Libreelec 8.90.006 Odroid C2: frame drops?

couchtomato · October 20, 2018 at 8:28 PM

I tested the Leia Alphas 8.90.005 and 006 for a while on my Odroid C2. First of all, I am very glad that it is running quite stable and that the bug that I reported in January ("DVB T2 HD recordings do not play with aac 5.1 + stereo audio description channel") is solved with this release.

Unfortunately I have a new problem: When I watch live tv or a recording (DVB T2 HD 1920x1080@50 fps HEVC), every few seconds the motion freezes slightly, looking like some frames dropped. This is especially visible with fast moves. However audio is perfect and not broken. The cpu usage does not seem to be high (<40% on second core, a few percents at the other 3 cores). I did not change my Libreelec Server (Raspberry Pi 3 with LibreElec 8.2.5), where the tvheadend server runs and the dvb t2 hd stick sundtek dvb-c (iii) is connected. When I use the Libreelec stable 8.2.5 on the C2 I do not get the frame drops.

Do you have any ideas why these frame drops occur? Are there any settings that I could try? Or is the problem already known?

**Iridium** · October 25, 2018 at 5:47 PM Official Post

There are certainly errors in the debug log related to either ffmpeg or hevc.

I've created ticket #31

couchtomato · November 16, 2018 at 7:38 PM

Thank you for creating a ticket.

I just installed the Leia Alphas 8.90.007 to figure out if the "micro stuttering" with DVB T2HD/HEVC is better than with the previous version 8.90.006. Unfortunately it is not solved. Of course I do not know if there was anything determined and fixed.

My last logs: http://ix.io/1s84

couchtomato · November 16, 2018 at 7:53 PM

I prepared a second micro sd card containing stable 8.2.5 and played the same video.

See my logs for comparison: http://ix.io/1s8d

For my surprise it seems that there are even more ffmpeg errors in the stable version's log. However video playback run's smoothly.

couchtomato · January 2, 2019 at 6:28 PM

I just tried the new beta 8.95.1 (thank you for releasing! Have a happy new year!). Unfortunately I still have the "micro stuttering" that occurs every few seconds. Especially you can see it very good with scrolling titles at the end of a movie. However, it is even more annoying during playback or live tv.

See my logs at http://ix.io/1xmz

Is there any way to figure out why this problem occurs. Can I e. g. replace the video player with the 8.2.5 version for a try to figure out if the issue is related to the player or to the libreelec release?

couchtomato · January 2, 2019 at 7:40 PM

One further information. To check another platform and to figure out if the problem is related to Kodi or to Libreelec, I installed MacOS Kodi v18 "Leia" RC 3 directly from http://kodi.tv/download onto a MacBook Pro (late 2013). With this version I don't have any problems when I playback the hevc video material. So it seems to be somehow related to the alpha/beta Libreelec/Odroid C2 versions.

TheWojtek · January 3, 2019 at 11:23 AM

I'd rather say it's a hardware/driver thing, since your late 2013 MBP has a Core i7 CPU and at least Iris graphics if not better. The actual Kodi in LE has the same codebase as the Kodi for Mac OS.

couchtomato · January 4, 2019 at 4:58 PM

Maybe. I read in another forum that I could try CoreELEC 8.95.7 that is a Libreelec/master fork. Fortunately this version runs smoothly on my Odroid C2. Hopefully a future LibreELEC version will contain the relevant code that fixes the problem. Unfortunately I am not an expert to determine the relevant code. However I can use CoreELEC as a workaround so far.

rabaraf · January 6, 2019 at 8:20 AM

I would confirm that micro-stuttering is noticeable on my Odroid-C2 running LibreELEC (Leia) v8.95.2 BETA. This is almost not visible but when I'm looking with my eyes very close to the screen it is perceptible, especially with the scenes where camera is moving along the landscape very slow but for 5 or more seconds - then for sure I see motion is freezing for one or more frames.

So for that reason I'm going back to LibreELEC (community): 8.2.3.1-C2 (Kernel: Linux 3.14.29) build made by kszaq where micro-stuttering is not happening at all.

Another problems I noticed with Leia Beta 2:

- CPU temperature is huge in idle mode. This is around 68-73 ºC when screensaver is active while on kszaq build it is 48-52 ºC

- Create System and Kodi Backup action is starting and window is disappearing after one or two seconds but the backup file is taking as I see in WinSCP how the file's size is growing. Until backup is completed screen in LibreELEC is frozen.