Please resist the urge to upgrade Kodi Omega to the latest version, it breaks things

I am reposting this because previously when I posed about this some invalid assumptions were made and the post was labelled as off topic. So to be clear, I am requesting that the maintainers of LibreELEC resist the urge to upgrade Kodi Omega beyond the 21.2.0 version that you are using now. The reason is that they have totally f'ed up something in the latest version of Kodi Omega and it will immediately crash if you try to play certain types of files. In particular if you have a satellite TV backend such as Tvheadend and it records programs to .ts files from a satellite feed, certain channels will consistently and immediately crash Kodi every time you attempt play them (though other channels play just fine). I believe the ones that crash are the ones that use HEVC and h265 encoding (if that makes any sense) but don't hold me to that. This does not happen in the 21.2.0 version of Kodi that you are using but it definitely does happen in the latest released version of Kodi that is available through other channels. I am not asking for help with that version, I am just asking that you guys don't put that bad version in LibreELEC!

Thank you!

I once tried reporting a Kodi bug on one of their official channels, possibly in the forum, but anyway the people there (one person in particular) were quite rude. I am not a developer, I am not a coder, I am just a Kodi user in my senior years, and apparently they don't want to hear about issues from non-technical people.

I expect that either someone who can has the time and patience and temperament to jump though whatever hoops the Kodi developers want will find the same bug and report it (I'm rather surprised that hasn't happened already) or it won't ever get fixed. Or maybe it will be fixed in the next major release. I told you what the problem is in my first post, do you really think the Kodi developers would be satisfied with that? I'm assuming, partly based on past experience, that they would want a lot more than that and I am simply not in a position to give it to them. I was burned once before when trying to report an issue to them, and I am really not wanting to get my head bit off again!

I maybe have a bit more information on this problem, although I am unable to verify it personally. I heard from someone who thinks it is a bug in the version of ffmpeg that they are using in the new version of Kodi, he says that he believes they made the change to the ffmpeg version to fix an issue with HDR, but it broke the decoding of those recordings (the ones that ones that use HEVC and h265 encoding, perhaps). He also believes they either have no clue that happened, or they could not care less because it's not a bug that would affect a large number of their users. I don't know if he was referring to the ffmpeg developers or the Kodi developers. As I said I cannot verify any of this, and I'm sure the Kodi developers would not consider that anywhere near approaching the level of what they would want to see in a bug report, but I thought I would mention it.

The problem is so insidious because Kodi immediately crashes if you try to play such a recording , and if you move the file to the Videos directory and try to play it as a video, Kodi crashes the second you enter the directory or when the filename comes into view. I suspect that is because in that situation Kodi attempts to create a thumbnail when the file appears in the file chooser, and probably uses its built-in ffmpeg to do it, if it really is an ffmpeg issue.

Well the person who had thought it might be ffmpeg apparently tested that theory in some way and concluded that it is not ffmpeg after all. He did, however, figure out that whatever caused the breakage first appeared in the Kodi version released on Flathub on March 18 or possibly the day before. If there was a way to know what was changed on those days, you could probably find the answer, but I haven't the foggiest clue how you would do that.

Also I would have no idea how to run a "nightly" build and if I ever tried I would more than likely destroy my entire system.

Quote from Elicity

I dont know if this is related, but I have reported some issues with x265 here

Well the recordings that caused Kodi to crash are x265 so that is a possibility??

Quote from emveepee

In the related post on the issue on this forum from maple, I thought this RE: Irrelevant Kodi Omega (on Ubuntu) post linked to the problem. Given that http streaming might work wouldn't the problem be TVHeadend or pvr.hts and not Kodi (ffmpeg building aside)

No, because if I copied the .ts file from the Tvheadend backend to my HTPC and attempted to play it as a video, completely bypassing the PVR stuff, Kodi would still crash. in fact it would crash the moment the file became visible in the file picker, and my suspicion is that happened because that would be the point where Kodi tries to create a thumbnail image. But if I did the same thing with a .ts file that was H264 and not HEVC rather than H265 and HEVC, then it would play just fine. So it is something about the .ts file that Kodi doesn't like, but as I said prior to March 18 it would play all those file types including the H265 HEVC with no problem at all (other than that I had to disable deinterlacing on programs from one channel or else the CPU decoder would get pushed to its limits and Kodi would start dropping frames, but once I did that they played fine).

I will just ask, is there any place you guys know of where I could (preferably without having to set up an account on anything) upload a short .ts recording from one of the affected channels, so you could try playing it in a newer version of Kodi and see the issue? if so you will find it plays fine in the current version of LibreELEC, but immediately crashes any Kodi version since March 19 (at least any flatpack version).

Well I was finally able to get a test recording, I apologize that it is a commercial but I guess that is what was on when the recording was made.

Download test_recording.ts | LimeWire

Download test_recording.ts on LimeWire

limewire.com

The link will expire after 7 days.

If you try to play this in any version of Kodi released since March 18 it will immediately crash Kodi hard. If it doesn't for you than maybe it is GPU related although I don't think Kodi uses the GPU for that kind of file, as best I could tell all the decoding was done in software. My HTPC is entirely Intel-based.

Now, if you don't care if a problem really exists then please just move on, this is the best I can do and I had to have help getting this much. But if anyone does try it and it does or doesn't crash for you I would be interested in hearing your experience. And if YOU want to jump through the hoops of making a bug report to the Kodi developers, please feel free, I would even be grateful to you - you either know how to do it in the way they approve of or you have way more tolerance for abuse than I do.

Sort of, it's from a satellite tuner. And I know it falls back to software decoding, that was never an issue.

As far as deinterlacing, it did play in Kodi but dropped a lot of frames until you set the "deinterlace method" to off. This is still what happens in LibreELEC, But the only way I know of to set the deinterlace method to off is to start the video playing, then press down on the remote, press right until you get to the TV screen icon and then go down to "deinterlace method" and turn it off. But the problem in the newest Kodi versions from flathub is that the very act of trying to play the video crashes Kodi, so you don't have the chance to disable deinterlacing. If there is a way to disable interlacing for recording before playing it, or better yet for any recording from a particular channel, I have never found it.

But also I am not sure deinterlacing is the problem, because there is another channel that is only 720p but it is also HEVC, and it also crashes Kodi. I do not have a sample recording from that channel but I could possibly get one, might take a few days though. I do NOT have to turn off deinterlacing on that channel.

Kodi does NOT crash on channels or recordings that are NOT HEVC, so I am thinking maybe HEVC is the common denominator here, but that's just a guess and I could be wrong.

My question is, did you try playing that video in the current flathub version of Kodi, and did it crash for you?

That great, as long as it will play in future versions of LibreELEC that's all that matters. The only reason I asked if it had been tested against the flathub version is because I know that whatever version of Kodi is in that not only won't play it, but immediately crashes, and I was just curious if maybe someone else had tried it there, but you're right - as long at it plays fine in LE it's not a problem that you need to be concerned about...

... Unless, of course, you decide to upgrade Kodi and whatever version you upgrade to has this issue. But for now I'm going to let this drop, I appreciate those of you that tool the time to look at this, it's much appreciated!

P.S. For those that keep insisting that I should post in the Kodi forum, I tried to create an account there and for whatever reason it would not let me. Kept saying I had not solved the Captcha but I had, it is a simple math problem and I know I did it correctly, but it would not recognize the answer as correct, so I guess there is actually no way I can report it there even if I wanted to. I know I had an account there a very long time ago (10 to 15 years ago maybe?) but I have changed computers several times since then and somehow lost the login credentials.