Any way to disable hardware rendering in the new reader?

[ownedbycats]

The new Calibre reader apparently uses some kind of hardware rendering/acceleration, which results in FRAPS hooking into it and a giant FPS counter in the top right corner. A bit distracting, that.

Rather not turn off FRAPS or the counter overlay entirely as I like to read while waiting for games to load. No way to disable it per-application.

Is there some option I missed to disable hardware rendering in the reader? Thanks in advance.

[kovidgoyal]

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-debugging.html

use --disable-gpu via the environment variable as described there.

[ownedbycats]

Thank you

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

The new Calibre reader apparently uses some kind of hardware rendering/acceleration, which results in FRAPS hooking into it and a giant FPS counter in the top right corner. A bit distracting, that.

Given that the latest version of FRAPS is ~6 years old, might it be time to give it a decent burial? I seem to remember my son deep-sixing it when he moved to Windows 8.1 in early 2014 though I'm not sure if that was due to incompatibilities with his new computer or just not wanting it anymore.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Given that the latest version of FRAPS is ~6 years old, might it be time to give it a decent burial? I seem to remember my son deep-sixing it when he moved to Windows 8.1 in early 2014 though I'm not sure if that was due to incompatibilities with his new computer or just not wanting it anymore.

I've been looking at alternatives, honestly, especially since FRAPS doesn't work too great with some newer games that use different rendering modes (e.g. Vulkan).

[Kuram]

How or where exactly do you apply this environment variable? I find myself needing to disable acceleration as well, though for me it's because g-sync causes havoc and makes my screen flicker when I'm trying to read due to the low refresh rate. Not a pleasant experience.

As for the question about fraps, if you use it for video recording, consider shadowplay through geforce experience if you have an nvidia gpu. If you use it for a framerate counter, rivatuner works great.

[Kuram]

Bumping this up. I've tried editing the path environment but that didn't do anything for me. I'm at a loss as to where I actually apply this environment variable.

[kovidgoyal]

A quick google will tell you how to set environment variables in windows. Or read the bottom of https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/cus...ment-variables

[Kuram]

Right, I've read those, but maybe I'm missing a step or piece of info in between everything because I am not sure what to put. Assuming I need a specific name that I dont know that calibre checks? And then --disable-gpu is the value? I don't want to disable all hardware acceleration, only that for calibre's reader.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by Kuram

Right, I've read those, but maybe I'm missing a step or piece of info in between everything because I am not sure what to put. Assuming I need a specific name that I dont know that calibre checks? And then --disable-gpu is the value? I don't want to disable all hardware acceleration, only that for calibre's reader.

Kovid linked the info above: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-debugging.html

The environment variable you want is:

QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--disable-gpu"

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by sjfan

Kovid linked the info above: https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtwebengine-debugging.html

The environment variable you want is:

QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--disable-gpu"

Not sure if this works but from the referenced web page, it appears possible that you could use:

QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--disable-gpu" ebook-viewer

to disable using the GPU only for the calibre's ebook viewer.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Not sure if this works but from the referenced web page, it appears possible that you could use:

QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--disable-gpu" ebook-viewer

to disable using the GPU only for the calibre's ebook viewer.

That'd work if you were running the ebook viewer from a command line shell, which he probably isn't.

The environment variable itself is what you need to set wherever Kuram's OS stores those things (https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000549.htm if it's some version of Windows).

If you really want to have it affect only the ebook-viewer and not other QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM programs, you could make a batch file that sets it and runs ebook-viewer and set that as your default program to open epubs. It's fairly unlikely he's got any other QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM programs installed other than calibre, though, so that's probably overkill (especially since he's having trouble just setting the environment variable).

[Kuram]

Well I don't know what else is qtwebengine_chromium so I can't say for certain. The viewer is already my default, but you're correct I typically just open books through calibre itself. This is my first time fiddling with environment variables so yes it's pretty new to me, I wouldn't consider myself a power user in any form (win10)

So does this make sense? Or the value has to be true? Or something else still flying over my head?
.

[sjfan]

Originally Posted by Kuram

Well I don't know what else is qtwebengine_chromium so I can't say for certain. The viewer is already my default, but you're correct I typically just open books through calibre itself. This is my first time fiddling with environment variables so yes it's pretty new to me, I wouldn't consider myself a power user in any form (win10)

So does this make sense? Or the value has to be true? Or something else still flying over my head?
.

Variable name should be QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS.
Variable value should be --disable-gpu.

You don't need the "ebook-viewer" there; that's from an example of running the viewer from the commandline.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by sjfan

Variable name should be QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS.
Variable value should be --disable-gpu.

You don't need the "ebook-viewer" there; that's from an example of running the viewer from the commandline.

Which is where I quite often run the ebook viewer from. You mean everyone else doesn't use calibre and it's bits and pieces the same way I do? Shock and horror!