Grandia FMV Playback Slow

[Alextended]

I've tried everything, as soon as any Grandia FMV starts the framerate slows so playback is slow and the audio is distorted.

It runs fine in the latest Mednafen and the issue doesn't come up in any other game that I've noticed, in-game or in FMV...

I believe it might be related to this but I'm not entirely sure:
#24

Please fix it someone out there :)

[McRmie]

Reproduced the issue on my end with the latest beetle_saturn core. Lots of stuttering/slowdowns during the FMVs but then I wondered if it was simply a performance issue.

Sure enough, I upped the audio latency and changed to vulkan instead of glcore (apparently vulkan can be faster than glcore even with non hardware-accelerated cores it seems) and the stutterings/slowdowns during FMV were gone. The FMVs in the game just seem to be very cpu demanding for some reason (maybe video decoding related?).

Try changing some of the settings/drivers in RA -things that might be more demanding cpu wise. Try upping the audio_latency for the game for example. Switch the video driver, or remove some of the lag-reducing options etc. Anything that might lower the cpu costs and see if that makes a difference. Remember that Saturn emulation (and beetle saturn especially) is already relatively demanding.

edit: Am on Windows -Ryzen 7 2700.
edit: Enabling threaded video in addition might help a lot as well (though might add a bit of input lag I believe). Standalone 1.32.1 mednafen saturn might have added additional optimizations which may be why you get full speed or it's the lag-reducing options of RA mentioned above that might add to the requirements for full speed.

[Vamp898]

For reference, I tried all of this but nothing helped. FMV in other games and the game itself works fine, but not the FMV in Grandia.

No issues in mednafen

[Alextended]

Yeah, the issue has persisted for me as well throughout all this time.

Mind I recently got a new (modest, no flagship or anything) phone, the Poco X7 Pro, and it's strong enough for Beetle Saturn and the issue with these FMV does NOT occur there so it's something specific to the Windows build or however these work.

[Vamp898]

I noticed, it does work perfect on Linux too. Not on my Android phone (Maybe it is too slow? But it can play FMV Videos from other games without any issues whatsoever and it can play the actual game) but on my Linux Desktop, there is no issue with the Beetle Saturn Core

[pstef]

Should be better after #64

[Alextended]

Grandia FMV performance seems fixed! New graphical glitches after the game boots though! Big green vertical line and in game various horizontal ones too after loading asave. But thanks, good sign!

[pstef]

Will look into that, thanks for reporting.

[Alextended]

Here's some screenshots if they help;
https://i.ibb.co/1GKkSkzb/retroarch-2026-05-12-12-46-44-034.png
https://i.ibb.co/XrDBCx7L/retroarch-2026-05-12-12-40-30-776.png

BUT. While I'm on latest windows 11/latest retroarch/updated cores/everything as always and with the same settings like Vulkan etc., and these issues had never shown before and ra and most cores I use have been just fine. I should mention my GPU is end of life and no longer supported. I have a GTX1080 and I'm using the last hotfix drivers available for it.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/263265/
So maybe not something you should bother with if it's a driver issue for no longer supported GPUs only. Just saying.

Gungriffon only gets a less obvious vertical line in FMV but fine in game. Virtua Fighter 2 seems unaffected. Haven't tried more yet.

Edit: similar glitches on my Poco X7 Pro too after updating everything there also (not play store retroarch, downloaded from site).

[LibretroAdmin]

Panzer Dragoon issue should be fixed by this
dfb3c26
I think it fixes Grandia too, can't reproduce the issues here anymore

[Alextended]

Panzer Dragoon issue should be fixed by this dfb3c26 I think it fixes Grandia too, can't reproduce the issues here anymore

Every issue encountered after the initial Grandia FMV performance fix seems to be back to normal (in the games tried so far).

Whatever you did also fixed the small performance issues I had in Last Bronx and Touge King the Spirits 2 (I never reported it because I chalked it up to my ancient PC build, while it didn't make sense to me for Grandia FMV playback to be more demanding).

Thanks!!!!!!

[pstef]

I think we can close this and #24.

Possibly also #39, #50, #49

[Alextended]

It does seem to run worse on my Poco X7 Pro now mind. But don't trust me too much, I hadn't tested thoroughly but as I said in way older comment it seemed to not have the Grandia FMV issues which it now seems to have some and also frame drops in VF2 I tested. But yeah seems like these should be solved for most and Poco X7 Pro isn't a flagship phone or anything (but not bad). Just saying!

[Vamp898]

The Mediatek Dimensity 8400 Ultra should be fast enough for Saturn Emulation with Mednafen, it far exceeds it's requirements

[Alextended]

That seems fixed too now :) Edit: maybe still some drops in VF2.