moonlight-stream / moonlight-stream/moonlight-android
Choppy video on Android 12 (Pixel 4a 5g) Edit: And other devices
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Description
Describe the bug
Even though moonlight renders at 60 fps, the video feed is very choppy. It happens with all frame pacing options, with "Prefer smoothest video" not yielding good results. The results are somewhat better on Balanced (the new one) than the rest, but it still is choppy and there and the rendering framerate often drops a bit below incoming (maybe it is by design?).
On Android 11 with same phone, Balanced with FPS limit yelds a very fluid video.
It happens with both stock Android 12 and custom roms such as LineageOS 19.1 or GrapheneOS.
Affected games
All the games I tried, including emulators and halo infinite. Probably happens independently?
Moonlight settings (please complete the following information)
The problem occurs whether I select HEVC or AVC, and whether I use stretch the screen or not. As in the description, Frame pacing option has an impact, but not the intended one, as
Lowest latency (12) ~ Balanced with FPSlimit (12) ~ Smoothest video (12) < Balanced (12) ~Balanced (11) <<<<<< Balanced with FPS limit (11)~Balanced with FPS limit (ShieldTV, Firestick)~Default settings on Qt
Device details (please complete the following information)
- Android version: Android 12 stock, LineageOS 19.1 or GrapheneOS
- Device model: Pixel 4a 5G
Additional context
As Moonlight is a very important use case of my phone, and as the choppy video breaks my immersion, I will probably be returning on Android 11 for the time being, and I don't have another pixel to test android 12. I can reinstall Android 12 relatively quickly to help test anything. If that problem is solvable, I would probably return on 12 as it's better practice for security.
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reproducing the choppy video on Android 12 using the Pixel 4a 5G, then compare it with Android 11 across the listed frame-pacing modes. Done means identifying and resolving the rendering or frame-pacing difference so video is consistently fluid with both HEVC and AVC.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- android
- Domain
- mobile
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 30/100