Micro stutter with Netflix

    Hello everyone,

    I've a problem with micro stutter in the Netflix addon for a while now. At seemingly arbitrary times every couple of seconds / minutes the playback of a video stutters slightly but noticeably for a few seconds. As far as I could find out, this affects H264 streams, at 25FPS in FullHD, e.g. the german series "Freud". With other formats / resolutions / refresh rates the problem doesn't seem to exist, e.g. American series in 24p and FullHD or with lower resolution of the problematic video.

    For all videos - both the problematic and the unproblematic ones - the Samsung TV switches to the correct refresh rate / resolution.

    When I look at the video details (key "O") during playback, I see that for the problematic H264 videos the hardware decoding is set to "Inactive" and the inputstream decoder is used. I think this is normal because Netflix needs inputstream.adaptive, right? Nevertheless, the CPU is not overloaded, at most 40% used, RAM is used 15%.


    That's how Kodi is currently configured, I have also experimented with other settings, but without success:

    Settings / Player:

    • Adjust refresh rate: always
    • Synchronize playback with screen: off
    • HQ Scaler for scaling greater than: 0%.
    • Allow hardware acceleration - VAAPI: on
    • Use MPEG-2 VAAPI: on
    • Use MPEG-4 VAAPI: on
    • VC-1 Use VAAPI: on
    • Use VP8 VAAPI: on
    • Use VP9 VAAPI: on
    • Use HEVC VAAPI: on


    Image settings during playback:

    • Video scaling method: Lanczos3 - Optimized
    • Tone Mapping: Reinhard

    The environment:

    Kodi 18.6 runs under LibreElec 9.2.2 on a Zotac ZBox CI327NANO (Quad Core Celeron N3450@2200MHz, 4GB RAM, SSD).

    Netflix Addon is version 1.1.1

    InputStream Adaptive Addon is version 2.4.4.1

    Internet connection is 500MBit with stable download rate, according to speed test. Kodi is connected to the router via Gigabit LAN cable (no WLAN).

    Does anybody have an idea where else you could look for something? I slowly can't think of anything anymore, I've been trying to get a grip on the whole thing for a while now.

    Thanks for every hint :)

    Many greetings

    Snoopy

    Edited once, last by snoopy1978 (April 15, 2020 at 12:26 AM).

    Quote from snoopy1978

    Kodi 18.6 runs under LibreElec 9.2.2 on a Zotac ZBox CI327NANO (Quad Core Celeron N3450@2200MHz, 4GB RAM, SSD).

    afaik you need dualchannel RAM (2 modules) To have enough thruput for the GPU. Also n or j 34xx can't do HDR at all in Hardware.