Bug 11169 - Screen flickers
: Screen flickers
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Product: SB Touch
Classification: Unclassified
Component: OS
: unspecified
: PC Windows XP
: P1 normal with 2 votes (vote)
: 7.5.0
Assigned To: Spies Steven
: CAT
Depends on:
Blocks: 15042
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2009-02-23 16:53 UTC by Ross Levine
Modified: 2010-04-08 17:25 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:
Category: ---


Attachments
Video of Flicker Issue (1019.31 KB, video/avi)
2009-04-10 08:15 UTC, James Richardson
Details

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Description Ross Levine 2009-02-23 16:53:57 UTC
I've now noticed this twice today with 4399 and after I updated to r4402 as well. Maurice pointed out the flicker only happens during a transition on the screen. While looking at a still menu there is no flicker, but while watching now playing or actively browsing the screen flickers.
Comment 1 Blackketter Dean 2009-02-23 18:51:54 UTC
this is likely specific to your hardware. did you show this to Maurice in person?
Comment 2 Maurice Alou 2009-02-23 21:35:58 UTC
i am wondering if this is not something similar to the audio L/R swap where the buffers get messed up.
Comment 3 Blackketter Dean 2009-02-23 22:18:26 UTC
Interesting.  you think it's actually two different frame buffers flickering?
Comment 4 Richard Titmuss 2009-03-05 02:17:48 UTC
Hopefully fixed in r4694. The screen refresh was not waiting for the vsync.
Comment 5 Ross Levine 2009-03-06 17:41:26 UTC
I'm seeing it now with r4712 pb2. :-(
Comment 6 Ross Levine 2009-03-25 12:22:52 UTC
*** Bug 11472 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 James Richardson 2009-03-25 12:25:28 UTC
I have seen it with r4875, after the unit had been on and playing for > 30 MIN
Comment 8 Ben Klaas 2009-03-25 12:27:01 UTC
This comes up periodically for me too. It's not fixed, whatever it is. My hunch is Dean's comment #3 is what is happening.
Comment 9 James Richardson 2009-04-10 08:15:05 UTC
CAT testers have seen this as well, even with firmware r5265
Comment 10 James Richardson 2009-04-10 08:15:28 UTC
Created attachment 5093 [details]
Video of Flicker Issue
Comment 11 James Richardson 2009-04-13 11:59:04 UTC
PR-0065

=======================================
PR-0085
Again, This may be difficult to duplicate. I had left my entire network and the Squeezebox touch on overnight and hit the play button to the previous "Random Mix" playlist from the night before.

Then I chose a new shuffled song playlist for the year 1982. And a few minutes later I noticed the flicker. There was nothing unusual as I didn't change any settings on the Squeezebox or my system other than the newly generated playlist. And I haven't had any noticeable problems with the wireless, networking, or internet aspects previously.

The screen is not flickering at this point... but I will continue to monitor it.
Comment 12 James Richardson 2009-04-13 12:18:29 UTC
PR-0087
Screen was Flickering after no use for 48 hours.  I had not used the Sqeeze box for the weekend as i was out of town.  When i returned the display was flickering.  After a reset everything was back to normal.
Comment 13 Ross Levine 2009-06-08 11:48:15 UTC
*** Bug 12303 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 14 James Richardson 2009-06-09 07:14:35 UTC
*** Bug 12314 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 Pikeharmony 2009-06-17 05:27:39 UTC
BUG has returned again with firmware 6068.

I created a post

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?p=432794#post432794
Comment 16 Ben Klaas 2009-06-18 08:50:48 UTC
Screen flicker issue is tied to screen drawing/updating. 

-- If I have a window that has any text scrolling, the flicker is constant and happens multiple times per second. 

--If I have a menu window with no scrolling it flickers when it first draws (and sometimes a second time) then stops.

