Posts by ozarks

I've been using both LE (LibreELEC-S912.arm-8.2.5.1-444-1000nits) and CE (nightly and stable builds) regularly on a daily basis for a while now on 2 S912 boxes.

To say that CE is is almost not stable and faulty is perhaps a little strong.

In terms of general picture quality, LE scores higher, especially when it comes to OTA SD content, where the picture is sharper and colours more vibrant. However CE continues to show great improvements and recent nightly builds bring the quality much closer.

LE has issues with HEVC content where playback starts but within a few seconds can cause a blank screen, requiring either a scrub to the end of the video or a reboot to resolve. CE does not have this issue.

General playback of the vast variety of video formats is consistently good with both but when it comes to things like Sony_4K_HDR_Camp and many other test files of the same type, LE plays perfectly but CE, in any form shows distinct stuttering, so there is absolutely no doubt that under the same conditions, using the same box, LE beats CE for such very high end video, although it should be said that the general availability of commercial release movies/TV shows using the high end settings of the test files is probably minutely small, so not necessarily a great issue for now but something for the future.

This difference could of course may be related to either CE or LE directly but perhaps to Kodi, where for my use, I am essentially using 17.6 on LE and 18.x on CE, which will still be prone to bugs until 18 becomes an official stable release.

The only area where neither currently works for me is with regards to commercial 4K releases, where I find things too dark in comparison with 720p/1080p versions, so stick with these for the time being.

I do think that to some degree, a form of competition gets created when both comparing the two and giving feedback that can sometimes render some form of hostility, which is a shame because I believe that most people just want to give constructive feedback to aid, rather than hinder development.

The vast majority of users appreciate the work that goes into development and perhaps that also gets a little lost in the conversations, where devs perhaps feel as though they are being jumped on rather than being supported.

We are all most certainly in a far better position than if such endeavours were left to hardware manufacturers, that consistently provide sub par software out of the box.

I am a very happy camper with what is available, as I believe that most of us are and should be.

Quote from merl

Hi

I had another try with the instructions from ozarcs (thanks!)

I'm on a wetek play box (arm7) so I just tried the pi3/arm version. I tried as per the instructions.

Comments: creating the directory in step 1 is fine but since it is empty then comskip won't find an ini file there.

I tested the post-processor line from the command line, replacing the non-existing ini file with the default one in the installation:

Code

/storage/.kodi/addons/tools.comskip/bin/comskip.bin \
 --ini=/storage/.kodi/addons/tools.comskip/defaults/ini/comskip.ini \
  Modus2018-03-12.ts

This runs, identifies the video file and its metadata, gives with a few error messages then dies:

[mpeg2video @ 0x2c94fb0] Invalid frame dimensions 0x0.

...

[mpeg2video @ 0x2c94ac0] gray decoding requested but not enabled at configuration time

Illegal instruction (core dumped)

I presume running from tvheadend is not going to make any difference.

Any ideas?

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What I found was that when the addon was installed, the folder that was created was automatically populated with the ini file.

If I am reading things correct, your modification to comskip.ini references a specific file name, which I am guessing won't work unless you can predict the name of the file that will be recorded.

There are also a couple of back slashes in there, which I'm not certain are allowed.

One thing that I did change, which might not have any impact, but worth trying, is to use the default stream profile for Matroska, which is then also selected in the recording section to produce a .MKV file rather than a .TS.

I take it that you are not using a 9.0 based LE release as the addon doesn't work with the latest releases and comskip is now baked into the latest TVheadend builds.

Quote from CvH

did you upgraded 4.2 -> 4.3 ?

Yes.

Installed the 1468 generic release on Millhouse #1015 build.

When first attempting to record there was no output.

I turned on Activate TRACE Debug to see if I could find out why and whilst active, recording worked.

After turning the debug off again recording is fine and also works after a reboot.

Also tested Comskip and it works perfectly.

For reference, the Post-processor command: entry for Comskip should read:

/storage/.kodi/addons/service.tvheadend42/bin/comskip --ini=/storage/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/service.tvheadend42/comskip/comskip.ini %f

Glad that it fixed the dark video rraod.

BTW, you should not need the reboot to libreelec Android app as the default for a normal boot will be to boot from the SD card.

I think that it's use is probably for those users that have dual boot options when both OS's are installed on the internal storage.

Quote from pommy

I have the same problem and have to reboot my box too. Does anyone know how to fix it?

I had the quarter screen problem whenever I powered up my box when the TV was switched off.

I created a custom EDID from this thread and it fixed it.

Although your problem is a little different, I suspect that the causes may be similar, so worth a try.

Quote from rraod

I would not like to wait and try the new Amlogic series S905x2 or S922. As the history indicates S912 boxes have suffered the lack of support for fbdev drivers from Amlogic for very long time. After reading on the forum that kszaq has finally succeeded in finding a solution and made a successful release, I took a risk and bought a S912 box though initially I wanted to play safe and go for a S905X box.

I thought of going for the latest LE release for S912 and have tried the LE 8.2.4.1 release on this box. But I was facing problems right from the beginning. The Screen was getting stuck at LibreElec start screen. Sometimes it used to load Kodi 17.6 but I was not able to go forward in the initial configuration of the box. Another aspect is the intermittent clicks from the speaker continuously.

Then I reverted back to LE 8.2.2.3 release on the box, and I was happy to find that this version is working very smoothly. It was just like the LE 8.2.5 on my old S812 box but faster and smoother.

I tried to play HEVC files and they were playing smoothly while on S812 box the movies were with jerky motion. My only observation on this new S912 box is that the videos are little dark and I have to increase the brightness of the screen. There is also no clock display on the box.

