Pi 4 - video is slow

[pi4master]

Hi!

I bought Pi 4 to watch dvb-t2 and youtube/websites videos.
While it's ok to watch them in a small window (smooth), by resizing them to fullscreen (1920x1080) they are quite slow. It's visible how moving by lips is delayed after sound and it's very distracting. It's like the video would be 10 fps or like so. Sometimes I can see how a frame is drawn from top to bottom.
I'm quite disappointed since everywhere they wrote it has 4k hevc support, but in reality it's not possible to play even FullHD Youtube video smoothly.

Well it might be a sw issue or wrong configuration, therefore I'm asking if you don't have an idea what I can tweak to obtain the smooth FullHD video. For the time being I changed memory split - assigned 256 MB memory to gpu.

I'm running:

Raspbian Buster with desktop
Version: June 2019
Release date: 2019-06-20
Kernel version: 4.19

on Rpi 4 4GB RAM.

I use preinstalled Chromium to watch Youtube and web videos and installed Kaffeine to watch dvb-t2 channels.

[jamesh]

There's a known issue with playback in Chromium that is almost fixed.

For HEVC, the best playback is using libreElec .

[brimur]

I may be wrong here but dont Youtube videos use VP9? That is not HEVC and while a lot of devices support HEVC decoding in hardware they do not support VP9 so that has to be handled by the CPU

[pi4master]

There's a known issue with playback in Chromium that is almost fixed.

For HEVC, the best playback is using libreElec .

Is it already known when it's going to be released?

[jamesh]

The Chromium fix is done - if you are happy using beta software, rpi-update will get what you need. You will need to edit the chromium-browser file to remove the bit that forces the GPU off. There's instructions in another thread somewhere, search will find it.

Or just wait a bit longer for it to get in to the apt system which will be much easier.

[thatchunkylad198966]

The Chromium fix is done - if you are happy using beta software, rpi-update will get what you need. You will need to edit the chromium-browser file to remove the bit that forces the GPU off. There's instructions in another thread somewhere, search will find it.

Or just wait a bit longer for it to get in to the apt system which will be much easier.

Got a link dude? I can't seem to find it with search; what do I edit? disable gpu blacklist?

[gordon77]

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 5#p1493877

[thatchunkylad198966]

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 5#p1493877

Still not working after doing that and I'm running beta firmware.

[thrustpork]

Put chrome://gpu in the url bar and make sure hardware acceleration is going. If not you didn’t comment out the disable gpu portion correctly.

[thatchunkylad198966]

Got it working!
For anyone else; you don't edit /etc/chromium-browser you have to edit; /usr/bin/chromium-browser.
Thanks to shift on IRC.

[thatchunkylad198966]

Any ETA when we'll get the fix via apt update?????

[jamesh]

Any ETA when we'll get the fix via apt update?????

I think the guys were discussing it today, so I suspect not too long.

[KookyFlower]

i am having a similar issue. all video, from all sources is unwatchable, it's not just slow and choppy. i get big block artifacts, like when a dvd is covered in dust. and i know the files are good, i copied the files from my computer to the sd ofthe raspberry pi 4. put the sd in the pi 4, tried to play a video, failed. i then placed the sd in my computer, and played the file from the sd card, and it looks just fine. on youtube, the video is just slow and choppy, but you can see the frames correctly. i've tried with different file types and codecs, and all have failed to play correctly. i've also tried all the solutions i'ev found. disable compositor, disable unused video outputs. disable all video outputs and play in vnc, increase the video ram ( i gave it 512MB at most) edit chrome config file for youtube. reinstalled raspbian, tried to play the file from an smb server.

any solution would be really appreciated.

thank you very much!

[bjtheone]

What OS are you running on the Pi 4 and what are you using as a monitor? I know it is working in an up to date Raspbian Buster install, displaying on a 1080p monitor. By "it" I mean playing video from YouTube and other video sites full screen using Chromium, and playing movies using Kodi or directly using vlc.

I have played movies off USB 3.0 thumb drive and streamed from the net.

[LTolledo]

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B - 4GB
Raspbian Buster with Full Desktop
16GB class 10 microSD card
Kodi 18.4
GPU mem set to 196MB

1080p 5.1ch video slow? I dont think so... just watched one of my favorite concerts.....plays smooth...

there is probably something wrong with your setup

nah I dont use VLC, it crashed on me big time..... so I trashed it.

