Micro Stutters / Frame Drops with 10.0.2 (Matrix)

    I have been running LibreElec/Kodi on a Pi2 for years, playing mainly 720p and some 1080p videos and its been flawless. The last release I was using was 9.2.8 on an SD which had been upgraded countless times.

    I have just moved house and bought a new TV and totally rebuild my AV setup, so decided to upgrade to 10.0.2 and thought it was a good time to start again with a fresh SD.. So I built LibreElec on a new SD and after resolving a few issues, its pretty much working as before.

    But I keep noticing random frame drops which manifest itself as a micro stutter (this is not the 1:6 frame drop you get from 50/60hz).. I am running at 24hz (and have also tried 23.98).. I have pretty much tried every option in settings but can't fix it... I even tried upgrading the Pi2 to a 3 as I had a spare one, but its exactly the same.

    I never saw anything like this before.. Well I did.. But always proved that the 'stutter' was in the source video.. But now I am getting regular, random stutters which are 100% not in the source

    I am going to go back to 9.2 to prove this, but my old SD won't boot for some reason (I did have Hyperion installed with it, and now it freezes on a RGB colour panel at boot, so I think its related).. So I may just build a new card and see what happens...

    But I just wonder if anyone had any ideas which might help?

    Jon

    Another thing to check is subtitles or overlays (eg progress bar), if the are enabled they could lead to short stutters as well (eg when a new subtitle font has to be loaded). Turn off subtitles and all overlays (debug info, progress etc) to verify if you still get stutters (but whitelist is first point to check).

    so long,

    Hias

    Thanks for the reply.. Still not closer.. I already had the "adjust refresh rate" to Always.. But tried on Start/Stop too.

    Never seen the Whitelist option, but had a play and just added 1920x1080@24fps.. And it didn't help

    The videos in question do not have Subtitle streams nor do I have any overlays visible... But how do I turn off subtitles and overlays if I needed too??

    One thing which I didn't mention and I am still not 100% sure if its accurate is that I seem to see this after a scene change.. Perhaps when the bit rate changes significantly (As the vidoes are VBR). I have to admit to be clutching straws here as I am not 100% sure...


    I think I need to go back to 9.2 just to prove to myself that it was OK before upgrading... I can't say that it was.. But in the years of using LibreElec/Kodi, I never saw this before...

    Jon

    Verifying if it was indeed OK with 9.2 is a good idea - not that we're chasing a ghost :)

    If it works with 9.2 it might also be worth trying with latest LE10 nightly from here https://test.libreelec.tv/10.0/RPi/RPi2/ - it contains a few video fixes, one of that was rather hefty stuttering on certain files though.

    You can enable/disable subtitles during playback with the subtitles settings - press OK on your remote (or enter on keyboard) to bring up the player / progress overlay, you'll see various setting-icons in the bottom bar.

    so long,

    Hias

    Tested today with a few build of 9.2.8 and I don't get any stutters.. Everything is perfectly smooth. This doens't surprise me really as I have never had a problem before.

    So I will go back to 10.x and will try a Nightly build in the hope that it fixes it.. If not, i think i am going to have to go back to 9.2.8 as the stutters are really annoying me..

    If you get the issue with latest LE10 nightly as well then please post a debug log - mediainfo of a problematic file and a sample could be useful too.

    Another thing to try would be overclocking the RPi (RPi2/3 h264 decoders are clocked a bit low and struggle with higher bitrate/fps videos), eg try adding these settings to config.txt

    Code
    core_freq=500
h264_freq=500
over_voltage=6

    so long,

    Hias

    Just to give you an update on this.. I want to run 9.x for a while to be 100% sure its doesn't have the problem... From what I can see, it doesn't and I am not getting frame drops.. But the UK has had some of the best weather in years, and I have not been watching movies for a while.. So I havn't really had chance to test.

    In the small amount of time I have been using it, I do not believe that I have seen any unexplained frame skips.. So will soon go back to my 10.x SD and will then do some more testing...

    I will update you as soon as have some concrete information.

    Jon

    I have a similar issue on a Rpi3. I have stutter, no video when playing back X265 files using kodi matrix 19.4. I was sure I had viewed the videos previously, so I dug out an older version. This works flawlessly. Don't know if this is a OS or kodi issue, but reverting back to kodi 18 sorted me.

    Quote from blod

    I have a similar issue on a Rpi3. I have stutter, no video when playing back X265 files using kodi matrix 19.4. I was sure I had viewed the videos previously, so I dug out an older version. This works flawlessly. Don't know if this is a OS or kodi issue, but reverting back to kodi 18 sorted me.

    That's a different issue, accelerated H265 decoding is no longer available in LE10 on RPi2/3 - see the release notes

    LibreELEC (Matrix) 10.0.2 - LibreELEC

    so long,

    Hias

    I finally got around to testing the nightly build, and upgraded to "LibreELEC-RPi2.arm-10.0-nightly-20221014-c73c030.img"

    And its worse.. Much worse.. After the upgrade, the stuttering seems even more frequent and its almost like the frame rate is constantly changing...

    Further more, I had 1 instance where I had no pass-through audio (my amp just showed no audio) so had to reboot.. This is something I see very occasionally (perhaps once or twice per year), but using the nightly it happened the first time I paused the movie (but I concede this could be an unfortunate co-incidence)... And as a deal breaker I am also getting a horizontal bar of bright colours flash across the bottom (in the subtitle area?) of the screen every few seconds.

    So I think I am going back to v9... To be honest, there is nothing about V10 that I am using, so its not the end of the world.

    10.0.3 is the same for me as the Nightly build that I tried yesterday.

    The frame skip/stuttering is still worse than it was in 10.0.2, and I have the odd flashing at the bottom of the screen.. Although its only one movie so far..

    I watched 1/2 of the movie using 10.0.2 and didn't have a problem, but when I upgraded to the nightly, I watched the rest of the movie and every 2-20 seconds, I get a bar of blocks appear across the bottom of the screen.. now that I have upgraded to 10.0.3 I went back to check and its the same.

    So something isn't right.. And as I said, 9.x worked perfectly for me, so i think I will go back to that..

    Please provide a full debug log.

    How to post a log (wiki)

    1. Enable debugging in Settings>System Settings>Logging
    2. Restart Kodi
    3. Replicate the problem
    4. Generate a log URL (do not post/upload logs to the forum)

    use "Settings > LibreELEC > System > Paste system logs" or run "pastekodi" over SSH, then post the URL link

    I have gone back to my 9.x card at the moment, but when I get a minute I will go back to 10.x and grab some logs.

    The horizontal bar of colour that I talk about is odd.. I checked the original file just in case, and realised that its rendered at 1248x548 (so letter box).. And the area of the screen where it appears is in the bottom black 'border' of the screen which is not in the original file.. So it must be generated by the Kodi..

    In contrast the other movies I have watched were 16:9 format so filled the entire screen.

    I will do some tests soon, but as 9.x works so well for what I want.. I am quite happy to use that for the time being.