Failing on Apple Silicon/Monterey?

[rkeniger]

I'm new to this project but thus far cannot get PyCocoa to work at all on Monterey on my Apple Silicon machine.

The tests fail, and I get this when trying to use it in a project:

  File "<path to project>/mypythonfile.py", line 16, in <module>
    from pycocoa import App, MediaWindow
ImportError: cannot import name 'App' from 'pycocoa' (<path to project>/env/lib/python3.10/site-packages/pycocoa/__init__.py)```

[mrJean1]

1. With prior macOS 11.6.1 (10.16) Big Sur on Apple-Silicon the script python-vlc/examples/cocoavl.py 21.08.18 and PyCocoa 21.8.18 run with Python 3.10.0 and 3.9.6 (both macOS 64-bit universal2) on amd64 natively and with Python 3.8.10 and 3.7.6 (both macOS 64-bit Intel) emulating x86_64. All 4 are using the latest release of VLC 3.0.16 Universal Binary. Here is some terminal output

% python3.10 cocoavlc.py -v
cocoavlc.py: 21.08.18 (pycocoa 21.08.18 macOS 11.6.1 arm64)
vlc.py: 3.0.12119X (Mon May 31 18:25:17 2021 3.0.12)
libVLC: 3.0.16 Vetinari (0x3001000)
plugins: /Applications/VLC3.0.16.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins
Python: 3.10.0 (64bit) macOS 11.6.1 arm64

% python3.9 cocoavlc.py -v
cocoavlc.py: 21.08.18 (pycocoa 21.08.18 macOS 11.6.1 arm64)
vlc.py: 3.0.12119X (Mon May 31 18:25:17 2021 3.0.12)
libVLC: 3.0.16 Vetinari (0x3001000)
plugins: /Applications/VLC3.0.16.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins
Python: 3.9.6 (64bit) macOS 11.6.1 arm64

% python3.8 cocoavlc.py -v
cocoavlc.py: 21.08.18 (pycocoa 21.08.18 macOS 10.16 arm64_x86_64)
vlc.py: 3.0.12119X (Mon May 31 18:25:17 2021 3.0.12)
libVLC: 3.0.16 Vetinari (0x3001000)
plugins: /Applications/VLC3.0.16.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins
Python: 3.8.10 (64bit) macOS 10.16 x86_64

% python3.7 cocoavlc.py -v
cocoavlc.py: 21.08.18 (pycocoa 21.08.18 macOS 10.16 arm64_x86_64)
vlc.py: 3.0.12119X (Mon May 31 18:25:17 2021 3.0.12)
libVLC: 3.0.16 Vetinari (0x3001000)
plugins: /Applications/VLC3.0.16.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins
Python: 3.7.6 (64bit) macOS 10.16 x86_64

% python3.10 cocoavlc.py -v
cocoavlc.py: 21.08.18 (pycocoa 21.08.18 macOS 11.6.1 arm64)
vlc.py: 3.0.12119X (Mon May 31 18:25:17 2021 3.0.12)
libVLC: 3.0.16 Vetinari (0x3001000)
plugins: /Applications/VLC3.0.16.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins
Python: 3.10.0 (64bit) macOS 11.6.1 arm64

% python3.9 cocoavlc.py -v
cocoavlc.py: 21.08.18 (pycocoa 21.08.18 macOS 11.6.1 arm64)
vlc.py: 3.0.12119X (Mon May 31 18:25:17 2021 3.0.12)
libVLC: 3.0.16 Vetinari (0x3001000)
plugins: /Applications/VLC3.0.16.app/Contents/MacOS/plugins
Python: 3.9.6 (64bit) macOS 11.6.1 arm64

The vlc.py file is a slightly modified version 3.0.12119X to show the platform.machine() result.

2. This following example works with all 4 Python releases

% python3
Python 3.10.0 (v3.10.0:b494f5935c, Oct  4 2021, 14:59:19) [Clang 12.0.5 (clang-1205.0.22.11)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from pycocoa import App, MediaWindow
>>> App, MediaWindow
(<class 'pycocoa.apps.App'>, <class 'pycocoa.windows.MediaWindow'>)

Even with legacy Python 2.7.16 still included in macOS 11.6.1.

% python2.7

WARNING: Python 2.7 is not recommended. 
This version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. 
Future versions of macOS will not include Python 2.7. 
Instead, it is recommended that you transition to using 'python3' from within Terminal.

Python 2.7.16 (default, Sep  6 2021, 07:39:44) 
[GCC Apple LLVM 12.0.5 (clang-1205.0.19.59.6) [+internal-os, ptrauth-isa=deploy on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from pycocoa import App, MediaWindow
>>> App, MediaWindow
(<class 'pycocoa.apps.App'>, <class 'pycocoa.windows.MediaWindow'>)

3. Support of and testing with macOS Monterey is forthcoming. Obviously, there may be a Monterey specific issue.

4. Try un- and re-installing PyCocoa again using

    python3  -m  pip3  uninstall  pycocoa
    python3  -m  pip3  install  pycocoa

If the uninstall fails, chances are pycocoa wasn't installed at all or not properly.

[mrJean1]

PyCocoa 21.11.3 includes several changes required for macOS 12.0.1 Monterey.

In particular, fault handling by module pycocoa.faults is temporarily disabled for macOS 12.0.1 Monterey.

Hopefully, this resolves the problem and if so, please close this issue.

[rkeniger]

Thanks @mrJean1, 21.11.02 does indeed fix the issue for me. I'm very grateful for the extremely fast response.

[rkeniger]

So maybe spoke too soon, I'm having issues with scaling:

This occurs in the cocoavlc.py demo as well. I'm using a 4K display with scaling enabled.

[mrJean1]

Don't have a 4K monitor, but videos play the same on the built-in screen and an external monitor, both scaled and not scaled.

What happens if you jiggle the window a little? Grab the lower right corner and move it.

[rkeniger]

Yeah, a resize instantly fixes it

[rkeniger]

Seeing the same thing on the Cocoa and Tk examples, so it could be a VLC thing?

[mrJean1]

Possibly. If you don’t have it already, get the very latest VLC 3.0.16 universal or for Apple-Silicon.

Also, does the same problem occur when you play a video with the VLC App itself.

[mrJean1]

Does, Start-Play-Pause-Play fix it too?

There is some fancy logic in the methods _resizer and _sizer of the AppVLC class in cocoavlc.py. That may need some tweaks to force the window and video aspect ratios to be aligned. One issue is that the video size is not available from VLC until after the video plays for a (short) while. That’s why the _resizer method kicks off method _sizer in a separate thread.

[rkeniger]

I see, right, that makes sense. I'll keep playing around with it. Thanks for all your help. I was able to lock the scale of the video using video_set_scale() with the Tk player but I haven't tried with PyCocoa yet.

[mrJean1]

Please report whether video_set_scale works, when it should be called and what the factor argument has to be.

[rkeniger]

So video_set_scale does work, but it locks the video to that scale. There would be a possible calculation to fix it, I think, but I'm not familiar enough with the API.

This set the video to the "correct" size, but it then doesn't scale with the window:

from tkinter.font import Font
from tkinter import font
…

// this is hideous, but does work
scale = Font(family='times', size=30, weight=font.NORMAL).metrics('linespace') / 20
self.player.video_set_scale(scale)

[rkeniger]

Also, see this: https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/-/issues/25264