<Solved> Splashscreen and starting games extreeeeemly slow

Hugofant

Hi,
this are my first steps with Batocera - I’ve installed it in a “Zotac CI323 Nano” - everything worked well, but when booting the splash video takes more than 1:30 minutes to play….also starting games (commodore c64 - “fix it Felix” takes more than a minute. When within the game everything performs well.
Problem exists on my 4K LG Tv. but also on my 2K Viewsonic Monitor…I’ve tried to set resolution in batocera-boot.conf (es.resolution=max-1920×1080) without success.
Have made two pictures, of the “system info”

So, i’m hoping for some tips/hints for getting this solved.
Thanks in advance and best regards

joinski

Hugofant

What kind of drive do you use for booting batocera? I only experienced long loading times (of the splash video) and performance issue in ES (freezes/hiccups, when navigating through the system/games list), when i was using old/slow usb (2.0) flash drives. With performant usb 3.0 drives (or SSDs in external usb enclosures) i did never face such issues.

So to find out the cause of your issues, i would try your batocera drive on another machine and try with another drive on your machine.

Hugofant

first i was using a Voyager USB 3.0 Stick with 8GB and second (actual) device is an intenso SSD disk with 128GB (connected via internal sata port) .

so, i’ve already tested with a different drive, and behaviour is the same :-(

…and testing the drive in a different machine doesn’t make sense as this has a different processor and graphics card.

and to be more specific: the splash video starts to play and it takes more than 1:30 to finish.

Sorthious

Hugofant …and testing the drive in a different machine doesn’t make sense as this has a different processor and graphics card.

Try it in a different machine. It could be an issue with the SSD and if Batocera boots up fine on the other machine, then you’ll know that it is another piece of hardware in that Zotac that is the issue. That way, you can exclude the SSD as a problem.

jcduss59

What is the format/codec of your splash screen video?

Maybe without graphic decode embedded, it needs high cpu usage.

I am not sure if your nuc cpu can natively decode 4K or fhd video ?

Did you double check the video settings in the bios ?

Hugofant

to be honest, i haven’t checked that, as it’s the default splash video and there is nothing in the bios to check/change.
Today i’ve noticed, that the audio is playing correctly and only the video is so slow….how can this be, why are they not synchronous?

joinski

Hugofant
Can you make a video of it? Sounds very strange.
And you said that this issue persists even on a 1080p Monitor/TV?
Do you have another PC/Notebook, which you could test with? Just to see, if the issue also persists on other hardware.

joinski

Hugofant
interesting 🤔
never seen something like that before.
you are using the official batocera image downloaded from the batocera homepage and not an image from somewhere else, right?

joinski Do you have another PC/Notebook, which you could test with? Just to see, if the issue also persists on other hardware.

Hugofant

so, have made a video now - here it is ;-)
hope it helps to find to reason for the problem.

…and the monitor (which shows the same behaviour) is a 2k monitor: Viewsonic VX 3211-2K

In the meantime i’ve also tried to use the Displayport of the Zotac (with a DP to MDMI Adapter)…also without success.

Hugofant

yes, it’s the official image.
nearly same behaviour on a Acer ES1-731 notebook (processor Pentium N3700 1,6GHZ, 4GB RAM).

No activity on USB when playing video.

joinski

Hugofant
Then I’m frankly at a loss. Because you seem to be the only one having this problem. Otherwise many more people would have reported it.
One last thing you could try: Older versions of Batocera or the current Beta 1 of 36.
Or just disable the splash video (there is an option for this in ES).

joinski

Sorthious

Hugofant nearly same behaviour on a Acer ES1-731 notebook (processor Pentium N3700 1,6GHZ, 4GB RAM).

so he already did try it on a different machine

Sorthious

You could SSH into Batocera and disable the splash video. It wouldn’t fix whatever is causing your issue, but it should lessen your load time. It seems like your iGPU is struggling to play the video, which is odd. Have you tried running any other software on that Zotac? Maybe make a bootable USB with some version of linux and try testing on there and seeing how graphics/video work. You can also test the internal drive to see what kind of load times you’re getting.

Custom User Splash

Sorthious

joinski

@Hugofant said

Sorthious …and testing the drive in a different machine doesn’t make sense as this has a different processor and graphics card.

So, I assumed he never tested the SSD in the other computer.

Hugofant p.s.: the almost unbearable loading times of the C64 emulator seem to be a completely independent problem

The C-64 is emulated to act just like the real thing. Thus, you aren’t loading games up as you would on an SSD/Flashdrive. You’re loading either from the C-64 Tape drive or 1541(I think that was the number) 5 ¼″ Floppy Drive. Regardless, when you load a game on C-64, you’re loading it using those old devices; so, it goes as slow as it did back then, regardless of the medium you’re using to load games. What you’ll want to do is create Save States of each game you want to play. That way you can just load the state and not the whole game. Hope that helps!

