Video is black on macOS (M4 Mac mini)

[tunerfush]

I just got myself a new Mac mini and I wanted to test out the RR performance on it, but it doesn't display the video - it just shows up as black. The audio works fine, but no video.

The video is h264 and plays just fine in QuickTime.

Does anyone have any hints as to what this might be, or how to fix it?

Computer is an M4 Mac mini. I know there's no optimization for apple silicon, but I at least expected it to work...

[aUser]

Interesting ... I was thinking of making the same move. Perhaps try running it under a VM for an older OS version. I'm currently still running Mac OS 10.12.6 ... runs slowly on older system, but works. Running it that way (or some newer OS) under a VM would still likely be blindingly fast compared to the older Intel-based systems.

UPDATE:
But there's also this to contend with (and it may even be related to your issue):
https://eclecticlight.co/2024/11/14/...e-older-macos/

[2fast4you]

That's interesting! Proplem description sounds like on Windows: https://forum.hptuners.com/showthrea...ck-loaded-HEVC

[aUser]

OK, looks like running any Intel-based OS in a VM on Apple silicon will not (ever) work ... so that's out.

Looking at your post in more detail, I was wondering:

- if it's the incoming video that won't play, is the video in HEVC format _and_ have you tried a video in H.264 format (HEVC or H.265 format is a known issue with RR3 so I set my dashcams to H.264 mode)?

- if it's the generated video that won't play, what format are you generating and have you tried other formats?

Assuming you can get it to run and generate a video, I'd also be interested to hear about:

- the speed of the video generation compared to your previous Intel system, but please be specific about both the format being generated and about which model/year/processor/etc. your previous Intel Mac was and what your current Mini is (so some extrapolation can be estimated)

- how's the heat situation ... does the Mini get hot, does it have/ramp-up a fan (BTW, it'd be interesting to know whether the freebie FanControl also works on the mini as I've used it for many years to keep my Intel Macs cool and they've been lasting a very long time: https://www.derman.com/Fan-Control)

[2fast4you]

The source video is shown black in RR3.
But it is solved just by reinstalling an older version of the HEVC codec package.

[aUser]

The source video is shown black in RR3.
But it is solved just by reinstalling an older version of the HEVC codec package.

Can you provide more detail ... what/where/etc. is that older version?

Can you share any responses to the other performance/heat-generation questions I asked?

[tunerfush]

No, this isn't the same problem as windows - that issue is related to the hevc / h265 format. I'm not using that format, I'm using h264. I'm also not using a VM.

> OK, looks like running any Intel-based OS in a VM on Apple silicon will not (ever) work ... so that's out.

I'm not running on a VM

> if it's the incoming video that won't play, is the video in HEVC format _and_ have you tried a video in H.264 format (HEVC or H.265 format is a known issue with RR3 so I set my dashcams to H.264 mode)?

No, it's not hevc, it's h264. From ffprobe:

Duration: 00:11:04.68, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 28635 kb/s
Stream #0:0[0x1](eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuvj420p(pc, bt709, progressive), 2562x1440 [SAR 4095:4096 DAR 116571:65536], 28494 kb/s, SAR 8112:8113 DAR 169:95, 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 60k tbn (default)

> if it's the generated video that won't play, what format are you generating and have you tried other formats?

The input video is missing, not the output video

> Assuming you can get it to run and generate a video, I'd also be interested to hear about...

Me too! I've tested FFmpeg with and without hardware encoding and it's very fast. 2x faster than my Windows PC (8-core i7-11850H @ 2.5GHz, 64Gb), 4x Faster when using hardware encoding. On the M4 hardware encoding doesn't touch the CPU, and when using software encoding I've pegged the CPU at 100% for 20 mins and the fan is only audible if you listen really carefully from about a foot away. Even pegging the CPU it doesn't seem to get hot at all, barely warm (so far).

RaceRender doesn't using 100% CPU on my PC, so I don't expect it to be much faster on the M4 tbh, but I need it to run!!

I've not run RaceRender on my other macs since they're slower than my PC. I just use the fastest hardware ��

RaceRender is annoyingly old and janky, but it's a great tool. It'll be really frustrating if I have to switch to Telemetry Overlay - I really like my RR template: https://youtu.be/v_SC09HjVGA

[aUser]

Thanks for the more detailed info. I mistakenly thought you had gotten it running on the Mini M4.

