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Help with weird graphics issue

Pugly

Pugly

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 7, 2016
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So my 11" MBA has started to do something strange. Sometimes when video is playing, or some other macOS graphical thing happens, I get strange white horizontal lines... something that I can best describe as interference. It tends to go away, but it is noticeable and slightly annoying.

I ran the Apple Hardware Test on startup and no issues came up.

I can recreate the white lines when using a wireless mouse and moving the mouse a lot. The white lines are pretty consistent when I move the mouse, and tend to go away when I stop the mouse. I usually see this when I connect the mac to a tv with DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

When I record the screen, the white horizontal interference lines aren't recorded when I do a quicktime screen recording. I just recently updated to 10.12.4... so maybe it's a software thing.

It's only on video though. Could it be the graphics system is on the fritz? Is it just interference. Searching about this problem doesn't come up with much, especially since it only happens on the video, not during general os use.
 
Pugly said:
So my 11" MBA has started to do something strange. Sometimes when video is playing, or some other macOS graphical thing happens, I get strange white horizontal lines... something that I can best describe as interference. It tends to go away, but it is noticeable and slightly annoying.

I ran the Apple Hardware Test on startup and no issues came up.

I can recreate the white lines when using a wireless mouse and moving the mouse a lot. The white lines are pretty consistent when I move the mouse, and tend to go away when I stop the mouse. I usually see this when I connect the mac to a tv with DisplayPort to HDMI adapter.

When I record the screen, the white horizontal interference lines aren't recorded when I do a quicktime screen recording. I just recently updated to 10.12.4... so maybe it's a software thing.

It's only on video though. Could it be the graphics system is on the fritz? Is it just interference. Searching about this problem doesn't come up with much, especially since it only happens on the video, not during general os use.
Click to expand...
Same here, seems software related,
 
It will help knowing how old your MBA is, how much RAM, and the resolution of the video you're watching.

My one thought it that your machine machine may be trying to play video at a higher resolution than it is capable of, but that is only a loose guess as there really isn't sufficient info to suspect that.
 
Beachguy said:
It will help knowing how old your MBA is, how much RAM, and the resolution of the video you're watching.

My one thought it that your machine machine may be trying to play video at a higher resolution than it is capable of, but that is only a loose guess as there really isn't sufficient info to suspect that.
Click to expand...

It's a 2015 with 8GB ram i7. I get it watching youtube videos at many different resolutions between 144p to 720p. It seems less likely when watching videos full screen for some reason.
 
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My MacBook Air is brand new it is two weeks old it happens from the last update, it happens where transparency is

So beachguy I don't think it is ram or age related
 
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Fabmac said:
My MacBook Air is brand new it is two weeks old it happens from the last update, it happens where transparency is

So beachguy I don't think it is ram or age related
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's it... wherever the os is applying some sort of effect is when I see it. It's a relief to know it is likely software related.

Are there any other online discussions about this issue? I haven't been able to find anything about it.
 
Fabmac said:
My MacBook Air is brand new it is two weeks old it happens from the last update, it happens where transparency is

So beachguy I don't think it is ram or age related
Click to expand...

I would agree you both have issues other than RAM and age/speed. I wonder if it is simply bad coding in video drivers or codecs.
 
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Beachguy said:
I would agree you both have issues other than RAM and age/speed. I wonder if it is simply bad coding in video drivers or codecs.
Click to expand...
I have seen card issues, and it's all over the screen

In this case it is only in videos, or transparencys in the OS X system, such as the header from safari, login screen etc.
It's quite difficult for me to understand how apple can mess it up in this way ....
Hope we get a fix in the next update.
 
Beachguy said:
Driver issues on video playback does not mean you'll see it on static displays.
Click to expand...

I investigated this with Apple Support via chat a couple of days ago as I have the same symptoms on 11" MBA 2015 1.6 8gb. Apple Support suggested that I install Adobe Flash (I had removed it) to see if that would solve my problem. It did not do so.

I have the problem appearing in both versions of OS X Sierra to include the latest Beta. Frustrating...I see it most frequently - the interference lines - in gmail for some reason.
 
This appears to be fixed in 10.12.5.

Here's a discussion about it on apple's forum.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7908354?start=0&tstart=0

From what I could tell, I frequently got the problem whenever I switched form external monitor to laptop screen. A simple reset often eliminated all the issues I found. The glitchy lines were white when on the external monitor, and black or gray on the laptop screen.

If I had to guess I suspect some sort of truncating number error with the transparency values, caused by the whatever changes were made to implement night-shift...
 
I am having a strange graphics issue on my MBA 11" 2015 8gb 512gb also.

Here's a video of it: https://vid.me/wfS5

I was pretty sure this was a failing graphics / logic board until seeing this thread.

Is the type of artifact people are seeing that is resolved in the update? I'm having no problem on the external display, and only seeing this sometimes on the internal.

Machine is under AppleCare until July next year.

edit: nevermind, checked the apple support thread and it looks like the same issue. Image from that thread:
display-issues.jpg
 
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Yeah that's the same issue. I was freaking out because I thought it was hardware related. But the diagnostic didn't come up with anything. And I would suspect something graphics card related would be on the whole screen.

But so far so good on the latest 10.12.5 update.
 
Pugly said:
Yeah that's the same issue. I was freaking out because I thought it was hardware related. But the diagnostic didn't come up with anything. And I would suspect something graphics card related would be on the whole screen.

But so far so good on the latest 10.12.5 update.
Click to expand...
Okay good. I'll wait for it to get released. Glad, I just picked this machine up second hand, thought the previous owner might have not disclosed an issue. :|
 
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