Videos is choppy, doesn't play, or displays blank black screen

[shea-sollars]

Describe the bug
On first install, it would just show an image of the video. It seems like it would play just a couple frames and then stop.

I changes some settings, and managed to completely break it after going to Advanced > Reset Aerial. After that it just showed a black screen.

I uninstalled it, deleted the AppData folders in Local and Roaming, and then reinstalled it. I had the same issue, where it would only play the first couple of frames and then stop.

Since then, I have changed Video Resolution to H.265 1080p, because my computer seems to support it. This didn't do anything.

I have turned on Multiscreen > Alternate Render Method. This allowed the video to play, but extremely choppy. So I lowered it to 15 FPS, and it was able to play, but it's not really worth it at 15 FPS. So I changed it to 30 FPS, and it plays, but still choppy.

I turned on Automatically download checked videos to cache, and changed Video Cache > Move Location to %USER%\Videos\Aerial. Then I clicked on Update cache. (All videos are fully downloaded as of writing this)

I see the videos come in, so I opened 5 of them in VLC, maximized, and layered them so they were all visible. Every instance of VLC played the videos smoothly. This seems to rule out that my GPU is too trashy.

Other than that, I'm using all of the default settings.

To Reproduce
Some info about my system:
I'm using a Dell OptiPlex 5000 micro PC. Overview of the PC: https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/servicetag/0-RGRsNllOWlNPQ2NvbEJ6clhkbDNqdz090/overview

I'm using two 4k monitors that are connected via display port.

My display resolution is 4k. (I tried H.265 4k also)

I'm using Windows 10, and all of my drivers are up to date.

Aerial Version
What version of Aerial are you running?
1.2.1

Edit:
I think it's also worth noting that I was previously using this version of Aerial, which worked flawlessly.

[Serviola]

Same issue here.

[Citratdz]

Any solution to this yet? The old aerial.scr runs smoothly. But the new version is buggy, video freeze in multiple screen. Change fps only result in bad play quality. But the old scr version cannot add time date text on screen. Hopefully there is a tweak to it.

[eblikstad]

Same issue here on Windows 11 and Ryzen 7 6800U APU.

[OrangeJedi]

One thing you can try is using Advanced > Disable all video processing. It will turn off some feature (like fading), but will speed up video playback. Barring that, I will spend some time looking into faster video rendering.

As an aside, I would guess that the h.264 videos would use less processing power, but I don't know if that would make much of a difference.