Metroid Beyond Audio lag in cutscenes

[kidicarus]

I'm on 19.0.1 and atmosphere 1.8.0. I downgraded the Metroid XCI and the 1.1.0 game update using Switch Army Knife with the 21.0 prod.keys. The game is running seemingly fine except in cutscenes it seems that the video slows down, causing it to desync with the audio (which plays back at normal speed). Does anyone else have this problem?

EDIT: I found the source of this problem. It was outdated syspatch (1.5.5). Updating to 1.5.7 solved the issue

 

[Raul8]

Yes me too, thought I was the only one. It happened on Emunand. I installed the game on Sysnand and videos played without desync there. Before, they had pauses, audio issues and videos ended earlier than expected.

 

[AllOver]

Yes me too, thought I was the only one. It happened on Emunand. I installed the game on Sysnand and videos played without desync there. Before, they had pauses, audio issues and videos ended earlier than expected.

Is emunand file based?

 

[Raul8]

Is emunand file based?

Yes I use file based. Sorry, I didn't specified.

 

[AllOver]

Yes I use file based. Sorry, I didn't specified.

Could be why, file based performance is awful. Would need someone to confirm that this issue is happening on partition based and also doesn't have a slow sd card.

 

[LightBeam]

I had that too, reinstalled atmosphere and got rid of any sysmodules I had. I replayed the beginning and it worked perfectly fine, since then I also didn't notice much slowdowns (maybe one, very small ?? I'm not even sure)

Reminded me of the slowdowns I had on ToTK (the first cutscene during the tutorial when meeting Ganondorf's corpse), but a clean atmosphere hasn't fixed that

Is emunand file based?

Completely forgot about that ...... I'll try to swap to a partition based emunand and tell y'all if that changed anything

 

[AllOver]

I had that too, reinstalled atmosphere and got rid of any sysmodules I had. I replayed the beginning and it worked perfectly fine, since then I also didn't notice much slowdowns (maybe one, very small ?? I'm not even sure)

Reminded me of the slowdowns I had on ToTK (the first cutscene during the tutorial when meeting Ganondorf's corpse), but a clean atmosphere hasn't fixed that


Completely forgot about that ...... I'll try to swap to a partition based emunand and tell y'all if that changed anything

Careful not to nuke your SD card when setting up partition based emunand.

 

[LightBeam]

Careful not to nuke your SD card when setting up partition based emunand.

Yeah I'm following this https://gbatemp.net/threads/change-...ng-all-games-saves-as-is.625089/post-10055005
Already backed up all my saves on JKSV, right now I'm copying my whole SD card to my PC (225GB total, so it's taking a while lol), might have more news in a few hours



EDIT : Editting so I don't bump a solved thread -
Finally was able to make an emunand that would work, had to nuke everything (and maybe I fucked up something and will eventually get banned , I'm not even sure, that'd suck but whatever)

I tested on ToTK tho, and the first cutscene was usually VERY laggy, lots of stutters and audio desync. Now it runs flawlessly.

OP already solved their issue so I see no point in even trying Prime 4, I have no doubt it'll run perfectly fine (and a clean atmosphere already did the trick for me even on file based)

 

[djnate27]

I'm on 19.0.1 and atmosphere 1.8.0. I downgraded the Metroid XCI and the 1.1.0 game update using Switch Army Knife with the 21.0 prod.keys. The game is running seemingly fine except in cutscenes it seems that the video slows down, causing it to desync with the audio (which plays back at normal speed). Does anyone else have this problem?

Wait, I didn't know you could downgrade games to play on lower FW using SAK. How?

 

[kidicarus]

So far I can confirm that the problem only happens when docked. And happens in sysNAND playing from an sd card

Wait, I didn't know you could downgrade games to play on lower FW using SAK. How?

I basically said it already. You need the prod.keys from 20.5 or later and you need to choose the patch XCI option.

Post automatically merged: Dec 6, 2025

Yes me too, thought I was the only one. It happened on Emunand. I installed the game on Sysnand and videos played without desync there. Before, they had pauses, audio issues and videos ended earlier than expected.

