LE13, 12, 11, 10 - NUC11 Audio lost until reboot [sample file]

    Hi everyone,

    this is happening for me ever since I installed LE 11 on my NUC11 4 months ago. (And also on the newest LE 10.0.3)

    Specific TV programs seem to break the audio completely after which nothing plays anymore (no TV, no music, no Movies). Changing audio devices does not help. Only rebooting restores the audio. This is reproducable for the same TV channel and running program, but that same channel might be fine later(after a reboot) when another program runs.

    http://sprunge.us/Qc9atz

    First channel I switched to was fine, switched to a second one at 2022-08-07 11:03:36.450 T:785 which borked the audio, switched back the first one, no audio.

    Another one without component logging: http://ix.io/46Ts switched to the breaking channel at 2022-08-07 10:50:43.608 T:782

    EDIT: Sample File (disable passthrough): https://www.dropbox.com/s/7tsxn0wpt5su2fq/testfile.mkv?dl=1

    EDIT2: LE 10.0.3 log: http://ix.io/4egB

    Edited 3 times, last by Mettbrot: include info on LE 10.0.3 (October 27, 2022 at 8:26 PM).

    running nightly and SAT-TV on an NUC8 [*] and all is fine here (apart when thunderstorm).

    my shots into the dark:

    1. what does "Continuity" counter show ?

    login to the web-IF from TVH required => Tab "Status" (usually http://<the TVH-server-IP-addr-here>:9981/)

    explanation: same Web-IF => menu bar => help

    2 . does this also happen switching between two recorded TV streams or two movies with same codecs as the tv stream ?

    P.S.

    try to run the lastest nightly

    [*]

    assuming nuc's buildin media devices haven't changed much NUC8 => NUC11

    Quote from GDPR-7
    ...

    P.S.

    try to run the lastest nightly

    [*]

    assuming nuc's buildin media devices haven't changed much NUC8 => NUC11

    Thank you for the reply. I take it you cannot reproduce the observed behaviour, the systems might not be as comparable as you think.

    Did you read the logs? The builds tested were the latest nightlies.

    I went ahead and recorded a portion of a failing stream and played it back. It was fine which got me thinking. I disabled passthrough and got the obseved behaviour. Interestingly, the file shows "VLC could not identify Audio- or Videocodec" Error in VLC on Windows but plays Audio fine.

    You may download the file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7tsxn0wpt5su2fq/testfile.mkv?dl=1

    Also, another debug log with the file being played 3 times: passthrough enabled (audio works), passthrough disabled (audio lost), passthrough enabled again (audio still lost until reboot) http://sprunge.us/jtj336

    Can anyone reproduce the problem?

    Edited 2 times, last by Mettbrot (September 10, 2022 at 10:07 AM).

    See here, perhaps it is similar root cause:

    Thread

    NUC10i5 hangs randomly with sound looping

    So I think it started when I upgraded my NUC to some nightly build in July. Then it still happens with latest @smp build from August. I believe it was never happening when I was running previous @smp build, which I believe was built somewhere in February?

    What happens is that randomly everything is freezing and the sound starts looping in some 0.2 sec cycle producing strange effect. Randomly means that sometimes nothing happens, sometimes it hangs twice or three times over 2 hours…
    adam.h.
    August 24, 2022 at 10:07 PM

    Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that audio loss in live TV is associated with streaming errors, and not with the type of hardware. I have observed this on PlutoTV live IPTV TV streams where continuity errors are absolutely normal and predictable when inserting ads. I've tried to fix it by processing the stream inside tvheadend with ffmpeg, cvlc and streamlink (the best) pipes and while some work better than others I haven't totally solved this problem.

    Checking the logs does not solve the problem, only video and audio discontinuity errors are observed, and sometimes the audio is lost or the video works stutters. When this happens, the solution that always works is to stop the playback of the TV channel and start it again, for the audio there is also the alternative of changing and resetting the passthrough switch, it seems as if the driver had been damaged, but I do not have the knowledge necessary to restart the drivers using linux commands.

    I don't know of any player that knows how to handle discontinuity errors.

    Quote from elonesna

    Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that audio loss in live TV is associated with streaming errors, and not with the type of hardware. I have observed this on PlutoTV live IPTV TV streams where continuity errors are absolutely normal and predictable when inserting ads. I've tried to fix it by processing the stream inside tvheadend with ffmpeg, cvlc and streamlink (the best) pipes and while some work better than others I haven't totally solved this problem.

    Checking the logs does not solve the problem, only video and audio discontinuity errors are observed, and sometimes the audio is lost or the video works stutters. When this happens, the solution that always works is to stop the playback of the TV channel and start it again, for the audio there is also the alternative of changing and resetting the passthrough switch, it seems as if the driver had been damaged, but I do not have the knowledge necessary to restart the drivers using linux commands.

    I don't know of any player that knows how to handle discontinuity errors.

    VLC can play the file just fine. Also I have no problems playing the TV stream on an older intel system (no NUC).

    Quote from adam.h.

    Well, it plays nice both with and without passthrough on my NUC + LE.

    Did you try to disable NUC power management as described in these other post threads?

    Thank you for testing! Too bad its not reproducable for you. I looked through the bios settings thoroughly and changed power settings - it didn't change anything. I dont think its a power issue because I dont experience hangs, just the sound is lost completely, without any chance of recovering besides reboot.

    I also found several Sound related settings in the BIOS but they also didn't change anything.

    heitbaum I remember you have a NUC11, could you try the testfile on your setup with passthrough disabled or maybe have a look at the logs?

    Thanks

    Code
    2022-10-27 21:20:07.766 T:831     DEBUG <general>: Open - probing detected format [matroska,webm]
2022-10-27 21:20:07.767 T:831     DEBUG <general>: Open - avformat_find_stream_info starting
2022-10-27 21:20:07.794 T:831     ERROR <general>: ffmpeg[0x5038380X]: [h264] mmco: unref short failure

    ^ popcornmix /shrug

    I think errors like "mmco: unref short failure" are common when source is live TV (where there may be errors in stream, or it may start from a non-I frame). I don't think it fatal for playback.

    But otherwise I don't know much about non-pi kodi, especially the audio drivers (which sounds like where the issue is).

    Quote from popcornmix

    I think errors like "mmco: unref short failure" are common when source is live TV (where there may be errors in stream, or it may start from a non-I frame). I don't think it fatal for playback.

    But otherwise I don't know much about non-pi kodi, especially the audio drivers (which sounds like where the issue is).

    Thanks! How could we debug this further? Can the audio driver be reset on a running system? Would another log file with component logging help(which options?)

    Best