Playing H264 Videos lags after 30 mins on Raspy 4

oJPTo · May 10, 2022 at 6:50 PM

Hi,

I am watching tons of videos in FullHD H264 from german ARD mediathek https://www.ardmediathek.de/

All of them start lagging after about 20 to 30 minutes of playback. I then stop and restart the video.

With lagging I mean the picture is stuttering and audio is out of sync.

H265 works fine.

any idea?

Raspy4B 2G

OpenElec 10, (doesn't show the version?!)

latest bootloader and USB firmware

original power supply, 42 °C under load

There is no obvious difference in bcmstat when playback stutters or when it doesn't.

btw, my Raspy3B suddenly started to lag with H265 videos (handbrake) which it didn't before. while H264 works fine (original power supply, too).

Maybe since upgrade from 9.2 to 10?

I used a Raspy1 for a year before, which did fine with H264 but always crashed with H265.

thanks

ps. there is something odd, why does it show only 1 gig of Memory?

Code

# bcmstat.sh 
  Config: v0.5.5, args "", priority lowest (+19)
   Board: 4 x  cores available, ondemand governor (Pi4 Model B rev 1.2, BCM2838 SoC with 2GB RAM by Sony UK)
  Memory: 1024MB (split 948MB ARM, 76MB GPU)
HW Block: |   ARM   |  Core  |  H264  |    SDRAM    |
Min Freq: |  600MHz | 250MHz |   0MHz |   3180MHz   |
Max Freq: | 1500MHz | 500MHz | 500MHz |   3180MHz   |
Voltages: |         0, 0.8500V        | +0, 1.2000V |
   Other: temp_limit=85
Firmware: Mar 1 2022 14:22:32, version 969fb9b1521fc7ac2b88b15a3a9e942da7678c4d (clean) (release) (start_x)
  Codecs: H264 MJPG PCM
  Booted: Tue May 10 19:08:39 2022

Time         ARM    Core    H264 Core Temp (Max)  IRQ/s      RX B/s      TX B/s
======== ======= ======= ======= =============== ====== =========== ===========
19:34:49  700Mhz  233Mhz  278Mhz 41.87C (43.82C)  1,759          32         112
19:34:51  800Mhz  267Mhz  305Mhz 42.35C (43.82C)  2,435      33,598         484
19:34:53  800Mhz  500Mhz  305Mhz 42.84C (43.82C)  3,114     504,439       4,592
19:34:55  700Mhz  500Mhz  278Mhz 42.35C (43.82C)  2,964     437,037       3,705
19:34:57  700Mhz  500Mhz  278Mhz 41.87C (43.82C)  2,840     469,945       3,688
19:34:59  700Mhz  233Mhz  278Mhz 43.33C (43.82C)  2,738     469,837       4,994
19:35:01  700Mhz  500Mhz  278Mhz 42.84C (43.82C)  2,629     503,894       4,338
19:35:03  700Mhz  500Mhz  278Mhz 43.33C (43.82C)  2,602     368,617       2,597
19:35:05  700Mhz  500Mhz  278Mhz 42.84C (43.82C)  2,737     368,765       4,173
19:35:07  700Mhz  233Mhz  278Mhz 42.35C (43.82C)  2,757     337,102       2,972
19:35:09  700Mhz  500Mhz  278Mhz 41.38C (43.82C)  2,659     369,320       3,236

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**HiassofT** · May 10, 2022 at 6:57 PM

Please test with this RPi4 build and report back if it works

https://www.horus.com/~hias/tmp/libreelec/LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-10.0-devel-20220328220759-4d9d4e2.tar

H265 stuttering/lagging on RPi2/3 is to be expected as the old optimized code had to be dropped - see release notes.

so long,

Hias

oJPTo · May 11, 2022 at 9:04 AM

ah, thanks.
Well, I usually trust in those great open source projects and don't read release notes

The devel build has the same issue on my Raspy4

I just tried pause as well... pausing and waitung for a minute does not change anything. only full stop then restart at the last postition. to me this looks like a leak in the code somewhere.

For my Raspy3 I will go back to 9.2

I found a difference.

when it starts lagging the cpu usage of kodi.bin suddenly doubles from 25% to 50%

Code

top - 10:22:36 up 16 min,  1 user,  load average: 2.21, 2.03, 1.38
Tasks: 134 total,   1 running, 133 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  3.3 us,  1.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 95.6 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   1848.8 total,   1325.9 free,    280.2 used,    242.7 buff/cache
MiB Swap:      0.0 total,      0.0 free,      0.0 used.   1491.5 avail Mem 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                                                                  
  977 root      20   0  597828 150128  56124 D  25.8   7.9   5:06.75 kodi.bin                                                                                                                                                 

top - 10:26:59 up 21 min,  2 users,  load average: 2.16, 2.07, 1.57
Tasks: 136 total,   1 running, 135 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  8.5 us,  5.6 sy,  0.4 ni, 85.1 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.4 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   1848.8 total,   1318.0 free,    287.7 used,    243.1 buff/cache
MiB Swap:      0.0 total,      0.0 free,      0.0 used.   1484.0 avail Mem 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                                                                                  
  977 root      20   0  613816 149680  56044 D  50.5   7.9   6:38.67 kodi.bin

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I believe it somehow loses timing. it tries to play the video as fast as possible instead of realtime.

**popcornmix** · May 11, 2022 at 2:39 PM

Does ARD addon use widevine? It may be suffering from [this issue]([Netflix] audio is out of sync even on sd) and need a downgrade of widevine lib.

uli_3 · May 16, 2023 at 5:58 PM

oJPTo Did you find any solution for your RPi4 and LE 11/Kodi 20.1?
I've got the same issue.

Kind Regards

Uli

Würzburg, Germany