v7.90.006 ALPHA skipping frames on intel NUC

mikeboss · August 8, 2016 at 9:51 AM

during playback the system is constantly skipping frames.

Intel NUC DC3217IYE with Intel Core i3-3217U & HD Graphics 4000

on v7.90.006 ALPHA all settings stock except display refresh rate is set to 50 Hz and
"Adjust display refresh rate" is set to "Always".

the issue can not be reproduced on Raspberry Pi 2 running the same release of LibreELEC.
the issue can not be reproduced on Intel NUC DC3217IYE running OpenELEC 6.0.3
the issue can not be reproduced if all settings are left at the factory defaults
the issue can not be reproduced if the display refresh rate is set to 24 Hz and "Adjust display refresh rate" is disabled
the issue can not be reproduced if "sync playback to display" is enabled
the issue can be reproduced as soon as "Adjust display refresh rate" is set to "Always"
the issue can be reproduced on LibreELEC (Jarvis 16.1) v7.0.2

Kodi logfile: aghK
Kodi debug logfile: gFOa

mediainfo:
General
Unique ID : 193262601416799577428073575155715625802 (0x916505EB2F33E89C97F2226C3D89534A)
Complete name : /Volumes/TRANSIT/Mr.Robot.S02E05.eps2.3_logic-b0mb.hc.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.H.264-NTb.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 1.61 GiB
Duration : 51 min
Overall bit rate : 4 483 kb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2016-08-04 13:48:13
Writing application : mkvmerge v8.3.0 ('Over the Horizon') 64bit
Writing library : libebml v1.3.1 + libmatroska v1.4.2

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 51 min
Bit rate : 4 097 kb/s
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.185
Stream size : 1.47 GiB (91%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 51 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 spf)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 141 MiB (9%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration : 50 min
Bit rate : 61 b/s
Count of elements : 829
Stream size : 23.0 KiB (0%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

**DaVu** · August 8, 2016 at 10:54 AM Official Post

Hmm..strange. The display seems to change fine to 23,976 and then back to 50

Could you please set "Adjust display refresh rate" to "on start/stop"

Do you have "sync playback to display" enabled?

mikeboss · August 8, 2016 at 11:15 AM

yup, very strange indeed.

"Adjust display refresh rate" to "on start/stop" had no effect, but

enabling "sync playback to display" seems to be the solution! no more skipped frames, yay! thnx!!

**DaVu** · August 8, 2016 at 12:07 PM Official Post

The only poblem you will have now, that audio passthorugh is disabled, as said in the setting explanation.

If it works for you, then ok, but it shouldn´t be a solution, tbh

Are you sure you enabled it or did you disable "sync playback to display"?

mikeboss · August 8, 2016 at 12:29 PM

during the trouble shooting I did countless factory reset procedures
plus installations on different machines/platforms.

I'm 100% sure that per default "sync playback to display" is disabled
and I had to enable it according to your suggestion.

**DaVu** · August 8, 2016 at 1:50 PM Official Post

ok, thanks for confirming

could you also please test, if you are able to reproduce the issue while using one of our alpha builds?

or with a milhouse build from here: LibreELEC Testbuilds for x86_64 (Kodi 17.0)

mikeboss · August 8, 2016 at 2:03 PM

of course, I'll try this as soon as possible. maybe this evening, maybe tomorrow... will report back.

mikeboss · August 8, 2016 at 4:33 PM

unfortunately, the latest LibreELEC.tv Krypton "Milhouse" build #0807 does not show skipped frames info anymore when pressing the letter "o" on the keyboard. I think I saw that the system skipped some frames, bit I would like to see proof. any idea about how I can reveal this info again?

latest alpha LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-7.90.003.img definitely is skipping frames, too. like with 7.0.2 the frame skipping stops as soon as I activate "sync playback to display".

mikeboss · August 9, 2016 at 9:58 AM

with LibreELEC (Krypton) v7.90.004 ALPHA the skipped frames info is gone, too. but I'm pretty sure that it is still skipping frames...

**DaVu** · August 10, 2016 at 8:17 AM Official Post

Try to SSH in and do:

Code

kodi-send --action=PlayerprocessInfo

mikeboss · August 10, 2016 at 9:05 AM

nope. unfortunately this just shows the exact same information panel as if I had pressed the letter "o" on the keyboard. skipped (and dropped) frames info is gone.

**DaVu** · August 10, 2016 at 1:57 PM Official Post

then play with:

PlayerProcessDebug
PlayerDebug

as the value for 'action'

mikeboss · August 10, 2016 at 3:09 PM

thnx! "kodi-send --action=PlayerDebug" did the trick. and indeed, the latest alpha v7.90.004 is skipping frames, too.

mikeboss · September 3, 2016 at 9:42 AM

as of v7.90.005 this issue still persists. the system is constantly skipping frames.

regards,
michael

mikeboss · September 5, 2016 at 10:23 AM

I'm going back to OpenELEC 6.0.3

HomeTheatreGuru · September 5, 2016 at 1:55 PM

I wish this was addressed by the developers. Plenty of guys seem to be having this issue. Logs have also been provided, what else needs to be done?

BrettB · September 12, 2016 at 10:08 PM

Quote from mikeboss

as of v7.90.005 this issue still persists. the system is constantly skipping frames.

I just began testing v7.90.005 on an RPi 3 (with MPEG-2 H/W license). My initial (upgraded) settings were:

"Adjust display refresh rate": "Off"
"sync playback to display": Off
"Allow hardware acceleration - OMXPlayer": Off
"Allow hardware acceleration - MMAL": On

"Audio Passthrough | Enable passthrough": On

And I am seeing dropped and skipped frames causing "jumpy" video (audio sounds OK, but it is the sync is messed up since the video is jumpy).

If I change just "Adjust display refresh rate" to "On start/stop", I still get dropped and skipped frames (although maybe not quite as bad?).

If I change just "Sync playback to display" to On, then the dropped and skipped frames (mostly) go away and the file seems to play OK. However, the CPU usage is considerably higher which leads to the Pi's thermal throttling kicking in (the yellow box in the upper right corner appears). If I let it continue playing, the box will then turn red (as the temperature continues to rise). If I pause the playback, then it will quickly cool off and the box goes away. This behavior leads me to believe that the hardware MPEG2 acceleration isn't being used.

EDIT: I've attached a kodi log with debugging enabled showing playback in each of these 3 successive scenarios.

bouvin · September 18, 2016 at 1:56 PM

Just a bump to confirm that I am also seeing this behaviour on my Intel NUC.