[x86-64] Dolby Vision Development for PC

Done.

First real Dolby Vision playback on LE in Kodi with an x86 Intel CPU (i7-11390H).

From the libreELEC community on Reddit: WIP - Native Dolby Vision support on x86 Intel CPU in LE & Kodi

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There are still quite a few glitches to fix (starting with Kodi completely choking on the UI/UX while a Dolby Vision movie is playing), but the full playback chain is now working.

The TV is properly switching into Dolby Vision, there are no frame drops, and playback itself is already very clean.

I’ll now start tuning, fixing, optimizing, and thoroughly testing every Dolby Vision profile.

I haven’t tested Profile 7 FEL yet. In theory, the implementation already supports it, so if I hit any issues, I expect them to come mainly from the additional GPU load. That said, I’m fairly confident the 11390H should be able to handle it without major problems.

Even though, from my vision, everything is 100% legal, using only open source and no proprietary code, I’m not quite sure how to share the build once I’ve finished a more robust implementation.

I have just published a first version

Feel free to test it out and report any bugs or issues.

Tested on an 11390H. It "should" run smoothly on an N100/N150 thanks to some performance optimizations, but that still needs confirmation. If you want to stress test it on any CPU, try setting a Profile 7 FEL or a Profile 10 and add subtitles

Pretty sure 50 fps won't be smooth on an N100/N150, though.

GitHub - CroqueMr/intel-dv-libreelec: Experimental native Dolby Vision playback in Kodi on compatible Intel HDMI systems. LibreELEC community build with source patches and installable images.

Experimental native Dolby Vision playback in Kodi on compatible Intel HDMI systems. LibreELEC community build with source patches and installable images. -…

github.com

I’ve seen that you’re really good at testing Dolby compatibility (probably better than I am) so your feedback will be very precious

I’m going to start looking into AMD drivers to extend compatibility. I do have an AMD platform (running a 7430U), but it’s currently under heavy use for my professional usage, and it will be complicated to test deeply on it.

I can confirm right now that, unfortunately, I won't be looking at any other platform: no ARM platform, nor dedicated GPU, I do not have the hardware to develop on it, and for ARM platform when I see the GPU render engine usage, I'm afraid optimizing my implementation might be beyond my capabilities.

Quote from CroqueMr

I’ve seen that you’re really good at testing Dolby compatibility (probably better than I am) so your feedback will be very precious

I’m going to start looking into AMD drivers to extend compatibility. I do have an AMD platform (running a 7430U), but it’s currently under heavy use for my professional usage, and it will be complicated to test deeply on it.

I can confirm right now that, unfortunately, I won't be looking at any other platform: no ARM platform, nor dedicated GPU, I do not have the hardware to develop on it, and for ARM platform when I see the GPU render engine usage, I'm afraid optimizing my implementation might be beyond my capabilities.

Happy to send you AMD NUC for development. I have a spare GEEKOM NUC with the AMD 740m.

I tested on a N100 DDR5 mini PC and on 23.976Hz have yet to find any playback performance problems. The Dolby Vision logo is enabled every time (Marantz AV Receiver + LG C2) and in all videos I tested I did not experience frame drops or skips.

I noticed that on FEL test files the player, even at 23.976Hz, in some cases drops quite a bit of frames (almost a frame per second on one called "FEL TEST ST DL P7 CMV4.0 4000nits V4.mp4") but I'm not too worried about it given its just a test.

I'll continue to test it as I use it but the initial feeling is that is already completely usable even on the lowly N100.

Quote from w46n3r

I tested on a N100 DDR5 mini PC and on 23.976Hz have yet to find any playback performance problems. The Dolby Vision logo is enabled every time (Marantz AV Receiver + LG C2) and in all videos I tested I did not experience frame drops or skips.

I noticed that on FEL test files the player, even at 23.976Hz, in some cases drops quite a bit of frames (almost a frame per second on one called "FEL TEST ST DL P7 CMV4.0 4000nits V4.mp4") but I'm not too worried about it given its just a test.

I'll continue to test it as I use it but the initial feeling is that is already completely usable even on the lowly N100.

Thanks for the feedback, good news for the N100, I was expected a good support from this CPU.

Profile 7 FEL require more GPU than other profile, I will deeply investigate on the CM4 / Profile 7 FEL, for me the N100 can read it without any drop at 24-30fps. maybe I need to optimize a little bit more.

EDIT : I found your file, peak GPU rendering usage is 52% on my 11390H, I do not have any dropped frame
I'm still going to try to reduce the GPU load.

Quote from atoulmin

Happy to send you AMD NUC for development. I have a spare GEEKOM NUC with the AMD 740m.

I'd be more than up for it, but I need it in long term it to ensure proper support for AMD and avoid doing a simple port that might not hold up over time.

