Animation stops

[viveksrathod1987-dotcom]

The wallpaper sometimes stops lop and becomes still. I have samsung galaxy s23, I have turned off all battery saving for this app and given unlimited access.

[maocide]

Hi @viveksrathod1987-dotcom and thanks for letting me know.

You are describing the issue I am targeting with the next release (v1.1.3). I think it is the same problem as #20.

On some devices, the hardware video decoder can sometimes get "stuck" or silently reclaimed by the system, leaving the image frozen even though the app thinks it is playing.

I have just finished implementing a "Stall Watchdog" specifically for this. It monitors the video position and if it detects the wallpaper has frozen for more than a few seconds, it will automatically restart the engine to recover playback.

The update should be out soon. I'll ping you here when it's ready to test!

One quick question: Do you happen to know the resolution or format of the video causing this (e.g., 4K, 60fps)? Or does it happen with every video you try?

[DmitryLark]

hello, i use 4k aerial apple tv screensavers that cause this issue, they are 30fps 4k hevc videos. try yourself one of those, after your question i converted one video to 1080 30 h.264 and so far no freezes was detected. i am on pixel 8.

[maocide]

Thanks @DmitryLark! This is really useful data, especially now that I am testing some solutions.

The fact that converting 4K HEVC into 1080p H.264 fixes the issue on consolidates what I think: high quality codecs and high resolutions are causing the system to aggressively reclaim the hardware decoder from the wallpaper service (which runs at a lower priority than foreground apps).

The Stall Watchdog I am adding in v1.1.3 is designed for situations like this, which are otherwise hard to catch. If the decoder freezes while the app is supposed to be playing, the watchdog will detect it and restart the engine automatically.

Also thank you for providing some sample videos, they will make things clear.

I am doing more testing now. Hopefully, this update will allow people to run those high-res videos without the hassle of converting!

[maocide]

Update: Root Cause Found

I analyzed the video files provided by @DmitryLark and verified the specific cause locally.
The "cursed" videos are using the HEVC Main 10 profile (10-bit color depth).

Technical Details:

codec_name=hevc
profile=Main 10
pix_fmt=yuv420p10le

Explanation:
Decoding 10-bit color requires a specialized hardware pipeline. Android OS often prioritizes this high-end resource for foreground apps (like YouTube/Netflix) and reclaims it from background services (like this wallpaper) to save power, causing the stop.

The Fix:
The Stall Watchdog in the upcoming v1.1.3 is confirmed to be the correct solution. It will detect when the OS reclaims the decoder and automatically restart the engine to recover playback.

(Ideally, converting videos to standard 8-bit H.264 avoids the issue entirely, but the update will handle these files).

[viveksrathod1987-dotcom]

Sorry for the late reply I used a normal HD video. If you want I can provide the video. I am attaching screenshot of the resolution

[maocide]

Hello @viveksrathod1987-dotcom, no worries, thank you for the screenshot!

That is very interesting. Your video is standard 720p H.264, which is light and should be effortless for the S23 to play.

Since the video file itself is standard, this means that specifically on Samsung devices, the system is sometimes silently cutting off the video decoder resources even when there is no heavy load. This is seems like a specific behavior of OneUI's background resource management.

The good news is that the Stall Watchdog doesn't care why it stopped, it just detects that it has stopped. So, even in this case where the video is fine but the system freezes it, the Watchdog will kick in and restart playback automatically.

I am testing this solution right now.

[maocide]

Update: v1.1.3 is Live

Hi @viveksrathod1987-dotcom and @DmitryLark,
I released 1.1.3 just yesterday on Play Store. This update includes the Stall Watchdog we discussed.

What to expect:
The app now monitors playback continuously. If your device/Android tries to stop the decoding by reclaiming resources the Watchdog should detect the freeze in about 4 seconds.
The video engine in that situation should be automatically restarted, you might see a quick flicker, but the wallpaper should recover on its own instead of staying frozen.

Please let me know if this solves anything for you! I will keep this issue open.

[DmitryLark]

hi, i reinstalled a new version asap, but it still stops hevc and not resuming it at all. so i pre render myself h264 2k vertical crops from those videos.

[maocide]

Thanks for updating me @DmitryLark!

I also tried to test your video for long on my device, but I could not replicate that at all unfortunately.
Actually, your update at least makes me think the app is still playing (so my current Watchdog doesn't trigger), but the hardware decoder has actually stopped sending new frames to the screen.

Next Steps:
Currently I am checking playtime to detect a stall, but the component is reporting it progressing normally. I will reattempt by targeting Surface Texture Timestamps directly. Basically, instead of checking the player component I will check if the GLRenderer is actually receiving frames to draw.

For now, re-encoding like you did seems a good workaround and indication it is specific to some combinations of codec and devices. I will keep this issue open as a tracker for the newer Watchdog implementation in a future update.