Overall all the box and the supplied remote are working perfectly and I am happy with the LE 8.2.2.3 release, as my videos are only up to 1080p. I will wait till a more stable LE version appears in the future.

I am grateful and thank the developers kszaq and wrxtasy for their relentless efforts in giving us this fine piece of software.

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Try the LibreELEC-S912.arm-8.2.5.1-444-1000nits build from here.

I've been using it on my S912 and it's about as perfect as you can get and all videos and streams are pretty much flawless and not a dark video in sight.

I have tried Coreelec and it does work well but because I use Comskip, it isn't yet compatible with the latest Leia based releases, I'm sticking with it.

Could not be happier right now.

I would prefer to see words such as 'misogynistic' not continually misrepresented and completely misunderstood.

Firstly, in reference to the term wife acceptance factor, we should first look at what it refers to.

"an assessment of design elements that either increase or diminish the likelihood a wife will approve the purchase of expensive consumer electronics products such as high-fidelity loudspeakers, home theater systems and personal computers."

It implies no such derogatory statement about women.

It is simply a tongue in cheek reference to something that many men may well have experienced when going out to buy their beloved tech.

The really bad practice seems to come from people who are unable to balance a sense of humour with ethical and moral thinking that matters and seek to ban anything that they decide is offensive, without really looking at the larger picture.

Look at 95% of humour and you will find it aimed at somebody, often taking a stereotype and exaggerating it.

Be careful what you wish for because you may find others picking holes in what you find amusing, dissecting it to fit in whatever they decide should be right and wrong for today, or turning your own arguments around to make you face your own morality to make it appear that you want a cake and eat it kind of scenario.

That's my tuppence worth on the subject.

I get this on occasion and just have to disable and enable the client and server.

Quote from balbes150

There is no such file in the image. Therefore, it is built outside the source kernel that is used in the image and will not be able to work with it.

Show the entire output of the script. The specified error may not be critical (in some cases). What system is installed in eMMC ?

Thanks for the confirmation.

Quote from balbes150

1. What model of TV box ?

2. What is the version of the LE image used ?

3. Write in detail the steps you did.

1. The version of the image LE ?

2. Where did you get this dtb (gxm_q201_2g_1gbit.dtb) ?

For all.

When asking a question, be sure to specify the version of the LE image that you are trying. Without specifying the version of the image, there will be no response.

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I am using the latest image LibreELEC-S912.arm-9.0-devel-20180920164743-905fd26.img.

I put a link to the dtb as part of the name in the last post.

gxm_q201_2g_1gbit

Thanks

I decided to give this a test and initially was able to boot up from the SD card successfully but I noticed that whilst I had WiFi, there was no Ethernet connectivity shown.

So I swapped out the q201 2g dtb with the one that I had previously been using that has ethernet (gxm_q201_2g_1gbit.dtb) but then unfortunately it would not boot at all.

Quote from chrisssj2

Why are you saying LE 8.2.5.1 is latest for S912? The OP only has LE 8.2.4.1 as is in title name.

Wrxtasy has an 8.2.5.1 available here..

Quote from balbes150

Since the regular Android does not know how to work with other systems, it is implemented through the menu item in LE. Start LE and the selected item in the menu off "Reboot to Android".

Thanks for the clarification.

Quote from balbes150

New images 20180920 (kernel 3.14).

I draw attention to the changes. Now the process of installing the system in eMMC has changed. The default install of the additional copy of the LE at eMMC without uninstalling regular Android. Now, to install LE in eMMC, there is a special menu item in "Libreelec->Services->eMMC->Install to eMMC". When you select this menu item, LE will be copied to eMMC in parallel to Android (Android is fully saved and can be used). Also in the new images added two menu items to create and restore a full copy of the eMMC on external media (along with the bootloader, settings and all data). I recommend that you make sure you create a full copy of eMMC before installing LE on eMMC. Depending on the type of external media and how busy eMMC data is, the backup process can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes. After the copy is created or restored, the system automatically shuts down. It is not recommended to use the system during creation and recovery (to reduce the risk of errors). For those who want to install LE in eMMC with delete Android, you need to rename the script on the external media beforehand "full_install2emmc.sh" to "install2emmc.sh", start the system from external media and also select the item in the menu. The system will execute the installation LE to replace eMMC with Android on LE.

A very interesting option to run LE and Android in parallel from eMMC but my question is what is the procedure for switching between the the two?

I have a first generation S912 (MXIII-G2) running wrxtasy LibreELEC-S912.arm-8.2.5.1-444-1000nits.tar build and it's superb. Picture quality across the board is the best that I have seen from anything and it just does the job that I have waited for Android to do for far too long.

I also have a very cheap T95N S905X box which also does a very good job with the latest builds, although I do tend to find that it comes to multiple tasks such as when I'm using a couple of TV tuners, recording 2 programs whilst streaming something else from another source that it can be quite skippy but for most things it does a good enough job, including streaming of local 4K files or playback from a USB flash drive.

I also run Libreelec from 2 X86/64 boxes, one an Cherry Trail Z8350 and the other a Beebox N3150 and whilst both run well, no matter what I try, I am unable to get the same picture quality that I get with the S912.

The only downside to the S912 is that there is no working method of putting it to sleep and waking up to record OTA TV but I accept that limitation and the box uses so little juice that it's not such a great problem with leaving it on all of the time. Other S9XX boxes are able to take benefit from the sleep/wake up but it seems random as to which ones will work.

Most AMLogic boxes tend to come with 2 USB ports but I just use an externally powered hub to provide for an extra port or two when required.

Tried it on my Z8350 Hibox and it works well.

Very snappy in operation.

Quote from CvH

Just for info, comskip is now also available at the tvheadend addon as soon the pending pr is merged

That's great news.