[imx] Stuttering HD Live TV

  • I already tried to talk about this issue with mk01 on github, but did not get an answer.

    Between Kodi Alpha 2 and Beta 5 (I know there are a lot of releases between them) something happened to HD playback on imx.
    mk01 made a rework of that imx codec in the meantime. Maybe this could be the reason for the issue I experience.

    Whenever I watch a HD livestrem (vdr.vnsi) after seconds or sometimes a few minutes the stream begins to stutter. It looks like the output drops to ~10fps, even though the first seconds were perfectly fine. Audio is playing correctly the whole time.
    In Alpha 2 this issue didn't exist.

    You can see this in my kodi.log
    The problem starts where the lines

    Code
    OutputPicture - dropped in output
    CVideoPlayerVideo::CalcDropRequirement - hurry: 1


    can be seen.

    This also sometimes happens to SD streams, but a lot later (at least 30 minutes watching).

    I am running kodi with LE on the 3.14 SolidRun kernel.

    Any ideas?

  • Which LE version was last fine? This problem happen only with livestream?

    There has been lot of changes regarding kodi. Previously I used big patch from xbian. But because it was to hard to separate it from theirs kodi repo I switched to patches from openbricks. Also mk01 did lot of work in upstream kodi. And everything is just a big mess at the end.

    Obviously I can't fix such errors.

  • I use custom builds (just a little change regarding CEC), so I cannot answer your first question directly. I will check with which of your releases this started.

    Up to now I recognized this with livestream using vdr.vnsi and also with the SkyGo video plugin (which is also livestream).
    It feels like the issue is bigger when the resolution is higher.
    When playing local files from HDD I didn't recognize that issue, but this might be because I don't have so much HD content. I will check this further.

    I am aware that imx has a few developers only but maybe there is a chance to get this issue fixed.
    [hr]
    vpeter: do you have a build 7.90.004 with 3.14 kernel somewhere?
    The oldest of your builds I could find is 7.90.005.
    7.90.005 already has this issue. This one is with Kodi Krypton Beta 1 (git hash 81d5d26) which was released shortly after mk01 reworked the imx codec. I would like to compare with 7.90.004 but I didn't build it by myself.

    Edited once, last by m.hueske (November 21, 2016 at 8:29 PM).

  • 7.90.004 image build. This one is still using huge patch based on xbian's kodi which includes more changes to kodi. In 005 I didn't do that anymore because it is hard to get this working. Maybe I should look this again... That's why images from 005 on are using only original kodi + some small patches.

  • Thanks a lot vpeter.

    7.90.004: affected by this issue
    7.90.003: playing smooth

    Right now I am building a version based on 7.90.004 but removed this huge patch. I will provide feedback as soon as I have it running.

    From what I saw these patches got mostly sent upstream. This would explain why current builds are also affected even though you removed that patch from LE.
    [hr]
    Update: 7.90.004 doesn't build without those patches...

    Edited once, last by m.hueske (November 23, 2016 at 10:32 PM).

  • 7.90.003 doesn't include any extra imx6 patch. Because of that some functionality seems better (like in your case) but other were worst.
    7.90.005 includes only small changes to upstream kodi (to even compile it for imx6). Nothing else. If you have an issue with this version it is a problem with some upstream commits mk01 did. But because no one has any contact with him there is not much hope for a fix.