--If I have the Now Playing screen up with text that doesn't need to scroll, the screen flickers every two seconds when it redraws itself. Interesting this isn't every second, which is what the NP screen should do. I'm seeing the time elapsed go from 1:17 to 1:19 to 1:21, flickering each time. A clue to the cause?
Comment 17 Richard Titmuss 2009-09-29 04:13:43 UTC
I've not seen this for a while, has anyone else?
Comment 18 Sue Chastain 2009-09-29 08:46:21 UTC
(In reply to comment #17)
> I've not seen this for a while, has anyone else?

Yes, two days ago. I posted in the beta forum about it.
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=68377
Comment 19 Wadzinski Tom 2009-10-19 11:57:25 UTC
Richard and I have both seen this recently. 

From what I saw when it was happening, it appears that the following is happening for some as yet unknown reason, taking the NP screen as an example:

Note: The NP screen triggers a redraw every second (also note: every redraw is a fullscreen redraw)

Looking at the elapsed time numbers, I see
00:01 screen draws 00:01
00:02 screen very briefly displays :02 then jumps back to 01 (no full screen flash)
00:03 whole screen flash occurs and screen displays :03 correctly
Comment 20 Erland Isaksson 2009-10-26 10:22:03 UTC
I'm not sure if this is related or not but I've seen flickering issues at least two times lately when the Touch was about to run out of memory. It had about 2MB free memory when I saw the flickering screen the last time.
Comment 21 SVN Bot 2009-11-04 03:06:38 UTC
 == Auto-comment from SVN commit #8006 to the jive repo by richard ==
 == https://svn.slimdevices.com/jive?view=revision&revision=8006 ==

Bug #11169
Applet for testing screen flicker.
Comment 22 SVN Bot 2009-11-04 07:01:58 UTC
 == Auto-comment from SVN commit #8007 to the jive repo by richard ==
 == https://svn.slimdevices.com/jive?view=revision&revision=8007 ==

Bug #11169
Experimental patch that may fix the screen flicker. This removes some locking to prevent double buffering problems in 
the video driver. The design of the application means this locking should not be needed, and removing it may fix the 
problem.
Comment 23 Richard Titmuss 2009-11-04 07:15:27 UTC
Can QA set up several fab4's, some with r8006 and some with >=r8007. Then go to Settings > Advanced > Test Screen Flicker, and leave them running.

Hopefully we'll find r8006 after some time will demonstrate the screen flicker, and the later firmware will not. I don't know how long it'll take to complete the test.
Comment 24 James Richardson 2009-11-04 08:34:45 UTC
QA started 10 units testing this AM.  5 on 8006 and 5 on 8007, all setup but not on the network
Comment 25 James Richardson 2009-11-12 09:20:18 UTC
Steven: what progress have you had on this issue?
Comment 26 Spies Steven 2009-11-12 09:29:01 UTC
Eventually all fab4 units would flicker with r8006 and r8007.  Any other ideas or any other things I can test?
Comment 27 SVN Bot 2009-11-13 02:14:24 UTC
 == Auto-comment from SVN commit #8085 to the jive repo by richard ==
 == https://svn.slimdevices.com/jive?view=revision&revision=8085 ==

Bug #11169
Fix the screen flicker on fab4. This patch clears the ready flag for the off screen buffer before flipping the 
buffers. This seems to prevent the IPU from incorrectly displaying the off screen buffer.
Comment 28 Richard Titmuss 2009-11-13 02:16:06 UTC
Please re-test with this latest patch. I have had 3 fab4s running for nearly 24 hours now in the flicker test applet, and they are all still working fine.
Comment 29 Spies Steven 2009-11-16 13:12:48 UTC
This appears to be fixed, thanks Richard!

I left 5 fab4s with r8007 and 5 fab4s with r8095 running screen flicker test over the weekend.  They have been running for over 72 hours now.

I am happy to report that all of the units with r8095 are still flicker free while all of the units with r8007 are now flickering.

Marking bug as fixed.
Comment 30 Ben Klaas 2009-11-16 13:14:22 UTC
Woot!
Comment 31 Chris Owens 2010-04-08 17:25:38 UTC
This bug has been marked fixed in a released version of Squeezebox Server or the accompanying firmware or mysqueezebox.com release.

If you are still seeing this issue, please let us know!