Frequent crashes when starting video playback (9.2.6 RPi4)

barry · January 2, 2021 at 6:44 AM

Hi, I've been running LibreElec on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB RAM) for over a year...

Lately, it has been frequently crashing when I start playback of an h.264 or h.265 MKV video file (possibly other formats as well). After it restarts the GUI (it usually doesn't seem to do a full reboot), I try again, and it usually plays the file fine the second time.

Previously it was very stable on everything except some crashes with 4k h.265 files.

I have been watching CPU temperatures with 'bcmstat.sh xype' and they are around 41C at the time of the crash. RAM is fine.

I did switch to a Argon One case, but I am still using the original RPi4 power supply and I did not hookup the case fan.

Nonetheless, the crashes were noticed sometime after the case switch.

I'm running 9.2.6 now, but it's been happening at least since 9.2.4.

Crash Log (debug enabled):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_fYHeC…iew?usp=sharing

Please let me know if I can provide any other info.

Thanks for your help!

**Da Flex** · January 3, 2021 at 4:56 PM Official Post

I haven't found heavy errors on your log. Please remove the Argon One case, and test with the naked board.

barry · January 3, 2021 at 8:12 PM

OK.

FWIW, only the last video in the log crashed.

Thanks

barry · March 16, 2021 at 8:09 PM

Hi, I had a lot of ZIP and RAR files in my Movies and TV directory trees; I have removed most or all of them and the crashes have stopped.

ISTM from the logs that Kodi is doing a full directory scan when starting to play a video. Is that true, and if so, why?

So, I think it was trying to scan the ZIPs/RARs every time I played a video, and for whatever reason that caused the crashes.

I could understand if it was only scanning the current directory/subdirectories for subtitles, but it seemed like it was scanning the whole filesystem.

Thanks

**chewitt** · March 17, 2021 at 4:25 AM Official Post

It's trying to accomoate the dumbfuckery of users who store videos, subs and other content inside zip/rar archive files. That ability needs to die in fire or be otherwise exorcised from the Kodi codebase - it's forever causing issues.

**CvH** · March 17, 2021 at 11:26 AM Official Post

workaround: convert all videos to mkv (no reencoding needed) and put the subs to the mkv, there are also tool that doing that automatically

**Jocke.Sve** · March 17, 2021 at 11:38 AM

Quote from CvH

workaround: convert all videos to mkv (no reencoding needed) and put the subs to the mkv, there are also tool that doing that automatically

And MKVToolNix encoder is free!: MKVToolNix Downloads – Matroska tools for Linux/Unix and Windows

BTW: Why RAR/ZIP anyway?? There is no or minimal space saving...

barry · March 19, 2021 at 11:42 PM

Quote from chewitt

It's trying to accomoate the dumbfuckery of users who store videos, subs and other content inside zip/rar archive files. That ability needs to die in fire or be otherwise exorcised from the Kodi codebase - it's forever causing issues.

Hi, it makes sense that it would scan the current directory and sub-directories for zip/rar files with subtitles, but I suspect it's scanning the entire filesystem.

BTW, I have an MKV file that crashed Kodi (but not the OS) twice in a row. Third time worked.

If it keeps doing it, I'll try to capture a debug log.

Thanks!