Screen flashing black when playing fullscreen videos

Silentninja914

I recently downloaded and started using Vivaldi only a few days ago. Everything was fine until my screen started flashing when playing fullscreen videos. I proceeded to r/vivaldibrowser on Reddit to ask them. They suggested the following:

Add Vivaldi as a game in GPU settings so Vivaldi doesn't use freesync.
Outcome: Geforce Experience does not recognize Vivaldi at all and doesn't even show its files.
Disable vsync in GPU settings.
Outcome: Issue still occured.
Disable hardware acceleration.
Outcome: Made Vivaldi run extremely slow comparing it to a Slideshow presentation.

This may seem like something minor to others, but I see this as a major bug that needs to be fixed soon. If I cannot find a fix for this I will have to switch back to Chrome.

floweringmind

I have complained about the video issues for quite sometime. I get artifacts all over my screen watching some videos. Now it has gotten hellish where the browser is becoming unusable. Today I scrolled down reddit and the entire browser window goes black. I wish they would stop adding features and actually fix the bugs. When I use Chrome or Firefox this doesn't happen. I have all my extension disabled.

mib2berlin

@Silentninja914
Hi, no issues at all on 3 different systems with AMD, Nvidia and Intel hardware.
Check this with a clean or, at least with a guest profile.
Please add a link to such a video and your GPU specs.
@floweringmind
I guess nobody report it to the bug tracker or they could not reproduce it.

Cheers, mib

Silentninja914

@mib2berlin
Thank you very much for answering and being willing to help. While for the moment I can provide you with my GPU specs, the reproduction of the problem is going to all depend on luck sadly. There just isn't an exact action that recreates the flashing. It happens at random times while watching any fullscreen video be it on YouTube or other sites. I will try my best to get that information for you though.

GPU Specs:
Name: Nvidia GTX 1050ti
DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Display Device
Approx. Memory Total: 11662 MB
Display Memory (VRAM): 4018 MB
Shared Memory: 7644 MB
Current Display Mode: 2560 x 1440 (32bit) (144Hz)
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
HDR: Not Supported

mib2berlin

@Silentninja914
Thanks, I use a RTX 2060 and never saw a black flash watching Youtube, for example.
A quick search for "Chrome black flashing" gives me hundreds of pages and how to solve it.
Except disable HW acceleration, some mention to disable smooth scrolling, you can try this.
Open
vivaldi://flags/#smooth-scrolling
and disable it.

Btw. I can watch videos in HD or 4K without HW acceleration on the system in my signature were 4K starts lagging a bit.
Anyway, the problem with such issues is only some user have this on some systems sometimes, therefor it cant be fixed by the developer.
It is like a loose contact for an electronics technician, you can get crazy to find it.
What I always do is:
Use only the original driver from Nvidia not the ones Windows provide
Test in a clean profile or the guest view
Open only one tab during testing
Watch my videos in Chrome and do the rest in Vivaldi

https://help.vivaldi.com/article/guest-view/

Cheers, mib

Silentninja914

@mib2berlin
Yea, I had looked this up as well and while results came up, none of them worked as I stated in my first post. Though it doesn't happen to everyone, it seems there are enough people with the problem that the developers should at least glance at it. I know you said this couldn't not be fixed by them, but it looks like it could to me. Seeing that this screen flashing does not occur on any other web browser I have ever used. Now, I don't have a lot of experience in HTML or web design in general, but Vivaldi is based on Chromium which is the same thing Chrome uses and the flashing doesn't occur there. All in all I'm a kind of guy that likes his pc streamlined where I like to optimize and make even the most minor problems work.

mib2berlin

@Silentninja914
Hi again, you can report it to the bug tracker and link this thread to it.
I guess the developer have test systems with Nvidia cards.
After a while you can ask about the status of the report:

https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/27450/what-is-the-status-of-vb-already-reported-bug-issue/

For information on how to report a bug, see this URL: https://vvld.in/how-to-report-bugs
Once that is done, please share the bug number (beginning with VB-). Thanks.
On the form, you can add your email address. Once submitted, you'll get a confirmation. You can reply to this with any logs or further info.

Cheers, mib