Pre-rendered cutscenes play in slow motion (4-12 fps, PC)

Hi @puzzlezaddict, if @kizmiazz7 has the same issue as me (which seems to be the case, see here), the issue affects all loading screens, so you should see it immediately if you're using an eGPU. 

@RPGaff  From their last post, it sounded like it was possible only the later cutscenes lagged, although maybe the issue is always present and simply a bit more subtle earlier in the game.  I'd still like to test though: it's worth knowing that this problem shows up on a Bootcamped Mac if and only if it's using an eGPU.  The graphics drivers for macOS are completely different than what everyone else has, so while the game might behave exactly the same way, I'm not going to assume.

Thanks for flagging the other thread though.  I haven't been able to keep up with this forum (really at all), so I'd only seen one other report and wasn't sure whether it was a coincidence.

@puzzlezaddict 

I can confirm that this definitely isn't just a Mac/Bootcamp issue, but there does seem to be an eGPU common connection.  I'm running Windows 10 on a PC (Intel Tiger Lake i7/16 GB RAM) with external eGPU and a Vega 64 and I get exactly the same slow motion cutscenes/stuttering during pre-rendered scenes (and loading screens).

What is more annoying is that not only does the cutscene run at a terrible framerate, but often there is an in-game engine scene which follows it (particularly common towards the end of ME1) which seems to start before the cutscene is finished, so you hear the overlapping audio of both scenes and miss the beginning of the in-engine scene.

Exact same problem here, and I'm not on a Mac but do have an egpu. The game runs great except for the blink video cutscenes/loading screens which really takes away from the experience. I'm running a Dell XPS 13 7390 and a Gigabyte Gaming Box RX580.

I tried to figure out a fix for this but nothing seemed to work. Things that didn't work: updating thunderbolt drivers, updating video cards' drivers, disabling the internal gpu, disabling vsync, lowering the resolution, etc...

The only thing that did work was to re-encode all the video files to 1920x1080. Which is fairly easy to do and takes about an hour. If anyone else wants to do this:

1. Download and install RAD Video Tools: http://www.radgametools.com/down/Bink/RADTools.7z (You'll need 7-Zip to extract: https://www.7-zip.org/a/7z2103-x64.exe)

2. Open RAD Video Tools and navigate to the directory: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Mass Effect Legendary Edition\Game\ME1\BioGame\Movies" or where you have it installed. You might also want to copy these files and back them up somewhere.

3. Select all the files then click "Bink it!", click "Yes" to "...batch process them one by one...", leave all the defaults except enable "Automatic overwrite?" and change (under the "Scaling type..." button) "Width" to 1920 and "Height" to 1080. Screenshot of my settings attached.

4. Click the "Batch" button and then click the "Start" button. Go grab a beer and wait.

I also tried different encoding settings but nothing seemed to work except changing the resolution to 1920x1080. Other things I tried was: keeping the files 4k but lowering the bitrate, removing the audio, increasing the audio compression, and lowering the resolution to 2160x1440.

I finished ME1 with the resized pre rendered cutscenes and it worked great. I'm onto ME2 now which has even more cutscenes to convert. I used the same RAD Game Tools settings as ME1 except it appended "New_" to all the rerendered files. If that happens to you just open a terminal in that Movies directory and run: rename "New_*.bik" "////*.bik"

I finished ME2 and the resized 1920x1080 cutscene videos worked great. I also finished ME3 and unfortunately some cutscenes still played in slow motion after being resized. Particularly the cutscenes at the end of the game, and there is a lot of them which kind of ruins the ending.

Same problem. Tried everything. The pre-renders are screwing my game up. I'm hitting 150s fps playing and 240+ idle. One cutscene and gpu usage drops to 0 and I get the worst tearing and stuttering I've ever seen.

Has to be the format of the files maybe the gpu doesnt know what to do with that format? Possibly outdated or not supported by some cards/drivers/software?

CPU usage is abnormally low for cutscenes as well but not 0.

Edit: if you're reading this stop what you're doing and download ALOV from Nexus Mods. The improved cinematics and pre-renders now play at 60fps 4k.

Has anyone found an answer for ME3? ME1 and ME2 seem to work fine with the fix suggested above, but if it doesn't work for ME3 that's no good. I can't seem to get ALOV to work in the ME mod launcher. Thoughts?

EDIT: I think I got ALOV working but now the issue has returned on ME2? With the resolution fix described on the previous page some of the clips seemed to work fine but the audio was delayed. Very not good for egpu users!!