screen tearing with certain presets

16 posts

invictiusFebruary 18, 2006 at 1:12 PM#

screen tearing with certain presets

E.g, "the landscape is killing me". I can get it not to tear (line across the screen where I assume the display can't keep up) on my monitor, but never on my projector. Using svideo out to the projector solves this, but of course, doesn't look as good. Any idea why this happens in VGA mode? It's like disabling vsync for a game...

TuggummiFebruary 18, 2006 at 1:21 PM#

Well you've got that right, indeed the tearing appears when Vsync is disable, go to AVS editor -> Settings -> Display and check "Wait for retrace". A lot of people prefer to have it unchecked, because most of the time it increases the frame rate quite a lot.

invictiusFebruary 18, 2006 at 3:14 PM#

Originally posted by Tuggummi
Well you've got that right, indeed the tearing appears when Vsync is disable, go to AVS editor -> Settings -> Display and check "Wait for retrace". A lot of people prefer to have it unchecked, because most of the time it increases the frame rate quite a lot.

Slows down the rendering, but I still get the tears - I have no idea why.

TuggummiFebruary 18, 2006 at 6:01 PM#

Could be just the preset then, i don't really know, the retrace should fix it, but if it doesn't there really isn't no way to tell for sure what's the problem. You could try changing your monitor's refresh rates and try different settings.

PAK-9February 18, 2006 at 8:14 PM#

Try page flipping, I dont know what it does exactly (triple buffering maybe) but it reduces page tearing a lot with me.

invictiusFebruary 19, 2006 at 6:23 AM#

Originally posted by Tuggummi
Could be just the preset then, i don't really know, the retrace should fix it, but if it doesn't there really isn't no way to tell for sure what's the problem. You could try changing your monitor's refresh rates and try different settings.

You know the presets that don't move rapidly - eg: most of mig's winamp 5 picks, and presets that are basicly moving patterns? I have no problem with those tearing. "landscape" is my favorite, and if there are any similar that anyone else knows about, let me know. As for the refresh rate - I'm running a dvi lcd, which is limited to 60hz, so upping the refresh rate is a bit hard there. The projector gets up to 85hz, but I have the same problem. It makes me wonder if a CRT at 640x480, 200hz would fix it 😁 . Settings in overlay mode are very limited, which seems to minimise the tearing, are there any other settings or tweaks I could try, whether their winamp settings of modifications to the AVS code?

TuggummiFebruary 19, 2006 at 7:47 AM#

Well as far as i know the tearing appears when the monitor can't keep up with AVS's speed (which is ironic in a way) so when refresh rate < AVS framerate = screen tearing, if refresh rate > AVS framerate there shouldn't be such a thing. You must have quite the powerhouse to reach bigger fps than your refresh rate 😛

PAK-9February 19, 2006 at 1:30 PM#

Its not necessarily dependant upon speed. If you imagine your monitor refreshes at 60hz and you are getting 60fps for a preset, the framebuffer can still be swapped half way through a redraw, and it will cause a tear each and every frame because it is exactly out of sync.

The reason you should raise your monitor refresh rate as high as possible is so that when AVS is 'waiting for retrace' it wont have to wait too long before the screen is going to be redrawn again and it can swap its buffers.

I'm afraid if wait for retrace and page flipping dont help then I'm not sure what to suggest.

invictiusFebruary 20, 2006 at 6:22 PM#

Originally posted by Tuggummi
You must have quite the powerhouse to reach bigger fps than your refresh rate 😛

Not trying to boast, but:

p4 3ghz prescott (powerful, but it hits 71c when running avs')
2gb ram
geforce 6800 (avs' aren't rendered using the 3d part of your card are they?)
2x200gb sata hard drives, 2x160gb ide

and thats about it. AVS wise, probably doesn't perform much better than the average system. anything above 800x600 with presets/AVS' are a bit slow, at 1280x1024, they're painfully slow ("landscape" anyway)

TuggummiFebruary 20, 2006 at 7:34 PM#

Gfx card does diddlysquat to AVS performance, so your fancy geforce goes to waste, sort of.

Still 800x600 is a ultra-high resolution for AVS 😱
I'd say the "normal" resolution would be around 400x300~ (i myself use only a 280x280 windowed mode with my old Athlon XP +2100)

So you're either lucky, or you run old and fast presets 😛

invictiusFebruary 21, 2006 at 4:52 PM#

Originally posted by Tuggummi
Still 800x600 is a ultra-high resolution for AVS 😱
I'd say the "normal" resolution would be around 400x300~ (i myself use only a 280x280 windowed mode with my old Athlon XP +2100)

So you're either lucky, or you run old and fast presets 😛

You don't run them full screen? Where's the fun in that? 😉 The presets that remain fairly static, with only patterns, and no waveform visible do run a bit slow at 800. I don't really like those, so it isn't much of a problem for me. Anything that flashes like all heck and would probably cause a seizure, I like 🙂

PAK-9February 21, 2006 at 5:01 PM#

Originally posted by invictius
Anything that flashes like all heck and would probably cause a seizure, I like 🙂

enjoy

TuggummiFebruary 21, 2006 at 5:03 PM#

I don't run them fullscreen, because i need the editor open about 95.7% of the time.

jherikoFebruary 27, 2006 at 2:20 PM#

it is possible to override the retrace option in your graphics driver somewhere, i would check that out, make sure vsync isn't being forced off.

GrandchildFebruary 28, 2006 at 1:00 PM#

/me rofls @ pak

JFASIFebruary 28, 2006 at 7:38 PM#

Originally posted by Tuggummi
I don't run them fullscreen, because i need the editor open about 95.7% of the time.

Me too, but I occasionally lapse into "trip mode".