Dim bif images showing on some videos.

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

This was going to be a problem report but I have solved it but I though i would post about it, just in case.

My Roku had been running for a little over 2 weeks continuously and "some" videos started playing with dim images of the bif file started showing all the time while the show was playing. They otherwise worked fine and i could progress through them just fine using the bif files. The vids also had just a little "graininess" that was not there with properly behaving files and, once the problem was fixed the "graininess"  also went away on the files that were giving problems earlier.
All other apps worked fine and the ones the have preview files like bifs (may actually be bifs but the apps don't say) worked fine and did not show the preview images except when needed and "most" Emby videos, with bif files or without, worked fine. It is only the oldest videos that had the issue and not all of them. It is possible that at least some of those had bif files that were generated by an external program called "BifFileCreator" but the were also other videos the created at about the same time and using "BifFileCreator" that always worked fine. 
I restarted the Emby server (Version 4.8.0.65 beta) a few times and no change.
This only happened on some shows that were all ripped a long time ago and have been in my system for many years without change.
I was about to restart the server and capture the logs but I realized it had been quite a while since my Roku Ultra was rebooted and I decided to try the first, but without much hope. To my surprise the Roku restart fixed the problem. So I have no screen shots or logs showing the problem. 

I decided to report here even though the reboot fixed the problem mainly because others might encounter it and just in case it might set off some "alarm" for the developers.
I have no idea why it showed up and also why it only effected some shows.
At least, now that i know about it and about the simple fix I will not be too bothered if it happens again. 
My Roku is model # 4640X software ver 12.5.0 - Build 4178-29 and I have no SD card installed. (I am including the info about the SD card simply because, quite a while ago, there were apps misbehaving only if an SD card was installed.

BTW: My other Roku did not ever have this problem but it is rarely used for TV shows.

I hope this was just a one time glitch and it is never seen again.

[Luke 37069]

Thanks for sharing.

[speechles 1919]

The dimmer BIF might be caused by a memory issue with the texture memory. When that happens the opacity of the parent object is seen as 0 which is transparent and 100% invisible. When it applies its own transformation of that opacity when adding the child it might reduce it to 50%. Making it not invisible, but sort of transparent like a ghost, where you can see through it like a film negative. The Roku should clean up those references and restore the parent object and fix the opacity but it might not be able to when memory becomes too low. That is why rebooting the Roku fixed it. During video playback is when the Roku is most at risk of running out of work RAM. This is why you may see weird behavior there at times especially with loads of BIF needing to be cached and displayed.

 

When fast-forwarding quickly though the BIF do you often see that last BIF image flicker? Also conversely, when rewind quickly with repeated keypress or using x4 speed do you see the first image flicker? These are issues with image loading speed and the BIF not using secondary image cache for each direction. We have a fix for that.

Edited January 3 by speechles

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

11 hours ago, speechles said:

When fast-forwarding quickly though the BIF do you often see that last BIF image flicker? Also conversely, when rewind quickly with repeated keypress or using x4 speed do you see the first image flicker? These are issues with image loading speed and the BIF not using secondary image cache for each direction. We have a fix for that.

I do not think you are understanding what i wrote or (most probably) I was not clear in the way I tried to state it. The bif images are on the screen, but very dim, all the time. They appeared as soon as the video started and remained on the screen until I stopped playback or it reached the end. I was fully able to FF/RW and the bifs appeared to operate as always. I did not notice any flickering.

BTW: The bifs were not dim during FF/RW or any other instance where the bfs normally appear. But they return to dim after playback resumes.

Again it is like the bifs were embedded in the video during playback. But you may be right and this is a memory issue. It has, for now at least, been solved with the Roku restart and it may just somehow be a glitch never to be seen again but it was the kind of failure that, for me, is very perplexing.

One additional bit of info is that I have been using Paramount+ a lot lately and something in that app may have been left behind or it may have somehow gotten the Roku into a state where anything could happen. If I remember correctly the very first time I saw it was right after watching two, back to back, soccer matches and then going straight to Emby and then playing a show. But my old brain may have misremembered and it could be that the Paramount+ usage is just a coincidence but I wanted to provide as much info as possible. 
It should be noted that I have used Paramount+ several times since that first view of the problem and the problem has not reappeared since the Roku restart.

Thank you. 

[speechles 1919]

4 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

BTW: The bifs were not dim during FF/RW or any other instance where the bfs normally appear. But they return to dim after playback resumes.

Again it is like the bifs were embedded in the video during playback. But you may be right and this is a memory issue. It has, for now at least, been solved with the Roku restart and it may just somehow be a glitch never to be seen again but it was the kind of failure that, for me, is very perplexing.

The BIF exists in a thumbnail group. The group is supposed to just change visibility when you change visible=true to visible=false on that object. Since the thumbnails are inside a group we just change the visibility on the entire group. But what happens during low memory is the opacity on the parent object is lost. Because of this I believe the Roku no longer understands how to change objects that have lost their parent to fully invisible. There will remain a ghost of the image when it becomes visible=false. This can also happen with the homescreen and any other screen. They can exist over the videoplayer in this semi-transparent ghostly look. The object actually exists but the reference to the object is lost. It can never be destroyed the object that becomes ghostly. That is why a reboot is the only way to fix it. When these lost references happen it is actually a memory leak on the Roku. It can become confused about how much free memory it has and at that point it is unpredictable. These are not bugs in Emby, but bugs in the Roku. Roku does internal garbage collection and if the reference is deleted it is supposed to free up that memory from that object. But sometimes it just forgets the reference and doesn't release that memory.

 

Also the flashing of the BIF is caused by the timing it takes for the image to transfer from Emby server across to your Roku and get stored inside the texture memory. It is more a flicker and only occurs if you fast-forward or rewind. If you fast-forward the very last image will constantly flicker as it changes. It will have the image, then black out, then the new image, black out, then the new image. But you will see this happen on just the very last BIF image as you fast forward. Since that last location is the first time the image is loaded onto the screen when fast-forwarding you will see delay as the image loads across the network to the Roku. If you fast-forward very quickly that flickering will become very noticeable. It also does this when rewind. The first image instead will flicker because it is the first place new images are loaded into the thumbnails. When you reverse the new BIF are shown on the left aka the first image. When you fast-forward the new images are on the right aka the last image. If you look at the BIF as they load in you will see this flicker only occurs ever on the first or last image. Never on the ones in the middle. You wonder why? The images in the middle have already been cached. They are first loaded on the very edge left or right. That is why they flicker there.  The solution is to create new thumbnail image placements for BIF in 1 pixel width on the very left and right edges. It adds two more BIF thumbnails but ones you really cannot see. Just to stop the flashing. The texture cache will load the BIF as their original size. It won't cache at 1 pixel width. So when it display in the place it used to flicker it no longer flickers. After this fix you can fast-forward and rewind as quick as you want and you will never see the flicker. The flicker occurs when the image is displayed as that 1 pixel wide on the extreme edge. You may not notice the flickering because you are just used to it. Look closely and you will see it. We already fixed that in our Alpha builds. That is what I was saying earlier about the fix. Not that we can fix the Roku bugs. Hope you understand.

 

https://community.roku.com/t5/Discussions/Memory-leak-during-binge-watching-episodes/td-p/883480

Edited January 3 by speechles