Posts by Jweaver

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.

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..

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.

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

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..

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

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

You b e a u t y (why would that word be censored.. Its a compliment here in the UK, but don't know about other countries))?.. I never even thought to try that.. Interestingly, I took another Skin and changed its addon.xml file and altered the name and it changed in Kodi settings.. So I don't know why changing the Estuary skin to "Estuary.jon" didn't work.

But it doesn't matter because its exactly as you said.. I just coped the Estuary skin over to 'storage' and made the change I wanted and its perfect again now.

Incase anyone wants do to this, here are my steps:

#cp -r /usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.estuary /storage/.kodi/addons

#vi /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.estuary/xml/Variables.xml

Change:

<value>$INFO[Player.Time]$INFO[Player.Duration, / ]</value>

to

<value>$INFO[Player.Time]$INFO[Player.TimeRemaining(hh:mm:ss), / ]</value>

#reboot

Cheers..

To give a further update, after downloading a few skins and working out where they go, I thought/hoped I had made progress but it still doesn't work.

The name of my skin was to be "Estuary.Jon"

So I basically, copied the contents of /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/skin.estuary to /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/skin.estuary.jon (But this was no more than a settings.xml file)

I then copied the entire skin from /usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.estuary to /storage/.kodi/addons/skin.estuary.jon

I now hoped/expected to see a new skin called "Estuary.Jon".. But all I see is Estuary.. So as a final step, I edited /.kodi/addons/http://skin.estuary.jon/addon.xml and changed the first line to:

<addon id="skin.estuary.jon" version="3.0.5" name="Estuary.jon" provider-name="phil65, Ichabod Fletchman>

But I can't see the skin in the list.. I know my setting changes will work.. But before I can make them, I need to a way to get my "modified" version of the Skin to be recognised.

Everything I have done here is based on what I see when a new skin is downloaded/installed.. So I can only assume there is some kind of "database" which tracks these new skins.

One thing I don't like about the Estuary Skin is the fact that it shows "Duration" rather than 'Time Remaining' on the playback bar.. So after every upgrade, I used to copy the Estuary skin.. Modify the Variables.xml file and change:

<value>$INFO[Player.Time]$INFO[Player.Duration, / ]</value>

to

<value>$INFO[Player.Time]$INFO[Player.TimeRemaining(hh:mm:ss), / ]</value>

But I have just upgraded to 10.2, and the Skin files are under /usr (/usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.estuary) and the only thing I can edit now under /storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data where there is a settings.xml file which offers little.

Since /usr is read only, is there any way to make this change?

Is there a way to edit files under /usr? Or could I move a copy of the skin to '/storage' and make my change there?

Jon

Quote from chewitt

It's an old noobs install.

Ahhha.. Yes.. Thats makes sense as some of the readme files talk about "Noobs"...

I think its best that i stick with the plan and rebuild it fresh.. As long as I can get everything working again, I will be happy.. I run lights behind my TV using Hyperion and I remember in the OpenElec days that was a nightmare to get working...

As long as I can do that, I will be quite happy rebuilding Kodi.

Quote from chewitt

Spring cleaning is never a bad idea. Take a backup, move it off box. Clean install to the RPi3, then manually extract (from the backup) and copy back only the things you need like DB files, sources.xml etc. - do not "restore" the backup as this also restores all the old OE cruft that you want to leave behind in the cleanup.

Is there a guide or any documentation about this.. I will have a play as I am sure I can work it out.. But it would be helpful to know where the backup lives.. What files are used for what.. And where to restore them..

I am in a similar position. I have a Pi2 that I have used for years and hoped I could just swap the SD card to the 3.

I did a quick test and got the "Rainbow" screen on the Pi3, where as the SD boots fine on the Pi2.

I then built a clean LibreElec and it boots fine on the Pi3.. And when I compared the filesystems on each card, they are completely different.,

I actually upgraded to LibreElec from OpenElec and it seems that my card is built completely differently to a standard LibreElec build.. So I fear I am just going to bite the bullet and start all over again.

