[APP BUG] Long moments where the preview is black

[Heraes-git]

Please confirm the following points:

• This report is NOT about the Android apps in the Play Store
• I have searched the project page to check if the issue was already reported

Affected Application

I don't know / Other (please elaborate below)

Affected Version

No response

Operating System

Windows

Additional Application Details

Downloaded on Github. File is : projectMSDL-Windows-x64-2.0-pre3.zip

Type of Defect

Graphical issue (rendering glitches, black screen, heavy flickering)

Log Output

Describe the Issue

PROBLEM

Regularly, in between two transition from a preset to another, the preview stays black for 30s or a 1mn. Like if it was loading something.

It's very unexpected during a stream where you're listening music in live, so I wonder if that's normal or not.

[kblaschke]

This should not happen frequently. Given the time, it seems this is due to a preset not working properly and being displayed for that period (as the default display duration is 30s).

Presets rendering fully black can have several reasons:

• A compatibility issue in the projectM build you're using (we've fixed a few in recent months, but the Windows build wasn't updated in a while). this is mostly because of shaders not compiling properly.
• Using a high resolution, e.g. >1080p or 4K, can make some presets render super dark or all black due to a design issue in Milkdrop, rendering lines at a fixed with, so they cover less screen area if the resolution increases. See [FEATURE] Improve line rendering on higher resolutions #682 for this particular problem.

Since there's no easy, general solution to this issue, I highly recommend manually selecting presets before running them during live acts.

If you can name specific presets which show up black for you, please list the names here so we can check those presets and possibly fix the issues preventing them from being rendered properly.

[revmischa]

Just checking in - were you able to identify any specific preset names that render black? That would help narrow down whether this is a shader compatibility issue or the resolution-related line rendering problem mentioned in #682.

[Heraes-git]

Hello. Sorry, I haven't seen your messages. Well it's difficult for me to investigate, given that I just double-click on the .exe and just push R to change to a next random preset. I don't know any advance technic nor how to debug anything, so talking about "checking specific preset" is nearly impossible for me. I don't know how to obtain names, nor if it's doable to browse randomly all presets and obtain all names.

As a matter of fact, I have a 2560x1080 screen, but I run projectM in windowed mode, to be able to capture it in 16:9 in OBS Studio.

My version of ProjectM is probably not even the one given here on this github because you don't give a .exe but something I don't understand nor know how to use. I have a projectMSDL-Windows-x64-2.0-pre3.zip from https://github.com/kblaschke/frontend-sdl2/releases/tag/2.0-windows-pre3.