Retroarch black screen with audio

[Thodi]

When starting Retroarch.exe through steam link I get a black screen with sound on my TV,
on my computer everything works just fine, it used to work perfectly without any troubles.

Fraps is not installed
nVidia Geforce Experience is uninstalled
Shadowplay was disabled before uninstalling Geforce Experience
Steam Broadcasting is disabled
Steam tried different In-Home-Streaming settings - no success

Steam Link: I tried both the current stable and latest beta build, same result.

Any ideas what to do?

[daninthemix]

What video driver you using in Retroarch? GL and Vulkan both work for me.

[Thodi]

Originally posted by daninthemix:

What video driver you using in Retroarch? GL and Vulkan both work for me.

Thank you for your response.
I am using GL, the problem with vulkan is that it's still not running entirely stable, especially not with n64 emulation.

edit:
Indeed I just tested it with vulkan and I get a picture. I don't understand why GL won't work. It used to work fine?
Any ideas?

[daninthemix]

Try going into the retroarch.cfg file and setting the shader to none (as in, just two quotation marks - "", get right of everything between them). Failing that, try deleting the retroarch.glsl file in the shaders folder.

[Thodi]

Originally posted by daninthemix:

Try going into the retroarch.cfg file and setting the shader to none (as in, just two quotation marks - "", get right of everything between them). Failing that, try deleting the retroarch.glsl file in the shaders folder.

thank you very much daninthemix! This sadly didn't help...

Accidentally I found a solution (the most awkward way) to get Retroarch to show a picture on my TV:
- Start Retroarch through Steam Link (still GL)
- Go to PC switch the video driver to D3D and close Retroarch
- Start Retroarch again and switch back to GL and close Retroarch
- Start Retroarch again and there is TV picture

I don't understand how this is possible though. It is quite ridiculous.

Thank you for your help! Hope this helps others too, although this is no permanent fix.

[daninthemix]

Have you tried NVFBC? And make sure NVFBC is actually working by turning on the performance overlay and streaming Retroarch. You need Geforce Experience. I got a black screen with mupen64plus until I turned on NVFBC.

[Thodi]

Originally posted by daninthemix:

Have you tried NVFBC? And make sure NVFBC is actually working by turning on the performance overlay and streaming Retroarch. You need Geforce Experience. I got a black screen with mupen64plus until I turned on NVFBC.

Thank you so much for your help!

Yes, actually that was one of the first things I deactivated to see whether or not it worked without this setting.

I just fully uninstalled my nvidia drivers and completely reinstalled them to see if there was a change but it seems there was no change at all, with NVFBC enabled and disabled.

The overlay is always enabled, I am not sure how to check whether NVFBC is being used or not. Is it the "NVENC"?

[daninthemix]

Yeah it should say something like "NVFBC + NVENC" if its enabled (which it needs to be).

[Thodi]

Originally posted by daninthemix:

Yeah it should say something like "NVFBC + NVENC" if its enabled (which it needs to be).

I don't understand why, but it is using "D3D10 NV12 + NVENC"

I am currently on the latest NVIDIA Driver on my GTX 980 Ti using Windows 10 Pro. The latest GeForce Experience is also installed.

This truly is puzzling...

[Thodi]

Originally posted by daninthemix:

Yeah it should say something like "NVFBC + NVENC" if its enabled (which it needs to be).

I was not able to activate NVFBC. But I rolled back my driver by simply uninstalling it from the device manager and rolling back to the default microsoft delivered driver and it works now.

[Marc Max]

I've been also trying to get RetroArch working on Steam Link.
RetroArch v1.5.0 works flawlessly with gl driver (except Mupen64Plus core, which fails when loading content for some reason).
But the latest version RetroArch v1.6.7 gives me a black screen. I can switch to vulkan video driver, but then all cores give very bad performance.

Anyone still with this problem?

I've mananged to make the GC/Wii emulator Dolphin work perfectly with no complex additional settings. Wish RetroArch wasn't giving so much trouble.

[Passatuner]

Funny I have the same problem today.. Worked until yesterday.. But I installed a new GPU, and since then its not running, updated from a 980ti to a 1080ti, and now this happens.. tried reinstalling drivers and nvfbc, remains black..

[Marc Max]

Here goes a few tips that may fix this issue:
* if your computer has two or more screens, disconnect all of them but the main screen
* if your screen has a 60hz refresh rate, set it to 75hz
* DISABLE BIG PICTURE: once Steam Link has connected to your computer, exit Big Picture (Alt+F4), then run RetroArch from the classic Steam menu, this helps A LOT.


I still can't get the Mupen64 core to work, but at least now it's stable with every other core I tested. By disabling Big Picture not only I managed to get RetroArch working flawlessly, but now Project64 works too (although I noticed a big input lag for some reason, I'll try to tweak its plugin)!

Hope this can help!

[Marc Max]

I managed to make the Mupen64Plus core to work!
It crashes when loading the core in full screen. Just switch to windowed mode (F) before loading any content, then you can switch fine to full screen (you can even change content without crashing).

[Nix99]

This is an old thread but thanks guys for pointing me in the right direction.

On the latest version of retroarch at the time of wrighting this (1.10.3) all emulators that try to render 3D crash through steam link but are fine on desktop.

Setting the video driver to vulken fixed the issue. All now work and play nice with big picture mode.

[sludgetrough]

Originally posted by Nix99:

This is an old thread but thanks guys for pointing me in the right direction.

On the latest version of retroarch at the time of wrighting this (1.10.3) all emulators that try to render 3D crash through steam link but are fine on desktop.

Setting the video driver to vulken fixed the issue. All now work and play nice with big picture mode.

I'm currently having this problem and would love some more detail. Where do I select this video driver? Is it at the windows level, the steam level, or within retroarch?