Hugofant

it’s not only the splash performance - it also takes really looong to start for example C64 games - loading screen seemes to be freezed, but no activity on disk/USB stick.
Have done some additional test in the meantime: installed Manjaro on the Acer. Playing the video afterwards (from the USB stick) worked like a charm - so its clear for me now, that there is no hardware or bios issue.
Hardwareinfo within Manjaro:

   ~  mhwd  ✔

0000:03:00.0 (0200:10ec:8168) Network controller Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.:

---—————————————————————————–

              NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE

---—————————————————————————–

     network-r8168            2016.04.20                true            PCI

0000:00:02.0 (0300:8086:22b1) Display controller Intel Corporation:

---—————————————————————————–

              NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE

---—————————————————————————–

       video-linux            2018.05.04                true            PCI

 video-modesetting            2020.01.13                true            PCI

        video-vesa            2017.03.12                true            PCI

   ~  inxi -G  ✔

Graphics:

Device-1: Intel Atom/Celeron/Pentium Processor x5-E8000/J3xxx/N3xxx

Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel

Device-2: Realtek Acer 640 × 480 laptop camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo

Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.6 driver: X: loaded: modesetting

dri: crocus gpu: i915 resolution: 1600x900\~60Hz

API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.1 renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 405 (BSW)

   ~ 

joinski

Hugofant

To recap briefly:
You have the following problems:

The splash video doesn’t play as it should (see the video you posted)
It takes a long time for games to start (loading screen seems to be freezed) for example with C64 games.

You have already tested different drives (a Voyager USB 3.0 Stick with 8GB and an intenso SSD disk with 128GB (connected via internal sata port)).
And you also tested different PCs/notebooks (Zotac CI323 Nano with Intel Celeron N3150 + Intel HD Graphics 400 and an Acer ES1-731 notebook with Intel Pentium N3700 + Intel HD Graphics 405)
You also tested different TVs/monitors (4K LG, 2K Viewsonic).

Some further questions:

Are the long loading times common to all games/systems/emulators? So it doesn’t matter whether it’s SNES, C64, PSX etc. and also whether it’s standalone emulators or libretro cores?
Do you have the opportunity to test other PC hardware? Maybe something more powerful than your previous systems and with a different graphics than the Intel HD Graphics 400/405?
Please test an older version of Batocera, e.g. 5.25 or 5.27.2

Hugofant

Hello again,

found the root cause of the problem: seems that I had the well known 4K problem. Afterwards i’ve set the parameter splash.screen.resize in /userdata/system/batocera.conf (still to a value to high).
As this didn’t solve my problem i continued with batocera-boot.conf……but forgot to remove the modifications of batocera.conf 😖 (yes, shame on me).

Seems that the higher value of splash.screen.resize (in batocera.conf) and es.resolution (in batocera-boot.conf) where in conflict and leaded to this strange behavior.

Nevertheless, thanks a lot for your ideas and support!

p.s.: the almost unbearable loading times of the C64 emulator seem to be a completely independent problem

joinski

Hugofant the almost unbearable loading times of the C64 emulator seems to be a completely independent problem

Does this happen only on C64 or on other Systems/Emulators also? And please test standalone and libretro cores.
What kind of controller do you use?

Hugofant

…correction, was to optimistic: issue is only solved for Acer, - Zotac (on TV) still shows the same behavior.
I think I’ll stop this project: with booting from USB, i was hoping for a nearly “working out of the box solution” - but actually it demands too much time/energy….maybe i’ll give it a try in some months again, but actually i too frustrated for continuing…

additional info: it’s also not possible, to boot the Zotac from the USB-stick. Batocera recognizes the SSD-Disk and reads configs from there…what a mess….

joinski

Hugofant

If you have two drives with batocera installed in the same machine (on SSD and on USB-stick) then unplug one of it and only use one drive with batocera installed to boot from. Otherwise this could cause issues.

It’s a pity that you only answer my questions selectively. Would have liked to have clarified a few things by process of elimination.

But it is okay, if you do not want to spend too much time/energy and make a break.

Hugofant

joinski If you have two drives with batocera installed in the same machine (on SSD and on USB-stick) then unplug one of it and only use one drive with batocera installed to boot from. Otherwise this could cause issues.

to be honest - this is an absolutely “no go” - when booting from USB i’m awaiting “booting from USB” and not grabbing files from somewhere else. Every linux live cd is working that way and even windows 😄

Sorthious So, I assumed he never tested the SSD in the other computer.

correct, but as the USB stick had shown the same behavior, and this one has been tested in a different machine with the same result, the SSD is definitely not the reason.

Sorthious The C-64 is emulated to act just like the real thing….

thanks a lot for this clarification….think i got it now, but didn’t expect a “tape drive game” in the standard batocera image (fix it felix).