My private message are open if you want to discuss

Quote from w46n3r

I tested on a N100 DDR5 mini PC and on 23.976Hz have yet to find any playback performance problems. The Dolby Vision logo is enabled every time (Marantz AV Receiver + LG C2) and in all videos I tested I did not experience frame drops or skips.

I noticed that on FEL test files the player, even at 23.976Hz, in some cases drops quite a bit of frames (almost a frame per second on one called "FEL TEST ST DL P7 CMV4.0 4000nits V4.mp4") but I'm not too worried about it given its just a test.

I'll continue to test it as I use it but the initial feeling is that is already completely usable even on the lowly N100.

Just pushed a new release "opti1" with two optimisation

- Libplacebo : remove one redundant filter (reduce GPU rendering load by 12%) (optimisation found by GPT 6 Astra)

- Skip DV processing on unactive image area like black-bar (reduce GPU rendering laod by 11%)

Results on my 11390H: approximately 16% reduction in render engine load overall, and up to 24% for 2.35:1 aspect ratio films without any impact on the image fidelity.

Could you let me know if that fixes your problem? I’d be really happy to see the N100 handle all DV profiles at 24–30 fps perfectly, and did you try the profile 10 (AV1)? this profile is also GPU-hungry.

Quote from ht2tweak

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Thank you for the review

Could you please share to me the file that was not working at all. I did not encounter that kind of issues

Thanks. I've seen the issue : the file is a nightmare, the FEL layers don't arrive in the right order in the file it's layer 0,3,1,2 and the timestamp is misread by FFmpeg.

I already patched it but it's not stable, if I move forward/backward a lot, Kodi crash. I'm going to work on it tomorrow, I should push a fix straight away

This is insanely good news! I wonder if the DV is "off" in the colors and brightness of it like the HDR is on my AMD mini pc though, compared to my AM6B+ ? The HDR on my AMD mini PC is not useable because it's too off and I tried everything. So I use it for SDR, especially high framerates H264 SDR which does not work correctly on AmLogic.

But yes, I can test AMD for you but I can't give the mini pc I use it with libreelec already.

I have Beelink SER8 AMD Ryzen™ 7 8845HS with AMD Radeon™ 780M 12-Core 2700 MHz model.

Yes overkill but I software decode everything on it.

Does the DV work in software decoding if you have the power?

I will be watching this thread to help you out when you make AMD builds.

Thanks a lot for your efforts!

Quote from ht2tweak

Sounds good... I mean your work, not the file ;). Is this the PC you've been testing with? Not going to order it yet, but as I already have RAM and SSD, price isn't bad.

Whenever you start working on AMD, I have a 5800H and a 8745HS I can test with.

I use this one as a test platform: https://www.geekmaxi.com/en/mini-pcs-geekom-it11-mini-pc-32gb-ram-1tb-ssd-4580.html

And this one for my custom Linux OS with DV and my jellyfin server : https://www.gmktec.com/products/gmktec-k17-mini-pc-intel-core-ultra-5-226v

The 226V is a monster CPU, this thing is so powerful, the GPU is insane, and the efficiency is stupidly good. It consumes less power than my old N100 at idle and during light tasks, yet the 226V is 5x more powerful and the GPU is 20x more powerful. It's far too powerfull for a simply TV Box I will not recommand you to put LE on it and just use it as a media player

I planned to work on a feature next week is to baked DV layer to an HDR10 output on the fly, ffmpeg has all the feature to do it, it will not be complicated. I assume it will consume a lot of GPU I hope the 11390H will be sufficent for all profile.

For AMD, yes, I'll work on it, but I don't know when yet. First, I want to get a stable build for Intel while the driver details are fresh in my mind, so I don't have to debug things later after forgetting how I set it up. Everything I'm doing will work the same way for AMD iGPUs, the architecture is driver-independent. I still need to take a closer look at the drivers, but from a quick check, it should be simpler since there are fewer specific drivers than on Intel.

Quote from CroqueMr

Could you let me know if that fixes your problem? I’d be really happy to see the N100 handle all DV profiles at 24–30 fps perfectly, and did you try the profile 10 (AV1)? this profile is also GPU-hungry.

Just tried it. Unfortunately it seems it did not change anything (at all) for the 2 minute file I tested. It keeps dropping somewhat around 90+ frames in total. I even increased the power limit in the BIOS to 25w to see if it improved anything but to no effect.

As for profile 10 AV1, it plays fine with no drops at all. At least on the test file I have (Old Harrison Ford in a boat, I do not know from what movie it is). This file was already running ok on the first version you released.

As for the DV FEL All Layers Test, it is a complete failure here. It seems to render just the first frame with no colors at all and it stays frozen forever at that image (but continues to play... even after the end of the video).