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theothernt / AerialViews

A screensaver for Android TV devices including Nvidia Shield, Fire TV, and Chromecast with Google TV. Inspired by Apple TV's video screensaver.
GNU General Public License v3.0
469 stars 35 forks source link

Screensaver gets stuck sometimes #48

Closed hyperglass closed 2 years ago

hyperglass commented 2 years ago

I have noticed >10 times this month that screensaver sometimes stops moving and wont play unless I go to the next one.. I have a decent internet connection (50Mbps) and I think it is enough to not be a reason for this issue. Its not HDR problem since I recently lowered the quality to SDR 4K and its still happening.

theothernt commented 2 years ago

That is an odd issue. 50Mbps is enough, even for 4K HDR videos. I have a few questions...

  1. Each video is a few minutes long. If a video pauses, does it eventually end and go onto the next video by itself?
  2. Do many people use your internet connection, is it possible that this is the issue?
  3. If you drop the quality to 1080p SDR (the lowest bandwidth option), does the issue persist?
hyperglass commented 2 years ago

  1. No it doesn't resumes no matter how much you wait and doesn't changes to the next video unless you manually press the button to do.

  2. Maximum 4 devices have access to internet. I don't think this is the reason for issue, I have seen it getting paused even with no other device were using the internet.

  3. Haven't tried running on the lowest quality that long so did not notice (used 1080p SDR just for 2 day till now).

theothernt commented 2 years ago

Thanks for that. My current guess is that the videos are not streamed at fast enough speed due to ISP connection or routing issues. So even though your internet connection is fast enough, the route from your ISP to Apple's CDN is slow. That's just a guess but I have heard of the issue happening to others temporarily.

Use the 1080p SDR videos for a few more days and report back. Is downloading the videos locally an option for you?

hyperglass commented 2 years ago

This seems to be an App specific issue since It doesn't use to happen with Aerial Dreams & on 4k YouTube videos never seemed to lag.

Alright, I'll let you know about the status of the issue after few days using SDR settings.

I can download upto 40 gbs of Videos on my Android TV but I don't think it is something anyone else will do, I have tried it already and then realised each video is about 1.3Gb and there are 100+ screensavers so only few can be downloaded.

I suggest you can make a dropdown menu or a slider for asking how much storage aerial dreams can use for Caching the videos on local storage. These local downloads for caching can occur in the background.. This may improve connectivity independency.

theothernt commented 2 years ago

This seems to be an App specific issue since It doesn't use to happen with Aerial Dreams & on 4k YouTube videos never seemed to lag.

Alright, I'll let you know about the status of the issue after few days using SDR settings.

It's difficult to diagnose. Aerial Dream uses different videos which might be served from an older CDN. Also, Aerial Dream and Aerial Views use the same video player. YouTube is quite different because they have many, many CDNs and their video is a lower bitrate even at 4K HDR.

The only worry is that the video seems to stop unless you manually skip to the next one. That should not happen. Even if you lose internet connection for 1 or 2 minutes, the video should resume or skip to the next video by itself.

I can download upto 40 gbs of Videos on my Android TV but I don't think it is something anyone else will do, I have tried it already and then realised each video is about 1.3Gb and there are 100+ screensavers so only few can be downloaded.

I suggest you can make a dropdown menu or a slider for asking how much storage aerial dreams can use for Caching the videos on local storage. These local downloads for caching can occur in the background.. This may improve connectivity independency.

There are a % of people who download the videos, mostly those with Nvidia Shields as they are typically advanced users - they use custom launchers, etc.

Caching won't work well for this kind of app and was tried before in Aerial Dream. Also, most users of Aerial Views use an Android TV or device with very little space so it's not practical.

hyperglass commented 2 years ago

I tried using 1080p SDR for few days and there seems to be no issue like before. Please try to fix this problem on 4k HDR.

booleangit commented 2 years ago

I've had the same issue on my 5yo daughter's TV, but that was probably caused by the low spec SoC (or crappy firmware). Aerial View is behaving as it should on all other devices. I've bought my daughter a new OLED TV which solved the issue.

theothernt commented 2 years ago

The issue does appear to caused by the size/bitrate of the videos vs your connection speed/quality.

In v1.2 Beta 1 (due in a week or two) there will be an option in Debug & Performance to change the buffer size (increase, decrease, etc) which may help.

theothernt commented 2 years ago

As @Stackedstudio mentioned via Reddit, the issue seems to have resolved itself. If it happens again, feel free to open the issue.

theothernt commented 2 years ago

Btw, the latest version (v1.2) has the ability to change the buffer size. I'd recommend you set it to 'larger buffer'.