Kodi 19 fails to start on old intel gpu with i915 because it loads the wrong libva_driver

jim_p · May 21, 2021 at 11:23 AM

Was there a new build for May 21th? Isn't this the same version?

**lrusak** · May 21, 2021 at 4:10 PM Official Post

nightly builds just build, well, nightly, if there was no changes in that period then the same hash will be used.

jim_p · October 14, 2021 at 5:50 PM

I am bringing this back because today I came accross the most weird playback issue. SInce May, I moved to the stable version of le (10.0.0 as of today) and I am still setting it up from scratch, using a usb stick and a persistent installation on it (the run option at the boot menu).

So, I came accross an old hp laptop with amd turion which has a tiny ir remote control (rc1762307/01) and I wanted to test the remote! It works good in general, although the buttons in the top row need remapping because they do all sorts of weird stuff, e.g. the dvd button acts like the stop one and stops playback.

The laptop has this gpu which presumably does vaapi video decoding according to vainfo

Code

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV620/M82 [Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470]
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company RV620/M82 [Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470]
Kernel driver in use: radeon

libva info: VA-API version 1.11.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/dri/r600_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_11
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.11 (libva 2.11.1)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 21.0.3 for AMD RV620 (DRM 2.50.0 / 5.10.47, LLVM 11.0.1)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline: VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               : VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   : VAEntrypointVideoProc

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But when a video is played with vaapi decoding, this happens (attached image). If I disable vaapi for h264 (and for everything else) the video plays fine, and it just stresses the cpu. On h265 videos, where vaapi does not work, the videos look fine too, although they are too choppy.

Why does this happen?

**mglae** · October 14, 2021 at 7:16 PM

jim_p

1. Wrong thread, intel != AMD

~~2. In Mesa 21.0.3 there is at least https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/4605 for Kabini GPUs, no idea if RV620 is affected.~~

Edit: issue 4605 this is already fixed in 10.0.0 with a patch. Maybe you can do a search about RV620.

PS: That reminds me we need to update Mesa for LE 10.0.1

jim_p · October 15, 2021 at 9:59 AM

Do you mean search the gitlab repo of mesa for issues related to rv620? Even if I find something, I will not know what to do.

The reason I posted on this thread is because I thought it was some libva misconfiguration again.

**Klojum** · October 15, 2021 at 10:39 AM

Quote from jim_p

Mobility Radeon HD 3450/3470

"Old" doesn't even start to describe it, that chip was manufactured around 2007. Prehistoric (in computer terms) would be a better term.

Quote from jim_p

On h265 videos, where vaapi does not work, the videos look fine too, although they are too choppy.

Such old hardware is totally unfit to decode h265 videos. The h264 video is relatively easy to process, for CPU and GPU alike. The H265/HEVC format requires much more "oomph", so unless you find slide shows amusing to watch, it's best to keep h265 videos away from that laptop.

jim_p · October 15, 2021 at 10:47 AM

I think the laptop I mentioned at the start of the thread is equally old.

And from all the hardware I have in my possession today, only a tvbox with amlogic s905 (no letter next to it) can play h265. That's why I don't bother with h265 at all.

**Klojum** · October 15, 2021 at 4:30 PM

Well, h265 does have its perks. I converted almost my entire collection to h265, mainly for its smaller file sizes. Converting h264 videos to HEVC will compress them from 40 to 90%, depending on the source video quality. I typically not only save 70% on average in size, but I also enhance the video when converting if needed. Say, cranking up the gamma, brightness, color and/or contrast a bit, and sharpen the video a bit.

jim_p · October 25, 2021 at 3:23 PM

So i got the turion laptop back and tried le 9.2.6 this time.

H264 files play with no issues, but without hardware acceleration (o > decoder > ff-h264 (software). And that is with the vaapi option enabled for h264 (settings > player > videos > processing > use mpeg4 vaapi).

jim_p · October 27, 2021 at 11:28 AM

It seems I made a huge mistake on the le 9 installation. It is the old one I have on the intel laptop mentioned at the top of the thread and I had created a file that sets the libva driver manually, as mentioned by lrusak here. I probably wanted to have it ready beforehand, for the upgrade to le 10.

Minimum opengl version for kodi 19 under linux · Issue #19521 · xbmc/xbmc

Bug report I have an old laptop with a libreelec installation since early July 2019. I think it started with kodi 18.2 back then and it has been successfully…

github.com

Removing that file made h264 videos play with hardware acceleration again, but with the same artifacts that I mentioned above for le 10.

jim_p · November 25, 2021 at 7:27 AM

Goodmorning everyone. Here is a weirder thing I noticed with le 10 on a different laptop (intel t4300, ati 4570, 4gb of ram).

Once it leaves the boot options screen (the one that says installer, live and run), it starts switching between an all red/green/blue/white/black screen and a couple of gradient ones! On the same system, le 9 boots fine.

The forementioned system fails to boot from another usb stick with ventoy and a couple of isos. It shows the ventoy boot menu, but when selecting any iso, it stops forever at the blinking cursor on the top left corner.