Rendering of plugins fails when using dual monitor setup with primary monitor to the right.

[mindbeat]

Problem description
I noticed that the rendering of the plugins breaks when using a dual monitor setup under Renoise with my primary screen to the right. It works as expected when I set the primary screen to the left.

Feels like a timing issue, cause it works 2 out of 10, with primary to the right, When closing and opening the plugin.
I notice the same behavior in both of my vst2 plugins. And it gets resolved set the primary to the left.

What did you expect to happen?
To render the plugin correctly

What actually happened?
Get a un-rendered window, mirroring the Renoise window.

System information

• Plugin: Z3TA+2, quadraSID ( The only vsts installed)
• Plugin type: VST2
• Host: Renoise 3.3.2
• Operating system: Linux Mint 20.1
• Wine version: wine-6.4 (Staging)
• GPU Nvidia 1060 - nvidia-driver-450
• Installation method: "Automatic setup"
• yabridge version: yabridge-3.0.2
• yabridgectl version 3.0.2

Debug log

In this log, the plugin at first rendered correctly, and then I closed it, and open it 4 more times, and then it did not display correctly, the 4 last times.
yabridge.log

Native plugins works, without this issue.

Else I just want to say thumbs up, for a epic, easy to use modern vst bridge.
Many thanks,

Dennis

[robbert-vdh]

Hi,

I don't have a second display available, so it's a bit difficult for me to debug this at the moment! Everything yabridge is doing should be deterministic, so that 2/10 chance you mentioned where it did work correctly on your second monitor would could indicate that Renoise creates the window on the primary display and then moves it to the secondary display. In the meantime, could you check what happens when you:

1. Drag the window around? So just pick up the window, move it a few pixels, and then let it go again. And also when dragging the window from your secondary display to your primary display.

2. Enable xembed support? This uses Wine's own XEmbed support for the embedding instead of yabridge's normal embedding method. The XEmbed implementation is kind of broken (and might also require you to reopen the window at least once to get it to display correctly) hence why it's hidden behind an option, but this avoids the only part of yabridge I could think of that could be causing this issue to happen. To enable this for all plugins (you'll probably want to undo this later), create a file called yabridge.toml next to your plugin's VST2 .dll files (likely in ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steinberg/VstPlugins with the following contents:

   # ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Steinberg/VstPlugins/yabridge.toml
   ["*"]
   editor_xembed = true

   When launching Renoise from a terminal and loading the plugin, you should see a config from: line telling you that the above file got loaded, and other options: should include something about xembed support.

[mindbeat]

Hello buddy,

Thanks for the quick feedback,

When I set the primary to the left, it also works in my right monitor. So that's my solution right now. It works for me :)

1. Dragging the window does not make any changes. The problem is on both displays with the "primary right" setting.
2. I tired the editor_xembed = true, and this seems to work, And it renders correctly. But that introduce another issue, now the mouse pointer y is like +50px off, and I have to click a littlebit above when using the plugin.

[robbert-vdh]

I've asked around on the Discord to see if there are any other people using multiple displays, maybe that will tell us whether this issue is an isolated case or if it also happens for everyone else. I couldn't get virtual X11 displays working on my desktop, but I'll have to try later if I can get it working on my laptop to see if I can replicate the issue (I also don't have a way to plug my monitor into my laptop). It could also be something related to your particular window manager setup, as a 50px y-offset does sound very odd (with editor_xembed = true Wine itself is responsible for making sure the plugin editor's screen coordinates match up with the window's position, and that works just fine here with Renoise 3.3.1, KDE Plasma and a single display).

[mindbeat]

Okay thanks.
I just double checked if I got a different behaviour changing the resolution. I'm using two 4K panels. But it did not make any difference.

I only got Cinnamon desktop installed right now, but I can test with some other desktop if you want :)

[mindbeat]

Okay, so I tested KDE Plasma desktop. It did not have this issue. So probably its related to the window manager Muffin, or the Cinnamon desktop.

Have a nice weekend!

[robbert-vdh]

That's actually very good to know! When I get around to checking this out (I'll have to either get virtual X11 displays working on my laptop or I'll have to go out and buy a DisplayPort to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 adapter) I'll at least know to focus Cinnamon, thanks!

[AquaMorph]

I have a three monitor setup and normally have the center set to be primary. I tried setting each monitor one by one as primary and open and closing the VST window multiple times as well as moving it between monitors. I didn't have any luck recreating this either. I'll post my system info here in case it is helpful for debugging.

System information

• Plugin: Valhalla Shimmer
• Plugin type: VST2
• Host: Bitwig 3.3.5
• Operating system: Fedora 33
• Window Manager: i3-gaps
• Wine version: wine-6.4 (Staging)
• GPU: Nvidia 1080 Ti driver 460.56
• Installation method: manual install
• yabridge version: yabridge-3.0.2

[robbert-vdh]

Small status update, but I've finally found some time to look into this. It took a bit of effort, but I've been able to replicate this with Renoise 3.3.2 on Cinnamon 4.8.6 when setting my laptop's (unconnected) HDMI-2 output to 1920x1080 and positioning that to the left of the main laptop's internal display, which is set as primary. This also seems to mess up Cinnamon itself, because this also causes the wallpaper to move off to the left, and even though the right display was the primary display new windows would still be created off screen on the 'virtual' HDMI output to the left. So I don't have a solution just yet, but at least I can now recreate this situation.

See below.

[robbert-vdh]

Or, well, never mind. The issue I've been seeing here is a pure Wine issue, and it doesn't have anything to do with yabridge. With this screen setup all Wine windows don't render the parts of the window that have not been visible on the leftmost monitor until you move it there. So if I run wine notepad.exe, move Notepad to the right screen, close it, and then run wine notepad.exe again so it opens on the rightmost screen (with the left screen still being virtual in my case), then the window will not render (like in your screenshot) until I move it to the left screen and then move it back. That might be a different issue from what you're seeing, but I'm sadly unable to reproduce that then.

So the issue in your case only happens on Cinnamon, but does it also only happen in Renoise? Have you tried in some other hosts like REAPER, Bitwig, and Carla (use carla-single vst3 ~/.vst3/yabridge/path-to-plugin-directory.vst3)?

[mindbeat]

I tried the same thing with Reaper and was able to reproduce the bug. You are probably right there, because in reaper I see that windows are opens or flicker at top left corner on my left screen, before it opens on my right. Here is a screenshot.

Open and close sometimes fix it, and sometimes not, similar to Renoise.
A comment in the wiki for known issues would be enough i guess. I've set my primary to the left, and moved my menu panel, to the right, and don't notice that much difference, cause Cinnamon opens most of my apps in the currently used screen.

[robbert-vdh]

I'll add a note for Cinnamon doing weird things then I guess, thanks! Cinnamon also causes some plugins to flicker when dragging around the windows. Could you test for me what happens when you set your right monitor as primary (so that the same thing that's been happening on your screenshots happens again), then open a terminal on your now primary right monitor, run wine notepad.exe, move that Notepad instance to the right screen, close it, and then run wine notepad.exe again. Does that render correctly?

Because the only issue I could replicate was really a weird interaction between Cinnamon and WIne, but I can't imagine what it would have to do with yabridge and how setting a certain display as primary would affect it.

[mindbeat]

I tried to recreate your example with notepad, but here it does render correctly. Tried it a couple of times.