MP 7,1 Weird graphics rendering/glitch in Photos

[mnc042]

Hello all,

New 2019 Mac Pro owner, having a very bizarre graphics issue with my otherwise-wonderful machine.

In Photos, occasionally zooming a picture (i.e., select it and press space bar) out to its full size results in this:

Sometimes, it shows most of the picture but the blue "glitch" is just a strip on the right-side. Sometimes, the blue is in squares across a portion of the picture. But it's always this blue weird pattern, and the "glitch" appears randomly.

If I hit space to zoom it back, then space again to zoom it up? Sometimes the same, sometimes the picture is fine.

If I keep using Photos? The glitch goes away. Or, moves to a different picture. The fun never stops!

Sometimes, if I'm really lucky and I push Photos by flipping between pictures enough, Photos will just freeze up completely, and then about 2 minutes later, my mouse will freeze, and a few minutes after that, the entire system will come down and reboot (kernel panic).

Termination Reason: Namespace WATCHDOG, Code 1 monitoring timed out for service
(1 monitored services unresponsive): checkin with service: WindowServer returned not alive with context:
unresponsive work processor(s): WindowServer main thread
80 seconds since last successful checkin, 10339 total successsful checkins since load, 39 seconds since last crashed by watchdogd, (1 induced crashes)

I thought maybe I got a bad graphics card (hey, it happens). But -- it ONLY happens in Photos. I've tried Lightroom, Photoshop, Illustrator, all kinds of benchmarks and other graphics-intensive apps, and no glitches or artifacting appears.

Specs for this machine:

3.5 GHz 8-Core Intel Xeon W
96 GB 2666 MHz DDR4
AMD Radeon Pro W5700X 16 GB
LG UltraFine 5K via Thunderbolt 3

Has anyone seen anything like this before? I'm at a loss. If it were hardware-related, I'd expect other apps to trigger this problem. But it's uniquely Photos, and only on my Mac Pro. I have other Macs that are logged into my iCloud account and syncing this library perfectly fine, no issues. My iPhone shows the library just fine, as well.

Any thoughts would be appreciated -- thanks!

\marc

 

[Gobbledigook]

Hi! I also had these kind of graphical issues but since I installed macOS 11.5 the problems are gone, I also thought it might be a bad graphic card (Radeon Pro 580X) but since I got that update everything is fine so I assume it was bad drivers all along.

In this website you'll find a more detailed explanation of your problem, keep in mind this was before 11.5 and up: https://icanthascheezburger.com/wordpress/2021/04/graphics-issues-on-the-2019-mac-pro/

Hope this helps!

 

[mnc042]

Wow, that's EXACTLY the same as what I'm seeing, thank you for the pointer!

I posted on that site as well.

I'm glad your issues went away as of 11.5 -- I'm on 12.0.1 and seeing this, so I think the fundamental issue is still there, but apparently it can hide or be hidden by something else in the configuration somehow. It's a really mysterious problem.

What's even more maddening is that yesterday, out of the blue, and certainly not because I changed anything, my problem went away. Photos is behaving itself perfectly fine. I can't make the issue happen for love or money. This is what makes me think it's a very, very obscure combination of factors that makes this happen, limited to a low-population machine, which is why it doesn't get reported much (if at all).

Just for giggles, I'm going to try swapping monitors out, and going from Thunderbolt to HDMI. Not sure if I'll be able to tell if that helps, though, since the problem did go away. For now.

Anyway, thanks for the reply and the pointer. It's nice to know I'm not the only one, and that my hardware is probably in good shape. I REALLY didn't want to haul it back to the Apple Store during the holiday season.

All the best.

\marc

 

[mnc042]

Well, the problem is back with a vengeance today. Photos is glitching out almost every photo I tried to edit. Interestingly, it's only affecting my HEIC photos -- others don't seem to be affected at all.

I did notice today that whenever I zoom in on one of the photos that's affected, and get the blue corruption bar, I see this logged in the console:

void IOAccelContext2::process_token_BindDataBuffer(IOAccelCommandStreamInfo &): bad texbuf id. id=0x00000038
The graphics driver has encountered internal error 0x0, 0xfffffffe.

I actually see a whole bunch of those appear, like 10-15 or so, every time the graphics glitch. A little Googling turned up -- NOTHING. So I'm really at a loss as to what this all means.

Oh, and I should note, I changed monitors to an HDMI connection and a completely different (Dell Ultrawide) monitor, no difference. Same issue.

I also seem to have those kernel panics that my system goes through when Photos decides it's had enough. I've noticed this always corresponds with a crash in the VTDecoderXPCService, like so:

Process:               VTDecoderXPCService [744]
Path:                  /System/Library/Frameworks/VideoToolbox.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/VTDecoderXPCService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/VTDecoderXPCService
Identifier:            com.apple.coremedia.videodecoder
Version:               1.0 (1)
Build Info:            CoreMedia_VideoToolbox-2925015004002000~1
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        launchd [1]
Responsible:           Photos [726]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2021-11-27 12:12:29.1059 -0500
OS Version:            macOS 12.0.1 (21A559)
Report Version:        12
Bridge OS Version:     6.0 (19P549)

Time Awake Since Boot: 220 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        5  com.apple.coremedia.rootQueue.47  Dispatch queue: vtdecoder-connection-event-queue-0x6000022fc000

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000008
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000008
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 11 Segmentation fault: 11
Terminating Process:   exc handler [744]

I don't really know what's going on here. It does seem to do with the graphics card, or driver, or something -- but it's only Photos that seems to trigger it. I also use Final Cut Pro, no issues. Adobe suite of products, no issues. Intensive graphically-demanding games? No problem. Literally, just Photos, and literally, just this way.

I'd love to figure this out, because having my system crash randomly while using Photos is not sustainable in the long run..

\marc