Bug 283284

Summary: kslideshow transitions sometimes slow, no choices
Product: [Unmaintained] kscreensaver Reporter: clickwir631
Component: screensaversAssignee: kscreensaver bugs tracking <kscreensaver-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE    
Severity: wishlist CC: 2bitoperations, aaronjg, christopherheiny, dirk.heinrichs, falolaf, galdralag, jhthayer, jynyl, kdebug, paul, phonic_p, rdieter
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Ubuntu   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description clickwir631 2011-10-03 23:14:00 UTC
Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.7.1) 
OS:                Linux

Sometimes, maybe one or two of the transitions for kslideshow are slow or at least take a while to perform. It would be REALLY REALLY nice to have a simple way to choose which (if any) transitions it uses. 

This isn't an issue that I've seen just recently, I've seen it off and on over the past year on a few systems that we have. One of the small dithering/pixel transitions seems to take a lot longer than the others. 

I'm using Kubuntu 11.10 Beta 2. KDE 4.7.1 and KSlideShow is 2.3.0

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
Enable KSlideshow, give it some images to loop. Watch.


Expected Results:  
Average time for a transition to be uniform across all transitions. Also choices for what transitions to use, if any.
Comment 1 Jon Trulson 2011-10-16 21:46:08 UTC
I am in the same boat as the OP.  I am running Kubuntu 11.10.  Some of these transitions take a very long time to complete, and all 4 cores are around 60% (logged in remotely to watch). 

In addition, when unlocking the screen when one of these slow transitions is running, sometimes it takes 10-15 seconds before my desktop appears.   

In 11.04, while some transitions were slow, they would always be 'force completed' within a short time.  I have my pics set to switch every 10 seconds.  In 11.10, this no longer seems to be the case.

I would love to be able to:

A) return to the 'quick transition' behavior I had in 11.04, 

AND/OR 

B) have the option of turning off these transitions completely.
Comment 2 Dirk Heinrichs 2011-10-18 07:48:47 UTC
/me too. Especially slow are those transitions which change only very small parts of the picture (i.e. pixelwise transitions). I for one would like to see the pictures, not the transitions ;)
Comment 3 Jon Trulson 2011-10-18 17:31:49 UTC
Ok, so I downloaded the source code (kdeartwork) and took a quick peek.  Apparently there is an undocumented option to disable the transitions.

Edit ~/.kde/share/config/kslideshow.kssrc and add the following in the [Settings] section:

EffectsEnabled=false

This turns off the transitions completely.  It's at least usable again.  

This option should be documented and added to the Setup screen.  

Perhaps when I have some time I'll try to see why some of these are so unusably slow.  But for now, I'm happy to be able to turn them off completely :)
Comment 4 phonic_p 2011-10-25 02:01:39 UTC
As the others above have noted, I too have issues with the slowness of the transitions effects. Thank you Jon Trulson for showing us how to turn off the transitions.  I hope someone recodes this with adjustable effects and transition times.
Comment 5 Peter Hewett 2011-10-28 19:22:24 UTC
Agree.  This is a very annoying bug, and it seems to have appeared in Kubuntu 11.10 (11.04 was ok).  It is especially annoying that the screensaver takes ages to stop when a user returns to the box.
It is a good suggestion to have the effects able to be turned on or off on the setup GUI.  An option to select duration of the transition effect would be nice, too.
Comment 6 Andrew M. 2012-01-09 18:34:12 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 7 falolaf 2012-01-31 06:06:02 UTC
I'm on openSUSE 12.1 and have just switched to KDE 4.8.0 and have this same problem. Some of the transitions are so slow that the monitor turns of before the transistion is done.

An option to be able to select what transitions to use would be super.

And of course make the slow transitions work again...
Comment 8 Christoph Feck 2012-02-10 17:04:22 UTC
*** Bug 293730 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 jhthayer 2012-02-18 19:50:41 UTC
I have been unable to find any joy using the recommendation from comment #3 above.  (fully up-to-date Lucid installation)  If anyone else has the same difficulty, or, better, an updated solution, please post!
Comment 10 Christopher Heiny 2012-02-28 00:51:52 UTC
This is a pretty appalling bug.  With transitions enabled, when the slideshow KDE screensaver is on X winds up using 75% to 80% of one CPU core, and kslideshow winds up using another core 40% to 50%.  And this is after the LCD itself has been turned off.  So basically it's using more than a core of compute power to do nothing at all.  

On the other hand, the comment #3 hack worked for me.
Comment 11 Rex Dieter 2012-02-28 16:30:41 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 182104 ***