Silverlight video freezes on external screen

[Gerd Stolpmann]

I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to UbuntuGnome 14.04, and ran into a strange issue: I can watch the movie when the browser window is on the screen of my laptop, but when I move the window to an external screen (i.e. TV), the video is no longer updated. The movie continues running though (sound is ok). The last video scene just freezes. When the window is half on the laptop screen, and half on the external screen, only the part on the laptop is updated.

This worked with 12.04, so there must be now some incompatibility causing this. For both OS, I was using gnome shell.

Information about the system:
 - pipelight-multi-0.2.6~ubuntu14.04.1
 - 64 bit
 - Intel HD 4000 graphics (Core i3-3227U)
 - firefox console output: see attachment
 - wine-1.7.17
 - $ sudo pipelight-plugin --list-enabled
silverlight5.1
widevine
 - $ pipelight-plugin --list-enabled
(empty)
 - compositor: gnome-shell-3.10.4-0ubuntu5
- libxinerama1:i386 is installed

Sorry, no public URL, I was watching on watchever.de (only in Germany, they are using Sliverlight). I can recheck with any public URL.

[Michael Müller (mqchael)]

Hi,

I believe that your problem is related to the intel graphic drivers. For some reason the OpenGL context is only valid for one screen and you therefore won't see anything on the other screen. I can not provide you with a solution for this, but I assume that if you open watchever when the browser is shown on the TV you should get the opposite effect, so that you can watch it on your TV.

Michael

[Gerd Stolpmann (gerd-f)]

Hi Michael,

thanks for the explanations. However, your suggested workaround does not work: Even if I start a fresh browser on the second screen, the video is not shown there. Probably this means that the OpenGL context always references the first screen. Maybe this is something that can be changed?

Gerd

[Erich E. Hoover (ehoover)]

Is it possible that the second screen isn't configured the same way you had it under 12.04? Depending on the way the screen is configured it might be considered a different X session.

[Sebastian Lackner (slackner)]

Hi Gerd,

can you maybe check if this issue is related to GPU acceleration (which was enabled in your log file):
"[PIPELIGHT:LIN:silverlight5.1] GPU driver check - Your driver is supported, hardware acceleration enabled."

For testing purposes just run Pipelight with GPU acceleration disabled - close all browser windows, and then start from a terminal:

PIPELIGHT_GPUACCELERATION=0 firefox

Does the problem still occur, then?
You could also try to run the browser with:

PIPELIGHT_EMBED=0 firefox

which shows the plugin in a separate window. Does resizing the plugin to fullscreen lead to the same effect?

Regards,
Sebastian

[Gerd Stolpmann (gerd-f)]

Hi Sebastian,

disabling the GPU acceleration does not change anything. (I also checked the console output, and in deed there is a line

[PIPELIGHT:LIN:silverlight5.1] enableGPUAcceleration set via commandline to false

). Resizing the separate window to fullscreen on the laptop screen leads to the effect that the video is only shown in the upper left corner, and the rest of the window shows some static picture that somehow derives from video stills, maybe some residuum from the window resize animation. If I resize on the TV screen, the video output isn't updated anymore.

Thanks for looking into that.

Gerd

[Sebastian Lackner (slackner)]

Hi Gerd,

based on the feedback from a different user, I think you have the same problem.

The user didn't follow our installation instructions exactly, and forgot the --install-recommends switch, which had the effect that some recommended 32-bit libs were not installed. After installing libxcomposite1:i386 this problem was solved.

Can you please check if this also solves the problem in your case? Just run:

sudo apt-get install libxcomposite1:i386

Regards,
Sebastian

[Gerd Stolpmann (gerd-f)]

Hi Sebastian,

libxcomposite1 is installed:

$ LANG=C dpkg -l libxcomp*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
ii libxcomposite- 1:0.4.4-1 amd64 X11 Composite extension library (
ii libxcomposite1 1:0.4.4-1 amd64 X11 Composite extension library
ii libxcomposite1 1:0.4.4-1 i386 X11 Composite extension library

I also checked that it is actually loaded: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libXcomposite.so.1.0.0 is listed in /proc/$pid/maps (of the pluginloader).

Gerd

[Michael Müller (mqchael)]

Hi,

I came across the same issue yesterday on an almost identical setup. It seems to depend on the desktop environment you are using, but it always worked for me if the display was connected during the startup of the machine. Can you try whether it makes any difference for you?

Michael

[t-lo (th-sc)]

Hi,

Probably a dumb suggestion but isn't screen mirroring (instead of extending screens) also a possible workaround?

I am facing the same issue when using Canonical's Unity WM (part of 14.xx, Trusty Tahr) on my Gentoo-Linux based system and also when using a plain 3.10 Gnome desktop environment.

With screen mirroring it is working for me. However your situation(s) may be different as my system is not a "real" Ubuntu. I decided to comment anyway as it won't hurt at least and to say thank you to the pipelight dev-team! Great work! You make Amazon Instant Video accessible for me (in Germany there is no Flash fallback for whatever reason). Is there a way to donate to you to support your work (didn't find such a button yet)?

I am also going to test the "boot with screen connected"-workaround tonight. :)

Btw, when using Unity WM 3D (basically Compiz + Unity plugin + "legacy full screen"-workaround enabled) my whole system keeps on crashing (immediate power-down) after a little while (never made it to more than 15 minutes of playback). First I thought it might be related to thermal sensor triggered BIOS emergency power offs due to overheating because of the quite compact design of my ultrabook that tends to get hot. But that is not the case. In plain Gnome it streams videos "for hours" without issues.
@OP:
Don't want to hijack this thread.
@pipelight devteam:
Just want to know if you are okay if I open a separate "bug" for this so that we maybe cans sort this out (with low prio)?

