video playing stops in external display wallpaper mode

[suchsu]

Hi, I'm on v408 and macOS 26.5. MacBook Air M2 & redmi 4k display, connected directly via usb-C.
I noticed since v408, if I left my Mac sleep overnight, and the next morning when I get it back on, the wallpaper on external display stops playing(stuck), but on internal display all behaves well. I'm using clone mode. I downloaded all video and play them locally.
when internal display switch video, the wallpaper on external display changes to the first scene of the video, and not moving, I guess this is continuity working.
I tried to quite the wallpaper mode & restart, the problem remains, I quite aerial and restart aerial, problem disappeared.
please find logs here attached.
Logs.zip

[suchsu]

[glouel]

Thanks for your extremely detailed explanation ! I will have a look, it's possible that your display going to sleep (separately from your mac) is what is causing the issue if I had to guess.

I'll investigate and let you know !

Edit :

when internal display switch video, the wallpaper on external display changes to the first scene of the video, and not moving, I guess this is continuity working.

This is the most important part, so likely the "wallpaper window" is just lost somewhere, and continuity is doing it's job (replacing your background with the first frame at video start, so your menubar looks correctly colored)

This is peculiar :

I tried to quite the wallpaper mode & restart, the problem remains, I quite aerial and restart aerial, problem disappeared.

The fact that restarting wallpaper mode didn't work means at that point the app doesn't understand your second screen position. That's slightly concerning but I'll look at your log, it might make it obvious why it got it wrong, assuming you tried stop/start the wallpaper this morning, I'll check !

[suchsu]

That's slightly concerning but I'll look at your log, it might make it obvious why it got it wrong, assuming you tried stop/start the wallpaper this morning, I'll check !

sorry my debug attempts were after I uploaded logs, I was trying while I was writing this issue. I'll try to get another log when this reappears.

[glouel]

Your log is actually great I found a couple of issues, I have a couple of questions :

• When you say your mac is going to sleep overnight, do you close the lid to put it to sleep ? Or do you let it go to sleep on its own ?
• Do you manualy power off your Redmi screen ? Or does it go to sleep on its own ?

There are a few issues that I'm fixing right now but your log show the issues fairly clearly, basically the window is getting moved at the wrong place, and macOS "changes" the identifier for your screen which mess my attempts at fixing it when you stop/restart wallpaper only .

[glouel]

Looks like I may have managed to reproduce the bug by unplugging/replugging my monitor and my fix worked. I'll put out a new version soon, there's a lot of hardening on wallpaper it should help. There were some issues on auto pause getting messed up by this too but that's wasn't the main issue for you.

[glouel]

I released 4.0.9 which has a bunch of fixes for this, you'll let me know if it's better ! Thanks again for the log + explanation, that was super helpful.

[suchsu]

• When you say your mac is going to sleep overnight, do you close the lid to put it to sleep ? Or do you let it go to sleep on its own ?

my everyday routine is control+command+Q to lock screen and then close the lid and leave it to let it sleep on its own.

• Do you manualy power off your Redmi screen ? Or does it go to sleep on its own ?

no I let it sleep on its own.

I just updated to v409, and I'll recheck it by next Monday (I leave my laptop at work this weekend)

[glouel]

I'll assume it's good now ? There were a few regressions in 4.0.9, speed would reset to full speed on wake from sleep, and pause on battery didn't work correctly with the new detection system I put in place in that version. 4.0.10 should have a better fix for all those issues now. Let me know if you still hit issues, I don't have a laptop so it's not easy to track.

[suchsu]

I'll assume it's good now ? There were a few regressions in 4.0.9, speed would reset to full speed on wake from sleep, and pause on battery didn't work correctly with the new detection system I put in place in that version. 4.0.10 should have a better fix for all those issues now. Let me know if you still hit issues, I don't have a laptop so it's not easy to track.

Hi there, things works fine on my laptop for now, nothing strange happens.
I have one more observation, which occurs way back from alpha versions, that the video playback on lock screen is choppy, with noticeable dropped frames if the system run a long time, and the wall paper mode plays all normal. I didn't mention this cuz I wasn't able to find a clear way to recreate the problem, but since you asked, I bring it up anyway.
btw, this problem occurred on my Mac mini M2 & iMac M1 as well, maybe not related to external display connections.
hope you could probably dig it out from the logs I shared. thank you for your care and effort on this amazing tool.

