Posts by chewitt

  • RK3328 4K HEVC stutter frame drop

    Quote from Tsxop

    error <general>: CDVDVideoCodecDRMPRIME::FilterOpen - avfilter_graph_config: Function not implemented (-38)

    This ^ is harmless and can be ignored.

    Quote from Tsxop

    I've set resolution to 4K in preferences and in inputstream resolution to 4K too

    Forcing the default resolution to 4K won't help the GUI experience, see https://wiki.libreelec.tv/configuration/4k-hdr and follow the recommendations for setup including the whitelist. Correct config on all ARM SoC hardware is DRMPRIME enabled, HW decoding enabled. Then retest with a current LE13 nightly. If there's still an issue, put Kodi in debug mode, reboot and demonstrate the issue and then "pastekodi" to share the log.

  • Combination of VPN gateway and multimedia device imaginable on basis of LibreELEC?

    I spend a lot of time in Hotels with work and have a couple of small devices. It's a 50/50 idea. Networking is the achilles heel:

    • Hotels have rubbish WiFi
    • LE has no interface for handling WiFi captive portals
    • LE has no interface for handling Ethernet tethering
    • ConnMan has no interface for tethering NIC selection
    • Hotels have inadequate bandwidth
    • Kodi doesn't support transcoding to deal with bandwidth
    • Kodi expects 'Library' DBs and media files to be LAN accessible

    ConnMan is intentionally simple; it was built for a phone which has a maximum of one interface per interface type (Wifi, Ethernet, etc.) so while it will work in multi-NIC scenarios it's not particularly elegant sometimes.

    After connecting to hotel WiFi it's often easier to connect to the LE device over Ethernet to bypass whatever captive portal or auth system the hotel has. Or vice-versa; if there is Ethernet in the room, use it as it'll be more stable. LE doesn't handle swapping the tethering NIC well (currently needs to be done over SSH).

    I use Kodi at home but also have a Plex server running on the NAS that contains media as this doesn't require me to run a VPN to connect to the library, and will transcode to a smaller resolution/bitrate on-demand based on the available bandwidth, although it can take a while to iterate down the quality ladder to a point where it works. I'm not wow'd with Plex, and if I hadn't been given a free lifetime pass some years ago (when the Plex 'embedded' fork of LE was a thing) I'd probably go looking for something else.

    Most of the time connecting a laptop to the TV in the room with an HDMI cable and using Plex from macOS (with flirc USB IR for remote work) requires considerably less effort, and ensures the laptop is on a table/desk not on the bed .. better for Zzz quality.

  • Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-S2 tuner not recognised

    Quote from jcjefferies

    There is no indication anywhere I can see that the tuner is recognised!

    You didn't bother to look in the log then?

    Looks detected to me /shrug

  • Libreelec update from 12.0.2 on RPi4

    Quote from tokul

    I know that I can manually go to 12.2, but I want to see normal update working.

    LE will auto-update within the same release, e.g. 12.0.0 > 12.0.1 > 12.0.2 but not 12.0.x to 12.2.x as 12.2 contains breaking changes for some hardware: not RPi boards, but there's a single rule that applies to all to avoid confusion.

    TL/DR: all is working correctly, do a manual update.

  • Kodi hangs after every video ends, or on pause or stop.

    For kicks, update to the latest LE12.2 nightly. It probably doesn't fix anything, but you never know.

    On the assumption it doesn't: enable debug logging in Kodi, then reboot to get a clean log, then demonstrate the problem, then SSH in and run "pastekodi" to pastebin logs and generate a URL you can share here. The logfiles dir will not show anything; it is 'special' and auto-generates a set of logs when (and only when) accesed over SMB. However that results in you creating and uploading a zip archive to the forum that everyone on staff avoids investigating because we have to download, unzip, and open files. It sounds petty, but repeat it 10,000 times and the novelty wears off vs. just clicking a URL link.

  • [RPi3] USB Wifi dongle won't work properly on 12.2

    The realtek device probes first and iwd sees this as phy0 and the internal Broadcom chip as phy1

    Then I see Jun 26 09:44:20 KODI-Kitchen iwd[382]: NEW_INTERFACE failed: Too many open files in system

    After this point I only see ConnMan mentioning wlan0 which has the MAC address of the Broadcom chip. The "Too many open files in system" failure is unusual and normally indicates an internal bug that results in a process leaking file handles; then at some point the OS hits the 'ulimit' value (in LE, this is 1024).

    The first thing I would do is bump up to an LE13 nightly which has newer everything to see if that magically fixes some underlying issue in drivers or iwd or connman. If that doesn't fix it, then this should raise the 'open files' ulimit:

    Code
    echo "ulimit -n 1000000" > /storage/.config/autostart.sh

    Then reboot and see if that changes anything? (if no, share a log again).

  • [RPi3] USB Wifi dongle won't work properly on 12.2

    Quote from tp3580

    Has support for this adapter (RTL8192EU) been removed?

    The original RTL8192EU vendor driver was dropped in LE11, but in doing that we switched over to the in-kernel RTL8XXXU driver and that remains enabled in the kernel config so LE12 'should' be the same as LE12.2 (other then the kernel being newer).

    With the onboard WiFi enabled (so you can access) connect the USB WiFi stick and reboot to get a clean boot log, then SSH in and run "journalctl | paste" and share the URL here so we can see if anything interesting is logged (or not).

  • Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-S2 tuner not recognised

    Quote from jcjefferies

    Is there something else I should be doing?

    Sharing a log file?

    NB: These days we are not too enthusiastic about adding patches that we can't drop in the future with a kernel bump, so if there are things in Issues/Forum threads that work (meaning, they need to be tested and confirmed first) someone needs to submit them to the linux-media mailing list. As long as there are signs that patch(es) will be merged upstream we will be happy to pick/backport the changes until some future kernel bump drops them. Firmware is more easily handled as we mostly have our own collection(s) and can add things to our own repo.

    Also note that I'm unable to test any form of DVB hardware (as no DVB-T/DVB-S feeds) so I depend on being told what's needed.

  • Libreelec 11, 12 and 12.2 doesnt work on S905 "Minix Neo U1" Box. Why?

    Kodi uses a 'compromise' but safe default for software deinterlacing. It's possible (with patching) to make it use other deinterlace algorithms that ffmpeg supports, but older ARM SoC boards like S905 don't have CPU grunt for the fancier ones that give better results. The S905 hardware has a dedicated deinterlace function, but software support for that only exists in the Amlogic vendor codebase that Kodi and LE moved away from. Older LE/CE images are more feature complete.

    DRMPRIME is a zero-copy rendering path (nothing to do with Amazon); meaning we read the video stream and then all processing stages through Kodi, FFMpeg, and kernel drivers; exchange a pointer to the original data in memory instead of reading it from RAM, changing it in some way, then writing back to RAM again. It's more efficient, but it's use requires the kernel hardware decode drivers which are not perfect. The only alternative is to disable hardware decode and use ffmpeg software decode. Playback start and seek on HEVC media then works great, but unless the video bitrate is extremely low you won't have enough CPU grunt to handle 1080p media. If you only need to play SD or 720p media (or have faster hardware like S922X/A311D) it's an option though.

    Nobody is working on the hardware decoders for several years now, so I have no expectations of improvements coming. For some users AMLGX works good-enough. For others not-good-enough. I am not a driver developer so I'm merely keeping the status-quo until either someone appears to do work, or the hardware dies out. S905 is now a decade old so the later is more likely.