Pinball X can only play PF videos at 60 fps. BG & DMD videos make ALL 60 fps videos stutter.

[TerryRed]

My videos previously for Pinball X were all 30fps, and I had them for the DMD, BG, and playfield. All "seemed" to run fine.

I just started adding 1920x1080 60fps videos to Pinball X. (PC games videos which are silky smooth) When I just had ONLY the playfield showing a video, Pinball X itself runs at 60fps locked as it should.

I use MSI afterburner to show fps and cpu usage.

I noticed if I play any video (at any fps) on either the backglass or DMD, it makes Pinball X no longer locked at 60 fps, and the framerate goes all over the place (always above 60, but usually 80-90 fps). CPU usage (quad core i5 2500K) is low. It's like Pinball X loses v-sync or something when this is happening.

This is not an issue for 30 fps videos, but it makes 60fps videos "stutter" a lot.

If I have ONLY one 1920x1080 60 fps video on the playfield, its smooth, and PBX runs at 60fps.

If I have only one video at 60fps on either the dmd or backglass, there's a lot of stutter and PBX fps are 80-90fps.

I tried changing PBX to full screen exclusive, no change, Full screen windowed,... no change. I tried forcing v-sync in NVidia control panel for PBX and no change. (GTX 960) LAV, ffdshow codecs, and hardware decoder,etc and no change.

Has anyone else had issues with this, or is it something that can't be avoided?

[Draco1962]

Using only one video card, correct? What format are your videos? What kind of displays?

Your system specs seem OK from what you describe. My GPU is a little older than yours but otherwise my system is probably on par, but not experiencing any of the problems you describe with stuttering videos.

[TerryRed]

Only one gtx 960, newest drivers. 42 inch TV via HDMI. 27 inch monitor via HDMI, 19 inch monitor via DVI. Videos are mp4 (h264). If I play multiple 60 fps videos outside of PBX (with any codecs), they play fine. However I tried various different formats, and bitrates to be sure.

PBX can play any of the 60fps videos nice and smooth, but only in the PF with no other videos playing. I only really started to notice it with PC games videos because they have a lot of smooth fast movement, where pinball table videos aren't so noticeable because the "camera" is static.

That's why I used MSI Afterburner to check fps, because the pinball tables videos weren't visually unsmooth, but now I see the difference when they are played outside of Pinball X.

[TerryRed]

I also noticed that its only when one video is being played on the "primary" screen that Pinball X stays locked at 60 fps. If you have your playfield screen set to a monitor that is not your "primary" monitor, then you will see Pinball X go crazy with fps.

Sometimes I notice that the backglass won't be in focus and you can see the windows taskbar in front of the BG videos / pictures. Any idea what may cause this?

[Draco1962]

I can't say that I have experienced this. I believe that in most cases the playfield monitor is set as the primary monitor and is the best.

Are you only having this issue when switching about your monitor order? Or are you having the video issues with your playfield monitor primary and backglass 2nd?

[TerryRed]

My playfield is always "primary", I only tried switching it to see if I could narrow down the problem.

Playfield is primary, screen 1

Backglass is screen 2

DMD is screen 3

It seems like whenever ANY video is played on DMD or BG that Pinball X loses v-sync and its fps goes wild....

Pinball X is not running "slow" at all, it's just "stuttering" its 60 fps videos when any videos are played on the BG or DMD. Again, if all the videos were 30 fps, this wouldn't have been visually noticeable, even though the problem is always occurring.

Games are not affected at all, as I have videos for the dmd and BG screen always running when playing PBFX2 or Pinball Arcade. FP and PC just have still pictures (or nothing) in those spots when they are launched,.