Stuttering and low FPS during cutscenes

[Dante]

Bought the game on the sale, immediately had problems with it.
Downloaded the FAR fix, but for some reason I still get huge frame drops (down to 8 or 12 FPS) when a cutscene is going on. I tried to use the NieRepack fix as well, but that didn't seem to help. I have tried to put the game on the highest settings and the lowest, it didn't change anything. Even though the video stutters during cutscenes, I can hear the audio just fine.

An odd thing I noticed using steam's fps counter, is that just as I open the game - when the logo of platinum and square enix shows up - the FPS goes down to 9 just like when a cutscene is going on. When the title screen, menu or when playing the game itself, there are no issues, I get a pretty stable 50-60FPS.

My drivers are up to date as well (using AMD Readon R9 200), my resolution is on 1920/1080, I have two monitors, the one which I use for the game is 144hz (I think).

Hope this gives you guys enough information the help me solve this problem.

[Aemony]

Disable Busy-Wait Sleep in the control panel of FAR (press CTRL+Shift+Backspace when in-game) and see if any difference occurs.

If not, open dxgi.ini and set RefreshRate to the refresh rate of your monitor and see if it changes anything.

[Minneyar]

The cutscenes are pre-rendered video at 30 fps, and FAR has no effect on them.

If the rest of the game runs at 60 fps, then I'd expect you to be able to play cutscenes just fine. I don't know if a 144 Hz monitor might have an effect on it; just as an experiment, you might try disconnecting that monitor and playing on the other one (assuming it's 60 Hz) to see if it has the same problem.

[Aemony]

Originally posted by Minneyar:

The cutscenes are pre-rendered video at 30 fps, and FAR has no effect on them.

This is incorrect. The busy-wait sleep method that is enabled by default in FAR fixes the cutscenes stuttering that was caused by the ineffective sleep method that the game by default uses.

[Dante]

Originally posted by Aemony:

Disable Busy-Wait Sleep in the control panel of FAR (press CTRL+Shift+Backspace when in-game) and see if any difference occurs.

If not, open dxgi.ini and set RefreshRate to the refresh rate of your monitor and see if it changes anything.

Already tried turning the Busy-Wait on and off, but I will try again. as to the ini file, it's currently at "RefreshRate=-1"
what should I change it to?

[Aemony]

Originally posted by Dante:

Originally posted by Aemony:

Disable Busy-Wait Sleep in the control panel of FAR (press CTRL+Shift+Backspace when in-game) and see if any difference occurs.

If not, open dxgi.ini and set RefreshRate to the refresh rate of your monitor and see if it changes anything.

Already tried turning the Busy-Wait on and off, but I will try again. as to the ini file, it's currently at "RefreshRate=-1"
what should I change it to?

144 if you're playing on your 144 Hz monitor. The game defaults to 60 Hz, so chancing that parameter in dxgi.ini is the only way to get another refresh rate.

[Dante]

Originally posted by Aemony:

Originally posted by Dante:

Already tried turning the Busy-Wait on and off, but I will try again. as to the ini file, it's currently at "RefreshRate=-1"
what should I change it to?

144 if you're playing on your 144 Hz monitor. The game defaults to 60 Hz, so chancing that parameter in dxgi.ini is the only way to get another refresh rate.

niether had any effect, the cutscenes still stutter.

[Aemony]

Do you have some form of third-party codec pack installed? Occasionally those can use a too high priority on some codecs that then interfereces with cutscenes in games.

[Dante]

Originally posted by Aemony:

Do you have some form of third-party codec pack installed? Occasionally those can use a too high priority on some codecs that then interfereces with cutscenes in games.

not sure what would count as a codec, would the VLC media player count?

[Aemony]

No, the VLC media player doesn't interfere with the global DirectShow settings of the OS.

Could you upload your game data\logs\dxgi.log and modules.log to pastebin.com and link them here? I'm out of ideas so I want to see if there's a third-party application that might be interfering in some way.

[Dante]

Originally posted by Aemony:

No, the VLC media player doesn't interfere with the global DirectShow settings of the OS.

Could you upload your game data\logs\dxgi.log and modules.log to pastebin.com and link them here? I'm out of ideas so I want to see if there's a third-party application that might be interfering in some way.

I played until the first cutscene and then quit the game. note that I can pretty much predict whether or not the cutscene gonna lag based on the logo at the begining of the game - if it lags, then the cutscene is probably gonna lag as well.
https://pastebin.com/3EUbsszW

[Aemony]

Originally posted by Dante:

Originally posted by Aemony:

No, the VLC media player doesn't interfere with the global DirectShow settings of the OS.

Could you upload your game data\logs\dxgi.log and modules.log to pastebin.com and link them here? I'm out of ideas so I want to see if there's a third-party application that might be interfering in some way.

I played until the first cutscene and then quit the game. note that I can pretty much predict whether or not the cutscene gonna lag based on the logo at the begining of the game - if it lags, then the cutscene is probably gonna lag as well.
https://pastebin.com/3EUbsszW

Could you post the modules.log as well?

As for that dgxi.log, I couldn't see any particular thing wrong with it. I noticed that you have your Intel GPU installed, I assume this is in a desktop with the Intel GPU integrated on the CPU? If you don't use the motherboard monitor ports then you can uninstall the drivers for the Intel GPU. I doubt it's the cause, but doing so would remove an unnecessary part of your computer that might only cause conflicts.

[Kaldaien]

Busy-waiting is enabled by default at a different level in Special K now.

Under the Advanced tab of the framerate limiter, there's Sleepless render thread and Sleepless window thread. Turn those off if you don't have very many CPU cores. They improve performance and stability on most systems.

[Kaldaien]

More than likely, setting the refresh rate to 144 is the problem.

The greatest common factor between 144 and 60 is 12, which ... is precisely where the game is running at. Don't use 144 Hz, it's evil.

[Aemony]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

More than likely, setting the refresh rate to 144 is the problem.

The greatest common factor between 144 and 60 is 12, which ... is precisely where the game is running at. Don't use 144 Hz, it's evil.

It it? I was under the impression that the game forces 60 Hz in full screen mode unless overridden using FAR, despite the desktop refresh rate in Windows?

[Kaldaien]

The end-user forced a 144 Hz refresh rate according to the logs. The game wanted 59, but he selected 144.