Cheers,

[Dražen Matešić (crazylemon)]

I experienced the same behavior of pipelight 0.2.6~ubuntu14.0 amd64.

I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit. Using Chrome 34.0 and i only have silverlight5.1 enabled.

The behavior like Gerd said is: Open Chrome on primary screen (1280x1024).. visit my local (Slovenia only) TV provider, video and audio starts and when i move the browser to secondary screen (1920x1080) the video freezes and audio continues.

I did not try secondary screen on before booting - will try and will report back.

[t-lo (th-sc)]

HI

I can't add anything useful to the "boot with screen connected"-workaround tonight as my system shows a lot of differnent strange bahviours including automatic switching to mirroring once silverlight loads...

Cheers,

[Dražen Matešić (crazylemon)]

I can confirm that booting with secondary screen connected does work. So it is a workaround but its not a fix :)

[Gerd Stolpmann (gerd-f)]

Michael: yes, booting with the external screen connected solves the problem.

t-lo: screen mirroring works, but is not always a good workaround. The aspect ratio of internal and external screen might not be the same. You are also limited to screen resolutions that work on both screens (e.g. for me this means no HD). Better than nothing, of course, but not a real solution.

[t-lo (th-sc)]

@Gerd: Ja, you have a point here. As my external TV-set and the built-in display are both native widescreens with 1080p resolution I must have missed that. So for me the mirroring is the proper workaround (due to that autoamtic mirroring bug or feature of my system) and for you the "boot thing". Totally agree that a real fix would be even better. :)

[Sebastian Lackner (slackner)]

Hi,

we recently updated one of our systems from Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.10, and now
we can also reproduce this issue ourself - which in theory is a good thing
because it makes fixing bugs much easier, but it somehow looks like this is
a regression somewhere in the Intel driver itself.

Could you guys maybe attach the output of "glxinfo" - probably comparing
all the different information we collect in this bug report helps to figure
out where the problem is exactly.

Regards,
Sebastian

2014-05-08 11:04 GMT+02:00 Gerd Stolpmann <email address hidden>:

> Michael: yes, booting with the external screen connected solves the
> problem.
>
> t-lo: screen mirroring works, but is not always a good workaround. The
> aspect ratio of internal and external screen might not be the same. You
> are also limited to screen resolutions that work on both screens (e.g.
> for me this means no HD). Better than nothing, of course, but not a real
> solution.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to
> Pipelight.
> Matching subscriptions: pipelight
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1313291
>
> Title:
> Silverlight video freezes on external screen
>
> Status in Pipelight:
> New
>
> Bug description:
> I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to UbuntuGnome 14.04, and ran
> into a strange issue: I can watch the movie when the browser window is
> on the screen of my laptop, but when I move the window to an external
> screen (i.e. TV), the video is no longer updated. The movie continues
> running though (sound is ok). The last video scene just freezes. When
> the window is half on the laptop screen, and half on the external
> screen, only the part on the laptop is updated.
>
> This worked with 12.04, so there must be now some incompatibility
> causing this. For both OS, I was using gnome shell.
>
> Information about the system:
> - pipelight-multi-0.2.6~ubuntu14.04.1
> - 64 bit
> - Intel HD 4000 graphics (Core i3-3227U)
> - firefox console output: see attachment
> - wine-1.7.17
> - $ sudo pipelight-plugin --list-enabled
> silverlight5.1
> widevine
> - $ pipelight-plugin --list-enabled
> (empty)
> - compositor: gnome-shell-3.10.4-0ubuntu5
> - libxinerama1:i386 is installed
>
> Sorry, no public URL, I was watching on watchever.de (only in Germany,
> they are using Sliverlight). I can recheck with any public URL.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/pipelight/+bug/1313291/+subscriptions
>

[Dražen Matešić (crazylemon)]

Here is my output http://paste.ubuntu.com/7433925/
I'm using open source AMD driver

[Gerd Stolpmann (gerd-f)]

GLX output of my Intel driver

[Michael Müller (mqchael)]

Hi,

I believe the problem is somewhere in Mesa since you are both running Mesa 10.1 (I use the git version of Mesa 10.2) and it also seems to affect AMD and Intel, so that it is not directly a driver issue. The problem didn't not occur when I used Mesa 9 on my machine, so it is most probably introduced somewhere between 9 and 10. Anyway, I was not able to find a bug report for this. The problem might also be related to the Xorg version, what version of Xorg do you guys use (Xorg -version)?

Michael

[Gerd Stolpmann (gerd-f)]

$ Xorg -version

X.Org X Server 1.15.1
Release Date: 2014-04-13
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 3.2.0-37-generic x86_64 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux e130 3.13.0-24-generic #47-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 2 23:30:00 UTC 2014 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic root=/dev/mapper/samsung0-root ro quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor vt.handoff=7
Build Date: 16 April 2014 01:36:29PM
xorg-server 2:1.15.1-0ubuntu2 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support)
Current version of pixman: 0.30.2
 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
 to make sure that you have the latest version.

[Dražen Matešić (crazylemon)]

I'm running basically the same version as gerd-f but here is the output as requested

X.Org X Server 1.15.1
Release Date: 2014-04-13
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 3.2.0-37-generic x86_64 Ubuntu
Current Operating System: Linux pingo 3.13.0-24-generic #47-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 2 23:30:00 UTC 2014 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic root=UUID=7f0f92ce-b3b6-459a-a972-d3f359f7b6a5 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
Build Date: 16 April 2014 01:36:29PM
xorg-server 2:1.15.1-0ubuntu2 (For technical support please see http://www.ubuntu.com/support)
Current version of pixman: 0.30.2
 Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
 to make sure that you have the latest version.