Some mkv.-Files won't play

1st Official Post

    Hi,

    new to this forum. I absolutely love Kodi/LibreElec which is running on my Pi media center.

    However, some of my video files won't play and make LibreElec crash.

    I choose playback of the file and nothing happens. After about 20 seconds the screen goes blank. After a minute or so, Kodi restarts (no full reboot of my Pi though).

    After lots of trying I've managed to get my hands on the log-file (For some reason, the submit log function of libreelec didn't work, only got an error message). WinSCP gave me access though. The kodi.old.log seems to show everything happening right until the reboot but I can't make sense of it.

    If anyone here can give me pointers what is going wrong here, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance!

    Bertel

    Thanks for the quick reply. If possible, I would prefer not posting a sample here.

    All files causing this behavior play without a hitch on my windows pc using mpc (previously media player classic).

    • Official Post

    Start upgrading your LibreELEC build first. Kodi 17.3 is from some time ago.

    Also, using a Raspberry Pi for playing 1080p HEVC files is not the best solution.

    LibreELEC 8.2.2 has a few HEVC video refinements for that which are not in 8.0.2, but it's not a magic box.

    If you want to play fullhd hevc video properly, you will need better hardware.

    Thanks for your answer and giving me pointers, Klojum.

    I never paid attention to the version numbers since I expected LibreELEC to update automatically. Now I will try to manually update.

    Better hardware is not an option for now. Makes me wonder if all videos that wouldn't play are HEVC (a term I had to google, thank you wikipedia).

    As far as I can tell from that log you are using Raspberry Pi2 and trying to play HEVC 10-bit videos. You need LibreELEC 9 / Kodi 18 to play 10-bit HEVC on RPi2.

    1080p/24 HEVC work rather well on an overclocked RPi3. On RPi2 you will probably get a lot of frame drops. 720p should be OK.

    Thanks, smp.

    What's the easiest way to upgrade from LibreELEC 8.x to 9.x?

    Under settings it's only offering me upgrading on the 7 or 8 track.

    How do I upgrade without losing all of my settings, addons, etc?

    Thanks again for helping me. Sorry for asking dumb questions, but...

    - I created a backup

    - I downloaded the newest build, realizing it's not a stable version etc... and copied it into the update folder

    - I rebooted

    Didn't update though, still on the 8.x version number.

    What could I have overlooked?

    [edit: added screenshot showing update file in folder]

    [edit 2: I use berryboot fyi]

    By following the instructions on the page linked above I was successfully able to update my system so that it's running LibreElec 9 / Kodi 18 now :cool:

    Sadly nothing has changed in regard to my problem with playback. Some files still crash the system ;(

    Even so I've learned quite a bit tonight, thank you smp and Klojum. I'd greatly appreciate any further help.

    Seems like editing config.txt needs to be done from the advanced options right in berryboot.

    Which would indicate that my system is not overclocked (I had tried to overclock the Pi for RetroPie which is my secondary system, which is why I use berryboot. Never checked for success. I've never edited config.txt from the berryboot start menu which seems to override anything done within the OSs)

    I'll play with that tomorrow (set the gpu_mem_1024 value) and report back.

    So long!

    Quote from Bertel

    Which would indicate that my system is not overclocked

    Your log file suggests otherwise:

    Code
    arm_freq=1000
sdram_freq=500
core_freq=500

    Are you using pi2 or pi3?

    Default arm_freq for pi2 is 900, core_freq is 250.

    For pi3 default value for arm_freq is 1200, core_freq is 400.

    Also from your log file:

    Code
    18:53:01.854 T:1961745360  NOTICE: ARM mem: 864MB GPU mem: 160MB MPG2:0 WVC1:0

    160 mb for GPU mem is too low. This will cause issues with HEVC decoding. You definitely need to add or edit the gpu_mem_1024 value in config.txt.

    Update: I just tested with gpu_mem_1024=160 on my pi3. With that setting Kodi crashes immediately after I start the playback of a HEVC file.

    Edited 2 times, last by smp (January 21, 2018 at 12:03 AM).

    Wow,

    that sounds really promising, smp! Thanks for trying that out. I was away from home for most of the day and right now I'm newly setting up LibreElec as a single boot system since I didn't like the peculiarities of a multi boot system with berryboot (no automatic updates, some stuff more complicated). I'll just get a second SD card for my RetroPie.

    At the moment the new system is scraping my libraries, as soon as that is done I'll edit config.txt. Hope I'll be able to announce HVEC playback (however slow) then!

    [edit: I'm using a Pi2 btw. I'm trying to get my brother to buy "LePotato" of which I first read yesterday, so that he'll give me his Pi3 ;)]

    Quote from Bertel

    and right now I'm newly setting up LibreElec as a single boot system since I didn't like the peculiarities of a multi boot system with berryboot (no automatic updates, some stuff more complicated).

    Bertel very wise move indeed!

    For anyone else currently using Berryboot with LibreELEC:

    Do NOT use Berryboot as Berryboot is not supported by LibreELEC!

    Aside from the inability to upgrade using the standard LibreELEC upgrade procedure, the main reason why Berryboot is not supported by LibreELEC is that Berryboot replaces critical LibreELEC software components with components sourced from random non-LibreELEC operating systems that do not perform to the same standard or in ways expected/required by LibreELEC. It's a miracle LibreELEC with Berryboot works at all, to be honest, until it doesn't of course, and then the LibreELEC developers have to pick up the pieces caused by Berryboot.

    The github instructions to "update" a Berryboot installation by copying only the SYSTEM file do not address the fact that LibreELEC will still be missing the matching LibreELEC kernel, firmware, kernel module and device tree files that are shipped in a normal/official LibreELEC release (these files are all removed by Berryboot in their "releases").

    Users of Berryboot systems will have problems that nobody else can reproduce because their Frankenstein Berryboot system resembles absolutely nothing created or released by LibreELEC and is just a random mess of mismatched components.

    Anyone using Berryboot should make a backup of their data using the LibreELEC Backup tool, re-write their SD card using the official LibreELEC 8.2.3 img.gz (latest version at time of writing) downloaded from libreelec.tv (and most definitely not the unrecognisable version of "LibreELEC" from Berryboot that should not be distributed as though it were an official LE release), and then restore their data from backup.

    If you must use a boot manager then both NOOBS and PINN are supported by LibreELEC. But not Berryboot.