See edit in OP for the solution

 

[LightBeam]

EDIT: I found the source of this problem. It was outdated syspatch (1.5.5). Updating to 1.5.7 solved the issue

Thank you for mentioning 1.5.7, for some reason I still had that issue with 1.5.8

Nevermind that's still an issue

 

[kidicarus]

Thank you for mentioning 1.5.7, for some reason I still had that issue with 1.5.8

Nevermind that's still an issue

Yes I've noticed it can still be an issue if your clockspeeds on the GPU (and RAM?) aren't high enough. The game doesn't drop frames to keep timing like other games (probably because they tested that every cutscene can run at a locked 60fps without mods).

 

[al2606]

Same issue

 

[LightBeam]

Yes I've noticed it can still be an issue if your clockspeeds on the GPU (and RAM?) aren't high enough. The game doesn't drop frames to keep timing like other games (probably because they tested that every cutscene can run at a locked 60fps without mods).

Just had some lag on a dialogue with Tokabi, even on a cutscene transport to the forest. Everything overclocked to the max with sys-clk, and no sys-patch
Really it seems that it's just about the sysmodules running. I noticed I have MissionControl Sys-con and emuiibo running so I'll disable those, I'll keep Ultrahand (been trying to make Uberhand work but it doesn't, for some reason. Idk if it's somehow easier on the memory tho), and fizeau. Hopefully that'll be enough, if not then I guess that the best solution is just to not have any sysmodule running

 

[al2606]

The cutscene at Great Mine is pretty much unplayable enough that I made an U-turn and decided to play Prime 3 and finished it instead
Any solution so far? I have no idea about sysmodules though, still using sigpatches

 

[SStreDD]

same issue here. Everything else performs fine, just the cutscenes in this game.

Post automatically merged: Dec 16, 2025

Just had some lag on a dialogue with Tokabi, even on a cutscene transport to the forest. Everything overclocked to the max with sys-clk, and no sys-patch
Really it seems that it's just about the sysmodules running. I noticed I have MissionControl Sys-con and emuiibo running so I'll disable those, I'll keep Ultrahand (been trying to make Uberhand work but it doesn't, for some reason. Idk if it's somehow easier on the memory tho), and fizeau. Hopefully that'll be enough, if not then I guess that the best solution is just to not have any sysmodule running

did removing all sys modules work?

 

[Kaed]

The same thing happening to me since launch. Not just the cutscenes freezes and audio desync, but even the main menu video get speed up when you boot the game, the BEYOND lags when it shows up, and the animation lags when you press "A". I tested on firmware 19, 20, 21, Atmosphere in different versions, all modules off, restarted Switch a lot of times, downloaded the game from different sources and sizes, oveclocked the CPU/GPU, recreated emuNAND (always used SD file since people say is more easy to deal with), used another SD card, nothing fixed these freezes or audio desync, or even the stutters in portable mode. I finished the game that way, searching for the cutscenes on Youtube.

Yesterday I find this post, tried to create a emuNAND with SD partition option, installed firmware 20.1.5, Metroid Prime 4 with update 1.1.0, emuiibo, Mission Control and Tesla modules active, with default clocks and the game runs smooth like butter. Not a single freeze in cutscenes or even a single stutter in portable mode! So I believe emuNAND in SD file is the culprit here. I'm surprised that Metroid Prime 4 was the only game that I played in Atmosphere since I have the Switch OLED, that give me that kind of performance issues. From now on I will always use emuNAND in SD partition mode.

 

[SStreDD]

I have found that putting my device into airplane mode removes the issue almost entirely. There seems to be a bug with atmosphere when using the hosts.txt file to block Nintendo's servers. Atmosphere will log any attempt the switch tries to make to connect to nintendy and as a result spam read/writes to the sd card.

 

[Earthshine]

I have found that putting my device into airplane mode removes the issue almost entirely. There seems to be a bug with atmosphere when using the hosts.txt file to block Nintendo's servers. Atmosphere will log any attempt the switch tries to make to connect to nintendy and as a result spam read/writes to the sd card.

If you're referring to the atmosphere/erpt_reports folder, you can disable writing those to the sd card with sys-patch. If you're referring to something else, elaborate as I don't have this issue either in or out of airplane mode.