Updating to 4k TV, SD/HD files play very very jerky

    So I have been running LibreElec / Kodi mostly without problems for a few years now, and my 10 year old HD TV finally died.

    I got a 4k replacement, however playing anything on kodi doesn't work well, very very jerky, slow motion then catching up in fast motion, and frame rate low.

    Is this because the Pi (which has detected 4k screen) is trying to upscale, and it's failing?

    FWIW the CPU load is not very high....

    Is there some standard thing one has to do when attaching a 4k display?

    Thanks, Dave

    I thought that setting affected the GUI only, and not actual playing of media?

    It actually says "changes the resolution that the user interface is displayed in"

    I am not trying to play any 4k content, however the setting of resolution to HD didn't work either, still completely unwatchable.

    Edited once, last by wcndave: Merged a post created by wcndave into this post. (October 22, 2022 at 6:25 PM).

    If you haven't setup whitelist and enabled refresh rate switching then the GUI mode will be used for playback - and if you try playing eg an SD or HD 50fps file at 4kp30 things will go south.

    If it still doesn't work then post a debug log.

    so long,

    Hias

    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

    BTW: the instructions in your signature don't seem to work for me, there's no LE Settings Addon, and in Settings / LibreElec / System, there is an "update latest kodi log and config and view short URL" setting which just errors for me.

    In any case, pasted the log here

    hastebin

    I think I tried to start playback around: 2022-10-22 22:30:40

    So, it seems much much better, certainly SD content seemed ok, and HD content was much better, however seems to freeze for one frame every second or so...

    Thanks again!

    There's nothing obvious in the logs except you are running a rather old LE version, 9.2.8, which is EOL now (latest release is 10.0.3) and you are playing a bluray image over nfs (which may or may not be problematic - never tried that myself).

    Another thing worth looking into is your TV settings. Best to turn off all picture/video "enhancement" stuff, they usually just make things worse (especially Samsung TVs still seem to come with terrible defaults). Search eg on rtings.com for your TV model to find some info about recommended TV settings.

    so long,

    Hias

    Quote from HiassofT

    There's nothing obvious in the logs except you are running a rather old LE version, 9.2.8, which is EOL now (latest release is 10.0.3) and you are playing a bluray image over nfs (which may or may not be problematic - never tried that myself).

    Another thing worth looking into is your TV settings. Best to turn off all picture/video "enhancement" stuff, they usually just make things worse (especially Samsung TVs still seem to come with terrible defaults). Search eg on rtings.com for your TV model to find some info about recommended TV settings.

    so long,

    Hias

    Hi, thanks for the response.

    1) I am using an older version because I have the Estuary skin, which stopped being supported. I had spent a lot of time creating a simple UI with node based searches, and other features of Estuary that let me adjust menus etc, and I got it perfect, around the time it stopped being supported. Perfect means wife & kids were able to use it, and enjoyed using it, and whether you were looking for a documentary, film, music video or a kids tv show, they were easy to find.

    2) how else would you play bluray over network?

    In any case, these two things worked find with older TV.

    I did quite a lot of testing last night, and found a few things.

    LOTR 33.6Mb/s 1080p 24fps runs perfectly

    SMFFH 33.6Mb/s 1080p 24fps seems to skip once per second

    Any 4:3 SD content gets completely squashed, and using the various view modes doesn't help.

    The only way to fix that is to turn off the "adjust display refresh rate" option, which then means it plays like it's in slow motion.

    I also played a few random 16:9 DVD files, and about half of them showed with an AR adjustment that made them unviewable. Generally I could work through the view options to find one that worked, but it's not very family friendly...

    I really just want this to put out a 1080 signal and ignore the TV, however I've now hit a whole load of issues...

    How did you set up your whitelist, did you follow the recommendations in the wiki or did you also include SD modes? If you did the latter: don't do it.

    Anamorphic videos (like on DVDs) are a bit problematic and ISTR LE 9.x had some issues with those. Please test with LE 10.0.3 (which, BTW still has Estuary as default skin so that should not hold you up).

    Playing DVD or BluRay images over the network, whether extracted or not, is often problematic. As you can see in your log kodi has to open dozens of files per second during playback as the video is split into thousands of tiny pieces. The better solution is to rip the main movie to mkv, those are far less problematic than dvd/bluray images.

    The stutter-every-second issue sounds like the screen is running at 25 or 50Hz but you play a 23.97 or 24fps movie - the log you provided though shows the mode had been switched to 23.97. You could try changing the adjust refresh rate setting to "always", maybe that helps.

    so long,

    Hias

    Hi Hias, I think I confused things there with my Estuary note. I actually mean Estuary Mod 2.

    That allowed me to use the node/menu editor to create exactly the layout I wanted.

    eg.

    Films -> Kids

    Films -> Not-Kids and Not Documentaries

    TV -> Kids

    TV -> Not-Kids and Not Documentaries

    Other -> Music

    Other -> Documentaries

    Other -> Home Movies

    Other -> Other -> Hobbies

    Other -> Other -> Stand up

    Other -> Other -> Sport

    And have kind of every screen laid out with the right information, eg UK-Age-Certs on on the wall page and sub nodes to specific types of files etc...

    Also the episode information and film information pages are much better on Mod2.

    Took me quite a long time to get it wife and family ready, and then the skin was dropped.

    I can however see that someone has picked it up, so perhaps there's life in the old dog yet!

    Onto the matter of the post, I had not done the interlacing steps, which removes some SD modes, and that plus all the other steps still didn't really work.

    So I took my Beta Kodi-Pi and updated to LE10, and now it all seems to work.

    I guess I can't really complain that my more modern setup requires later updates, so I will leave it like this and get back to trying to get all the skin/layout/details pages back to how we like them!

    Thanks for your help peeps!