[suchsu]

It just occurred, i took this video for you to understand what's going on.
and I'm on v40X now

[https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSQdGUc8q/](tiktok video)

[suchsu]

[https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSQdGUc8q/](tiktok video)

this is also an issue I noticed since alphas and still there, I don't know if it's under your control, but I bring it up anyway to give you information.
I live in Beijing, and on my other devices at home, the weather overlay shows Beijing Municipality(as photo I posted for #114 ), which is correct and understandable. but on my MacBook at work, it shows ChangQiao (as shown in the video), I don't even know where this name came from, as a Chinese person, I have never heard of any city, district or village called this, and based on its name, in Mandrin it might be 长桥, which means "long bridge", and it doesn't make sense ether, I garante that there's no such place in Beijing.
the overlay location settings are always based on my current location, and my current location is, I quote, "Aerial can access your location (latitude: 39.98, longitude: 116.42) and will use it to show you the correct videos."

[glouel]

this is also an issue I noticed since alphas and still there, I don't know if it's under your control, but I bring it up anyway to give you information. I live in Beijing, and on my other devices at home, the weather overlay shows Beijing Municipality(as photo I posted for #114 ), which is correct and understandable. but on my MacBook at work, it shows ChangQiao (as shown in the video), I don't even know where this name came from, as a Chinese person, I have never heard of any city, district or village called this, and based on its name, in Mandrin it might be 长桥, which means "long bridge", and it doesn't make sense ether, I garante that there's no such place in Beijing. the overlay location settings are always based on my current location, and my current location is, I quote, "Aerial can access your location (latitude: 39.98, longitude: 116.42) and will use it to show you the correct videos."

So, let me answer that one first.

The location name is returned by Openweather with the forecast, and they clearly mess it up. I live in a "large" city (for France at least) and it gets the name wrong too, it uses its medieval name that was changed 250 years ago !

As far as I can tell, it's just their geolocation that messes up, the weather forecast is correct but they return the wrong name most of the time. I do occasionally get the right name too, their servers are weird.

It's definitely annoying. I added a "Show city name" option for the weather overlay, you can uncheck it if it bothers you.

[glouel]

It just occurred, i took this video for you to understand what's going on. and I'm on v40X now

[https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSQdGUc8q/](tiktok video)

Ok thanks for the explanation and video, one thing that is interesting is that it's choppy, but in an uniform way, like it just skip frames all the time, not just it works, get choppy, works again, etc...

I will try to let it run overnight by disabling sleep to see if I can reproduce here. It's possible I have a memory leak or something that ends up causing this maybe ? Or something with the video decoding.

I do use hardware acceleration for playback so I'm not quite sure what could cause this, but I'll try to replicate.

One question, when that happens, do you hear the fan spinning on your mac/it gets hot ?

One thing that does happen when you let you mac run for a long time in screensaver mode is that macOS starts some tasks like Photo Library object recognition, Time Machine, and other Siri stuff. Historically that has caused issues on old Intel Macs. But as far as I know apart from your fan spinning a bunch, it's a non issue on M1+ macs.

This gets triggered when you upload a bunch of pictures, or most of the time after a macOS point update, mediaanalysisd will run the "new" face/object recognition on your whole library again, and that can take a while sometimes. I have a hard time believing it's enough to make a M1+ have choppy playback though !

I'll do my best to see if I can track this down, thanks for letting me know!

[suchsu]

On my Mac mini and iMac, i didn't notice any fun noises, and it's impossible to hear a fun noise on MacBook Air since it doesn't have one.

[suchsu]

It's definitely annoying. I added a "Show city name" option for the weather overlay, you can uncheck it if it bothers you.

Je savais pas que vous étiez en France, c'est pas vraiment un problème pour moi, je voulais juste vous tenir informer.
Merci pour votre réponse, vous êtes bienvenu à me répondre en français au futur si vous le préférez, je parle français aussi.
I didn't know that you were in France, it doesn't bother me, I'm just giving information.
Thx for your reply, you are welcomed to send future updates in French or English, I can speak both languages.