[KookyFlower]

hello, i am using raspbian buster with recommended software, i have not modified anything besides the changes to files that are proposed as solutions. adn also, video was unwatchable from the fresh unmodified install as well. i am using a computer monitor with 1366x768 resolution, and a 1080p monitor when connecting using vnc.

thank you!

[mtrtm]

I'd be interested, too. Using the latest Noobs streaming anything (youtube etc) in Chromium on my Pi 4 with 4 Gb RAM is not really possible. It lags/stutters a lot.

I tried quite a few customizations from a few different sites and forums but nothing seems to work. I was hoping that a platform bragging about support for two 4k monitors could stream a 1080p video. My 8 year old laptop can with 40 other tabs open, and the specs are very similar.

[bodai]

A stuttering YouTube video was also my experience. Therefore, I came to check this trail and other such contributions. I’ve followed only this one though:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-get- ... -kovalenko

Plus I put 256MB for the GPU memory instead of the recommended 128.

The like of

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... p?t=199543

is something that I stayed away from, especially that after a first round of going with tutorials (on some other matter) left me without internet on the pi and so I had to reinstall. Although this might just reflect the level of my competence, not 100% the usefulness, reliability of the referenced contribution.

However, what I did as stated above didn’t change the situation: the playback was still stuttering... Then I realised that after a minute or two, the playback quality become quite reasonable. No tearing of the image, very high definition image, not much stuttering or not at all just a not so high frame rate (don’t know how to measure it). One video finished starting with the other one automatically ala YouTube gives a good experience right from the beginning of the new video. However, making a new search and playing a selected video puts me on square one: stutter for a few minutes and then reasonably good viewing experience. For me it’s acceptable for now.

I note that I tried out VLC playing a HD vid from a thumb drive and that was perfect from the start; and playing YouTube in Firefox was the same bad as in Chromium (in the beginning).

Of course it’s possible that the experience didn’t improve in Chromium version 72 after a couple of minutes like it does on 74 for me. But it may also be possible that some of the problems reported by people affect the first couple of minutes only and we never heard back from the when they realised the same as I did.

[LTolledo]

try playing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mdgDIpAKxI
change to full screen
change resolution to 1080HD
right click on the video
select Stats for Nerds

check out Viewport /Frames
how many frames were dropped after hitting 3,000 frames?

[Lynxo777]

Hi,

Curious is this issue was resolved? Is it software related or hardware limitation of the Rpi4?
I have similar setup with Rpi4 4MB and the latest version:


Raspbian Buster with desktop and recommended software
Image with desktop and recommended software based on Debian Buster
Version:
February 2020
Release date:
2020-02-13
Kernel version:
4.19

I hooked it up to my samsung tv. It displays fine but when I try to watch BSG on Syfy Channel, it is choppy and delayed.
I just used the Buster web browser though for quick test.

So if I install and use the latest Chromium, it might fix the video lag issue?

I just want to watch SyFy channel on my older tv with the Rpi4 if possible.

Thanks

[Lynxo777]

So I setup the rpi4 again. Looks like the latest version of Buster has Chromium already install.
When I go to syfy channel to play an episode, I get this error:

failed to load vpaid ad url

So much for that idea.

[mtrtm]

My video plays fine once I switch to Raspbian. Not sure why NOOBS doesn't work but the latest Raspbian works great (not sure what is different about it yet, but it seems VERY similar to NOOBS.

[mahjongg]

My video plays fine once I switch to Raspbian. Not sure why NOOBS doesn't work but the latest Raspbian works great (not sure what is different about it yet, but it seems VERY similar to NOOBS.

NOOBS is an installer, not an OS, and AFAIK NOOBS doesn't have a function to play video's, so I assume that NOOBS just installed an older version of Raspbian. but that Raspbian isn't NOOBS.
at this time NOOBS is not the preferred installation method anymore, we now have switched to a system that directly installs an image (of the OS of choice) on an SD-card, no more formatting or unpacking needed. see https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/ imager (available for all three major platforms, MacOS windows and (x86) Linux)