BTW, is yours an M4 or M4 Pro chip? Getting RaceRender running will determine whether I buy a top-end Mini M4. I agree that it's old and buggy, but still can do things that nothing else can do. It's a shame that HPtuners won't let some developer update it (people _have_ offered) ... or, if they're done with it, put it out as open source.

I see there's a Pro Video Formats v2.3.2 update that was recently released and I wonder whether that would help?

[tunerfush]

Well I finally discovered the issue and it took me ages.

When I resized the input videos to 1440, the aspect ratio was not quote square (4095:4096 = 0.9998). RaceRender on windows (and all other video apps on every platform) don't care, but it causes race render to not work on macOS. I hadn't realized, but the issue was also present on my old mac mini with an intel chip, so it was unrelated to the M4.

For the techy folk, this is the output of ffprobe with the broken video:

Stream #0:0[0x1](eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuvj420p(pc, bt709, progressive), 2562x1440 [SAR 4095:4096 DAR 116571:65536], 28494 kb/s, SAR 8112:8113 DAR 169:95, 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 60k tbn (default)

And the fixed video:
Stream #0:0[0x1](eng): Video: hevc (Main) (hvc1 / 0x31637668), yuvj420p(pc, bt709, progressive), 2562x1440 [SAR 1:1 DAR 427:240], 12603 kb/s, 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 60k tbn (default)

As for performance, RaceRender isn't very good at using multiple cores, so it seems to cap out at about 20% CPU on any of my machines, but here's some very rough benchmarks:

Mac mini Core i7" (3615QM) 2.3 (Late 2012): 7fps
Windows / 8-core i7-11850H @ 2.5GHz, 64Gb: 16fps
M4 mac mini: 24fps

Actual hardware video encoding is waaaaaay faster, this is just what RaceRender is capable of, but it's good to see that the M4 is easily the fastest computer I have.

In case you care (you probably don't) this is what I'm using to rescale the input video to 1440p.

hevc apple silicon: ffmpeg -hwaccel videotoolbox -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=-1:1440,setsar=1:1" -c:v hevc_videotoolbox -vtag hvc1 output.mp4
h264 apple silicon: ffmpeg -hwaccel videotoolbox -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=-1:1440,setsar=1:1" -c:v h264_videotoolbox output.mp4

hevc standard: ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=-1:1440,setsar=1:1" -c:v libx265 -vtag hvc1 output.mp4
h264 standard: ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=-1:1440,setsar=1:1" -c:v libx264 output.mp4

[aUser]

Thanks for the detailed update. Good to hear that you found the issue _and_ that the M4 is much faster.

QUESTIONs
---
- are the ffmpeg scaling commands you provided the ones that generated the non-working or the working video

- out of curiosity, what are you (down?)scaling from

I wonder whether ffmpeg also provides the underlying mechanisms used by RaceRender and whether what you've found is actually an ffmpeg bug?

[tunerfush]

> are the ffmpeg scaling commands you provided the ones that generated the non-working or the working video

Working. The important part is "setsar=1:1"

> out of curiosity, what are you (down?)scaling from

GoPro 2.7k: 2704 x 1520

Edit: I scale down because I store all my raw video, and the go pro files are way to big. I join the video together (using ffmpeg of course), then convert the single file. It goes from ~15Gb to ~3Gb for a session. If I need to re-encode, I just use the downsampled versions - the quality is almost identical to my eyes.

> I wonder whether ffmpeg also provides the underlying mechanisms used by RaceRender and whether what you've found is actually an ffmpeg bug?

Very unlikely
- ffmpeg reads the via with SAR 4095:4096 perfectly
- almost every piece of video playback, transcoding, deciding and encoding software that exists uses ffmpeg
- ffmpeg by default will max CPU usage by default, and RaceRender doesn't

Strong odds that RR is at fault... Ask the windows guys that want to decode HEVC when every other piece of video software works just fine.

[aUser]

Thanks, again, for all the nice work and detailed responses. It's useful. My son is in the process of ordering an M4 Mini so I'll beg some playtime with it before making my move. If I learn anything interesting, I'll do a post.