LibreELEC 9.2.X video judder and stuttering [renamed]

    And adding total_mem=2048 to config.txt did not fix the problem for me.

    My output channels is only 2 as suggested.

    My refresh rate is 60HZ as suggested.

    I turned off hardware acceleration as one person suggested.

    These are all suggestions from this thread. None of them worked.

    Edited 2 times, last by harry_fine: Added more complete details (December 17, 2020 at 9:23 PM).

    • Official Post
    Quote from harry_fine

    I've tried 4 different cable, eliminating any adapters. But how would the cable cause the problem I'm having, that is, sound working perfectly for IPTV or local media streaming, but sound aq going to zero for live TV?

    A higher data rate can make the difference. If you need another proof to be sure about the cable: Click!
    Can you confirm that you've been deactivated de-interlacing for testing?

    Have you tried "Audio pass-through" on / off at the audio settings?

    Hi. I'm in expert settings, of course, and there is no de-interlace setting even for the pi4B.

    The new 2.1 cable should be here today, I will let you know if that changes anything.

    It's so frustrating, because I love KODI and the with IPTV and over-the-air setup, and dying to get rid of Rogers Cable, but so far it's impossible.

    Thank you for following up.

    It's not there, AFAIK you can access that settings only when you play the media - then push OK, select the wheel (Settings) icon in bottom right corner, select Video settings from menu and after changing the Deinterlace method (which is currently grayed in my latest LE 9.80 Nightly) you should select Set as default for all media. It's described in some other thread here.

    I received my $30 HDMI 2.0 cable, rebooted, same problem with buffering. Various whitelist and refresh settings, nothing fixed the problem. It plays for about 10 seconds and freezes. And it's always the AQ (pressing SHIFT+CRTL+O) that drops to zero before program stutters. The VQ is never at zero. And if you recall from the OP, this ONLY happens playing live streams from the TVHeadend Server.

    NETWORK: I have a fast wired cable connection (or fast enough, package is 300down, 20up) with speed tests showing 180mb/s download, with the Pi set to a static IP. Google Nest pucks, 3 in a condo of 1600sqft, with fast connection from the same hub at my computer and TV which can all stream 4K.

    Created an advancedsettings.html file as follows:

    LibreELECBR:~/.kodi/userdata

    <advancedsettings>

    <cache>

    <network>

    <buffermode>1</buffermode>

    <memorysize>209715200</memorysize>

    <readfactor>20</readfactor>

    </network>

    </cache>

    </advancedsettings>

    I did make one major change to see if it would make a difference, I have a second install of Libreelec on an Intel NUC box, so I installed the tvheadend server there, and tried streaming both from the NUC box which also housed the server, and from the PI4 running the client only. SAME ON BOTH, not just opn the PI.

    Tuner is Hauppage WinTV Dual Tuner.

    I don't know what else to check. Buffer settings have been increased in advancedsettings.xml. Machine, the Pi4B has lots of power. Is this a native Kodi problem and not a PI problem as it happened on the NUC as well? And then it is a Kodi problem, or an Libreelec problem?

    I found the setting, it's been so long since I've tried Kodi I forgot about those settings within the medium playing. I set deinterlace method to off, no change. I rebooted to make sure the change stuck, it had, but no change. I'm playing local over the air tv at 1080p, tried at 60, 59, 29 etc and I made sure that setting you mentioned sync playback to display was off.

    Pretty frustrating going through these threads, because everybody else finds that magic bullet that fixes it for them, but I'm suffering the same problem on two different hardware devices.

    Well, there're no details about SW versions that you're running, is the client add-on also Tvheadend? And what about some other add-ons (if installed) - a possible conflict there?

    I had no such issue running Tvheadend HTSP Client and Tvheadend Server 4.2 add-ons locally on RPi 4B, LE 9.2.5, 9.2.6, 9.80 Nightly and 2 different USB DVB-T2 tuners.

    I understand your configuration is different but maybe the Tvheadend Server's side configuration or PVR & Live TV configuration settings in Kodi may also play a role. Perhaps try to look at OTA EPG settings, disable EPG temporarily etc... Also I would try to latest LE Nightly 9.80, from my perspective it works pretty fine ( Index of / ).

    Using the the latest stock versions both for the server side and the client side, both TV headend. tried every possible software combination and taken every piece of advice in this thread.

    No other add-ons are installed except simplepvr, it's a fresh installation and I'm not looking for other video add-ins, looking to do things entirely from three sources, over the air tv, IPTV and streaming from my Synology box. So nothing either from the Kodi or libreelec add-ons added. Perhaps some audio codecs.

    I was wondering if there's a different back end and front end combination I can use to take those out of the equation?

    Here is a snippet. I can certainly do a link to a server it you like, but I zero'd the log, logging started then watched the screen as aq started at <0> at 10:42.09, then the picture comes back to life for about 2 minuets with a much higher than normal aq of 60, then as I watch the screen, it drops to 20, 10, 5 and then 0 all within about 5 seconds. Playback stops at that point.

    De-interlacing is set to OFF, and Sync playback to display is off.

    My bad, I had passthrough ON. Also had sync playback ON.

    Here's the new log from a new fresh test with passthrough OFF and sync playback OFF:

    Edited once, last by harry_fine: Merged a post created by harry_fine into this post. (December 19, 2020 at 4:07 PM).

    Well, in my case the aq drops to zero (sometimes) only when there's a bad DVB-T2 signal reception, then audio stops (and can be recovered only by tuning to another channel or by stopping and starting play on the same channel) but in most cases the video is still running, sometimes in worst cases it also stops.

    So from my perspective the audio is more sensitive to data stream corruption than video. I would expect audio could be recovered when the signal level returns to good value but usually it does not happen. As soon as the stream is corrupted, from point of corruption the data is (at least partially) useless - it's visible also when Timeshift is active - as soon as the 'aq=zero' issue happens, after that point audio is silent even if you skip forward, when you return before that point, audio + video is OK.

    So the question is - could the data stream suffer a corruption in your case as well? And the wait is due to missing (corrupted) block or is that nonsense?

    Don't you see any Transport Errors / Continuity Errors in Tvheadend's Status page on your adapter?

    Edited 4 times, last by ghtester (December 19, 2020 at 4:39 PM).

    OK, let's look at another direction. Could it be the server stream type on the server side?

    I notice in Tvheadend server that there are 7 default stream types, that are linked to each user. In the Tvheadend HTSP client, there is a field for Stream Type but I'm not convinced it does anything. I tried entering Pass on the server side, and put in Pass on the client side, , rebooted and got an error that the Pass stream type was not available.

    Yet, I was able to create a new stream type and that did not generate that message. However, the problem still existed. I've attached a screenshot of my custom Streaming stream profile, that was also entered on the client side.

    Any comments on the screenshot, or generaly, which stream type does Kodi best use for streaming live TV when setting up the user's stream types.

    Yes, it is in the blue, I had made sure of that. Tried the different server side settings, but after doing some readings, it seems that Kodi only accepts htsp which I think is equivalent to Pass.

    Funny, I just put my flat antenna out on my terrace rather than on the window, can physically see the CN Tower a mile away, and I went inside and the aq had jumped to 55%. I thought that was it all along. And then, after about 1- seconds, it dropped down to zero.

    Possible bad (new) Haupagge tuner?

    Edited once, last by harry_fine: Merged a post created by harry_fine into this post. (December 19, 2020 at 5:55 PM).