I am doing some tests now with a clean build, but to be honest, I can't really notice the difference between the Pi2 and Pi3, so I am tempted to stick with the Pi2 for now.

So I made a copy of my SD from an Image.. And then copied all of the files in the Windows partition from a clean LibreElec and now it boots without the Rainbow screen.. But I soon get an error stating "Could not mount /dev/mmcblk0p2"

For what its worth, here are the contents of the 2 Windows partitions, incase anyone has any idea what I could do.

I finally got my Pi 3 and did a quick test and its not gone well.

I have a couple of SD cards built with Libreelec (one is a back from a while back) which both work work fine on the Pi2... .But when I insert them on the Pi3, I just get the "Rainbow" splash screen.

I know the Pi3 is good as I have used other OSs on it, so there is something about my LibreElec installation which it doesn't like

I could start from scratch, but I have added so many things, I am not sure I will remember how to rebuild it..

Anyone got any ideas on what could cause this.. Interestingly, I have read a ton of posts about adding a "delay" in the "config.txt" file, or changing the Kernel, but for me, the FAT partition of the SD card does not have these files.

Fingers crossed someone can help

Jon

Edit: I have just created a completely new SD card for LibreElec and the file system looks completely different... The SD card is labelled "LIBREELEC" and I have Kernel and Sytstem files in root.. My other SD cards are labelled "RECOVERY" and the file system looks different.

One thing I notice on my old card is that some of the folders I mention "OpenElec" which is the OS I used to use before "upgrading" to LibreElec.. So I fear the cards are build completely differently.

I am going to have a little play to see if I can copy the files from the 'new' card onto the old one, to try and create something that works.. Of course, i will be taking backups so I have a way back.. Wish me luck!

I currently have LibreELEC on a Pi2 but need another Pi for a different project.

I am thinking about using this opportunity to upgrade to a Pi3, and re-use the Pi2 in the other project.

Can I just swap the SD card into the Pi3? Or do I need to do any kind of "upgrade"?

Jon

I have just upgraded to 8.0 and was a little surprised how much different it looked.

I am still not sure what i think, but i have found an immediate problem..

When you seek forwards one press (10 second) it jumps the 10 seconds and then another.. so the minimum you can seek forwards is 20 seconds.

Back works fine and only jumps 10 seconds.

Anyone else notice this? Is it a Kodi issue, or LibreElec?

Quote from Grimson

LibreELEC different issue but probably the same cause.

That certainly was the problem.. But now I am not sure what to do.

If I go into settings and look at my skins, I have 3.. One is Confluence.. The other 2 are my modified ones.

If I switch to the standard "Confluence", then immediatly the OpenElec option dissappears and its replaced by LibreELEC...

But this Skin lacks a feature that I heavily rely on (a countdown timer).. As soon as I switch back to my modified skin, I get my timer, but now the OpenELEC menu option re-appears.

Where do I go from here? Could I just use my modified one until I need the LibreELEC menus (Which is pretty rare), or is there a better soliution? Perhaps I just need to remodify the standard Confluence skin again, "post" upgrade?

Jon

Edit: That was easy.. I drilled down into my modified 'skin' folder and did a search (grep -i) for "openelec" and found 2 entries, both in a file named "IncludesHomeMenuItems.xml", and I simply replaced "openelec" with "libreelec" and all is now working:

LibreELEC:~/.kodi/addons/skin.confluence.jon15/720p # grep -i openelec *
IncludesHomeMenuItems.xml: <label>OpenELEC</label>
IncludesHomeMenuItems.xml: <onclick>RunAddon(service.openelec.settings)</onclick>

to
LibreELEC:~/.kodi/addons/skin.confluence.jon15/720p # grep -i libre *
IncludesHomeMenuItems.xml: <label>LibreELEC</label>
IncludesHomeMenuItems.xml: <onclick>RunAddon(service.libreelec.settings)</onclick>

Cheers.