Legacy v9.2 (LTS) builds for Amlogic S805/S8X2, S905/S912 and all WeTek boxes

    Rebuilt both my Wetek Cores with your latest build these past two days. Thank you for maintaining these!

    Display Spoiler

    One thing I've never had working, even back when the hardware was 'current' and supported by the official release, is 16:9 Non-Linear stretching of 4:3 content (keeps the center 1:1 but progressively stretches to fill horizontally). Have always assumed this isn't supported because of the GPU decoding/rendering, is this the case, do you know? Got to wondering if there's any shader code somewhere I could mod myself to make it happen.

    OMG, just tried 16:9 Non Linear stretch again and it's now working, though I was sure it never did before. Forget all that!

    Pleasantly surprised to see optical digital out work on Minix Neo U1 (with its optical port). The audio out setting doesn't seem to affect it.

    Bitstream AC3 and DTS work.

    Convert to AC3 seems to work.

    Didn't test PCM.

    So. I have an old question about software deinterlacing support.

    I tested old kszaq's image version 8.2.3 and software deinterlacing works properly with the same CPU load in debug info for both versions - 8.2.3 and 9.2.8.18, it shows about 170% of CPU-KODI load and 30%-40% for each of cores, but in 9.2.8.18 version it works with frame dropping.

    I used this video sample for testing with disabled AMCODEC support. May be there is a way to repair this functionality?

    Quote from Lirk

    So. I have an old question about software deinterlacing support.

    I tested old kszaq's image version 8.2.3 and software deinterlacing works properly with the same CPU load in debug info for both versions - 8.2.3 and 9.2.8.18, it shows about 170% of CPU-KODI load and 30%-40% for each of cores, but in 9.2.8.18 version it works with frame dropping.

    I used this video sample for testing with disabled AMCODEC support. May be there is a way to repair this functionality?

    Unfortunately, there was never a real solution for this, because the hardware deinterlacer works incorrectly for some formats. But AFAIK on Kodi Leia the software method causes the same frame drops you are experiencing, and this issue is not exclusive to Amlogic devices.

    Workaround #1:
    Please try this with MPEG2 hardware decoding enabled:
    echo 1 > /sys/module/di/parameters/bypass_all

    In fact, this solution also only works in some cases, but it worked for me for PAL (576i50) format DVDs.

    If this method has led to positive results, it is worth applying it at startup, for example:
    echo "echo 1 > /sys/module/di/parameters/bypass_all" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

    Workaround #2:
    An alternative solution may be if your display is a television that natively supports interlaced input format, because in this case you can also set the output to an interlaced resolution (e.g. 1080i), and then you can turn off deinterlacing with software decoding.

    In this case, your television is responsible for performing the deinterlace in real time, so this will definitely provide better results than any software solution. Of course, this is not a working solution for a standard PC monitor.

    In both solutions, it is important that the frame rate of the source media and the display refresh rate are in sync, so the Players Settings -> Adjust display refresh rate setting option should never be turned off.

    Quote from dtech

    Workaround #1:
    Please try this with MPEG2 hardware decoding enabled:
    echo 1 > /sys/module/di/parameters/bypass_all

    In fact, this solution also only works in some cases, but it worked for me for PAL (576i50) format DVDs.

    If this method has led to positive results, it is worth applying it at startup, for example:
    echo "echo 1 > /sys/module/di/parameters/bypass_all" >> /storage/.config/autostart.sh

    Hardware deinterlacer works properly for me with MPEG2, conditionally without frame dropping, but the main problem is the old method - BOB, which gives worse results, than YADIF software deinterlacer, video with hardware deinterlacer is slightly blurry on static regions.

    Quote from dtech

    Workaround #2:
    An alternative solution may be if your display is a television that natively supports interlaced input format, because in this case you can also set the output to an interlaced resolution (e.g. 1080i), and then you can turn off deinterlacing with software decoding.

    In this case, your television is responsible for performing the deinterlace in real time, so this will definitely provide better results than any software solution. Of course, this is not a working solution for a standard PC monitor.

    In both solutions, it is important that the frame rate of the source media and the display refresh rate are in sync, so the Players Settings -> Adjust display refresh rate setting option should never be turned off.

    I tried this years ago, but this doesn't have any effect for video deinterlacing. And of course I am using autoframerate option, it works properly as the current resolution and framerate shows in the corner of the screen by TV OSD.

    Quote from dtech

    But AFAIK on Kodi Leia the software method causes the same frame drops you are experiencing, and this issue is not exclusive to Amlogic devices.

    Why it cannot be fixed by comparison Kodi 17.6 changes in the sources? Maybe it can be fixed by replacing some old files from Kodi 17.6?

    Quote from Lirk

    Why it cannot be fixed by comparison Kodi 17.6 changes in the sources? Maybe it can be fixed by replacing some old files from Kodi 17.6?

    It would make more sense to backport the bug fix, but I don't know if the bug is actually in Kodi or FFMPEG.

    Quote from Ionman

    Any advice on what tools I'd need to build for my Wetek Core using Windows? Specifically, I'd like to tweak visualization.shadertoy to implement a better timer (on the Core, iGlobalTime overflows/wraps every 8.192 seconds). From; https://github.com/xbmc/visualization.shadertoy/tree/Leia

    I have never used Windows tools for cross-compile, so I don't know if it is even possible to compile binary code for armv7. Moreover, the NTFS file system does not handle the unix-like file system level permission management, so I would not recommend cross-compile Kodi and its addons under Windows.

    You cannot build LE images natively on Windows and since an older Ubuntu release (16.04/18.04) is required to build older LE images it's not possible to use WSL either. Virtual machines are the only option.

    Appreciate the replies. Really only looking to build a small, single shared object (visualization.shadertoy.so.1.2.4). Instinctively I feel like it must be possible (e.g. I cross-compile binaries for my Quest headset using Android Studio) but perhaps a VM will be the quickest and easiest way to get a working environment. Thanks!

    It seems that manual updates doesn't work from LE interface. Also need to test addons autoupdating (20250405_master_b9e7a60/LibreELEC-Generic_S905.arm-9.2.8.18).

    Quote from Lirk

    It seems that manual updates doesn't work from LE interface. Also need to test addons autoupdating (20250405_master_b9e7a60/LibreELEC-Generic_S905.arm-9.2.8.18).

    I haven't experienced any anomalies when updating addons. For manual system updates, I only list the latest stable version. So, if you already have that installed, you will see an empty list. You can only manually update to snapshot versions via the update folder.

    Edit: Something is really wrong with the manual updates listing because the output is empty. I will investigate this after the Easter holidays, so please be patient.

    Edit #2: I found the source of the problem, which can be traced back to the fact that I grouped the devices (S805, S8X2, etc.) in the JSON file generated for the USB downloader, and the manual update method also uses this file, but it did not find the specific device.

    Fortunately, I managed to solve it on the server side, so in theory it should now work flawlessly on older versions as well.

    Please, if you have the opportunity, check it yourself, if you haven't updated manually with the tar file yet.