ironed out later. 3.8.2 was smoother. Granted, it's not unbearable, it's just little stutters when scrolling systems. I only use SNES, Genesis, Arcade, Neo Geo, and NES.

mediamogul

@GreenHawk84 said in Carbon Theme Jittery Movement:

I noticed this as well... I only use SNES, Genesis, Arcade, Neo Geo, and NES.

Seeing as how you're well within what would be considered normal use and the higher ram split didn't do much in my case, I wonder if the stuttering can be traced elsewhere? @Rookervik, is this something that ever came up with anyone else while testing the new theme? Also, which elements from the new theme use the most system resources and how is it that the artwork for 'Onscreen Help' make such a difference when disabled here but not before?

Rookervik

@mediamogul

For me, Carbon has always stuttered a little. It's a lot of high resolution SVGs for the little Raspberry Pi to slide across the screen. If I use Carbon, I set it to fade so I don't see the stutter.

The only graphic added to the newer carbon theme is a glow behind the white system bar. Otherwise all of the graphics are the same. The carbon fiber background has a diagonal pattern rather than a square pattern, but it is the same size. Not sure if you're seeing the background seem to stutter more with it being diagonal. I haven't personally noticed any difference in performance on my Pi2.

As far as removing the help text, I've never even tried. So I can't tell you why that speeds a theme up. Other than it's less graphics for ES to keep in line while sliding the screen.

The new ES uses a newer SVG reader, so perhaps it's slower than the old one? The new SVG reader can display lines as well as solid shapes. The old one could only display solid-filled shapes.

I've noticed massive load times (1 second in some cases) for loading 1/5 screen "box art" in SVG format. I had to change all of them to PNG to keep things moving smoothly in the RetroPie menu. (when creating new graphics)

I've been recently wondering if it would be a good idea to convert all graphics to PNG and use that instead of SVG. Yes, if your screen is 4k or 8k or in the future 16k and you get a magnifying glass, you'll see pixels... but holy cow are the file sizes smaller, and they are loaded SO much faster and move smoother across the screen.

mediamogul

@Rookervik

Thanks for the detailed explanation. It's always great to hear how the glue is made straight from the horse's mouth. It's also very reassuring to hear that you are considering all the graphical options moving into the future. As for the time being, I'm just glad there's an option available that is so accessible.

edmaul69

@Rookervik if they dont like pixels the certainly wont like my logos im making. :)

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