Lutris/Wine: Odd video pause every four seconds

f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz · edit-2 1 month ago

Lutris/Wine: Odd video pause every four seconds

rowinxavier@lemmy.world · 1 month ago

You may be having a disk seek issue. Are you on a spinning disk? If so, sometimes running something a couple of times will have some cached or at least have the heads in the right spot to read the needed data. If that is the issue upgrading to an SSD would probably solve the issue at the root. A possible test would be using a RAM disk if you can be bothered testing it, you have sufficient RAM that it may be viable depending on the game.

That all said, for next steps I would personally consider if maybe an older version of WINE would work. Could you try installing another older version of both the vanilla and GE versions? Also, did you update your nVidia drivers recently? Maybe roll back if your system will work with that, I can do it easily in EndeavourOS but Mint is not something I am recently acquainted with, it may be a real pain or may tank your driver install to try and roll back. Also testing installing a browser in WINE and loading a video that way may help troubleshoot, or VLC through WINE and native to compare. Ultimately you want to try and find the difference between the failed states and the working states, so if you come back bring a log from a working run and a failed run.

f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz · edit-2 1 month ago

This is on a Western Digital Black NVMe SSD.

~~On further testing, the problem appears to be GameMode-related, disabling that makes Wine programs run without the lag. However, now~~ Also, attempting to run Wine programs in fullscreen (any resolution) causes the whole system to severely lag and it takes a very long time to Alt-Tab out or Ctrl-Alt-Fkey into a tty session.

Edit: I forgot that I wanted to clarify that this is not a video playback issue, the lag happens in all Wine windows, even winecfg. I clicked back and forth repeatedly between config tabs and was also able to notice the lag there.

rowinxavier@lemmy.world · 29 days ago

Oh, great, that actually limits what it is a lot. If it were related to video we could spend ages looking at codecs, drivers, all sorts of stuff.

If it happens in all windows including winecfg we have to be looking at a few causes.

Do you have a high polling rate mouse? That can cause a stutter issue. To test remove the mouse before launching something in wine (by terminal if you have to), then see if it replicates the issue. If no change, move on, next item.

You could be having a problem with your audio system trying to give things too quickly and falling over itself. Prefix the wine command with the below line.

PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60

So it would be something like

PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 winecfg

That should stop it if it is that audio issue, so see how you go.

Lastly, if you have winecfg running it is slowing itself down, but is it impacting other programs as well? I assume so, but want to make sure, so if you are for example playing a video in your browser and then launch winecfg does it start stuttering the video?

If none of the above helps can you dump the output of ps , mount, lspci -k, and iostat while no wine is running and while wine is running? Iostat is in iotools in mint I think, you may need to install it. Also, probably use a pastebin for the outputs.

f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz · 28 days ago

Thank you, this is good, something new to try since the logs aren’t showing anything amiss. I think we’re on the right track because I did find a forum post of someone looking at pulseaudio causing similar but not identical video issues even though audio is not stuttering.

The weird lag only happens in the windows of Wine executables. Nothing else is affected even if I leave winecfg or a game open in the background.

I actually verified the same behavior on a fresh LMDE6 install. I may raise the issue on their forums and look into your suggestions this weekend.

I have been open to venturing out of stable territory and playing with newer software on this particular machine… so I’m trying EndeavourOS! It also took a lot of fuckery just to make Wine games work in Lutris out-of-the-box, but I learned a bit along the way.

rowinxavier@lemmy.world · 28 days ago

I was holding back so hard on recommending EndeavourOS. I love it, it is my main distro and honestly everything else seems unrefined by comparison. The Timeshift setup with BTRFS is insanely useful and largely preconfigured. The lack of a GUI for package management is not a big deal if you can learn to use pacman and yay, and honestly cheat sheets are a win there. Hopefully EndeavourOS will work out for you, and if not then we can go with next steps for the WINE issue.