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Black Screen instead of displaying videos #1389

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Rob-Sherer opened this issue Jan 31, 2025 · 13 comments
Open

Black Screen instead of displaying videos #1389

Rob-Sherer opened this issue Jan 31, 2025 · 13 comments

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@Rob-Sherer
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I seem to have what seems to be a common issue, in that I only get a black screen, rather than any videos playing, although occasionally it does seem to work.

I have turned on the additional logging, but as far as I can see there are no actual errors in the log. The latest log shows the following:

2025-01-31 18:45:03.123 : 🖼️ AVinit (.saver) (0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0) p: true o: true
2025-01-31 18:45:03.138 : Running under companion in preview mode, preventing setup
2025-01-31 18:45:03.152 : child count 3
2025-01-31 18:45:03.169 : /PWC2 wdl
2025-01-31 18:45:03.185 : 🖼️ <AerialView: 0x131f30480> AVdeinit
2025-01-31 18:45:03.202 : reload sidebar
2025-01-31 18:45:03.218 : child count 3
2025-01-31 18:45:03.234 : empty set
2025-01-31 18:45:03.250 : NPrs
2025-01-31 18:45:05.579 : arm64
2025-01-31 18:45:05.617 : arm64

(this is in ArielCompanionlog.txt, there is another log called Ariellog.txt but that hasn't updated today)

Any ideas what could be causing the problem?
@Pcar17
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Pcar17 commented Jan 31, 2025 via email

@glouel
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glouel commented Feb 1, 2025 •
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Ok so let's separate a couple of things.

  • If you JUST see a black screen (no overlays), then macOS's legacyScreenSaver has crashed.

Easy fix : Open Activity Monitor, filter for legacyScreenSaver, force kill it. Retry and it should be good. Sometimes it crashed so bad that only a restart can fix it, but it's extremely rare afaik.

  • You see overlays but no video. Then it's an Aerial issue, it's usually a corrupted video file causing it. Going through the cache and checking the files is your best bet, or if you use your own videos, check they all play correctly in Quicktime

(this is in ArielCompanionlog.txt, there is another log called Ariellog.txt but that hasn't updated today)
Any ideas what could be causing the problem?

@Rob-Sherer because you don't see the regular log (AerialLog.txt) updated, this is what you are experiencing (case 1), legacyScreenSaver is stuck. So try steps above.

@Pcar17 can you check with the logs or overlay in which case you are ?

@Rob-Sherer
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Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, I do just see a black screen, but I don't see legacyScreenSaver in Activity Monitor. I always shut down my machine at the end of the day, too, so it's been rebooted. I will check again to be sure though, the next time this happens.

@glouel
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glouel commented Feb 1, 2025

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, I do just see a black screen, but I don't see legacyScreenSaver in Activity Monitor. I always shut down my machine at the end of the day, too, so it's been rebooted. I will check again to be sure though, the next time this happens.

Try to check if you get a preview in System Settings or not and let me know. If you don't have legacyScreenSaver hanging, it should run (and create a log) for both System Settings or running the saver itself.

No log means macOS is not launching it and something is stuck there (usually legacyScreenSaver but sometimes, though it's extremely rare from what I've seen, it can sometimes be macOS fully denying the screensavers to launch). Log is key in any case, keep me posted.

@Rob-Sherer
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Yes, if I do a preview in the System Settings that does work ok. Other screensavers do work ok to, it's just seems to be Ariel that has a black screen. I was wondering the same thing as what you said, something seems to be preventing it from launching.

@glouel
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glouel commented Feb 1, 2025

So 3rd party screensavers are treated differently, Apple's built in screensavers usually work fine, so it's not a good comparison. You can try another 3rd party one if you want like : https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/download.html

This should confirm it's legacyScreenSaver that blocks or not.

@Rob-Sherer
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I've actually done that already, all of those screensavers work fine, as it goes. Although I have noticed they install in a different directory, not sure if that makes a difference.

@glouel
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glouel commented Feb 1, 2025

Hmm. Can you quickly restart your mac, see if that fixes it ? My best guess is that legacyScreenSaver is refusing to launch it.

You could also try opening Console.app, start logging, launch the screen saver and try to find if any error pops then.

@Rob-Sherer
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Thanks, let me try that a little bit later.

@Rob-Sherer
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It has just worked, although for some reason it didn't display my music that was playing in the background, although I have seen that working before.

Do you need to see any logs to compare it with when it didn't work?

@Pcar17
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Pcar17 commented Feb 4, 2025 via email

@cryptochrome
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I have the exact same issue (blank screen only, no overlays). No legacy screensaver process in activity viewer. Preview in system settings is also blank.

It's intermittent, meaning, this issue pops up, then disappears again, then re-appears, and so on. No pattern.

@Rob-Sherer
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Yes, the same as me, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, and I can't see any pattern.

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4 participants
@cryptochrome @glouel @Pcar17 @Rob-Sherer