Posts by chewitt

The three missing things (holy trinity?) are/were:

• Hardware deinterlace
• 3D support
• Optimised software HEVC support

Deinterlace is done. 3D is possible and not on the Foundations to-do list, but one of their developers is likes 3D so it will probably happen from personal interest at some point. Software optimisation for HEVC is not likely to be redone because it's a large effort and requires a level of hackery in ffmpeg that will never be accepted upstream, which is the design requirement for all code now. Tests show the non-optimised HEVC support in LE11 images is sufficient for SD media, but not 720p/1080p. So if you really need HD media, either stick with LE9.2 or bump up to an RPi4 with native HEVC hardware decode.

The deinterlace changes need to be backported onto the kernel and ffmpeg branches that are being used in LE10 releases, and then we can think about spinning a new version. The lack of HEVC support, which is not on the Pi Foundation to-do list, means we are still 50/50 on what the user reaction will be like. It probably means we will choose timing; i.e. avoid Christmas and New Year periods when we'd like a break and some downtime with families. It's not the time to invite lots of user demand for something that can't be fixed.

Just copy the binary you compiled on RaspiOS over to LE along with the systemd .service files. You will probably need to fiddle with paths in the service files to get it working.

You can use a currently nightly image from https://test.libreelec.tv/ .. it's K20 not K19 but at this point in the dev cycle the the DB versions are still compatible.

Use the "box" image if the vendor u-boot (factory image) is still installed on eMMC and set the dtb name in uEnv.ini. The "wetek-play2" image requires the box to be boot using upstream/mainline u-boot on an SD card.

Forum rules prevent anyone from sharing links/sites where file-sets can be downloaded in bulk. Have a look at the Internet Archive Game Launcher (IAGL) in the Kodi repo. This plays files direct from the archive. SNES files are small so no big need to download them.

Most issues that result in random crashes and resets (that trigger safe-mode) are caused by add-ons.

kodiuser1 I've deleted all the LE10 images from my share now (as no intention to maintain them) so all images are pre-Alpha Nexus (K20) but at this point in the Kodi cycle the DB versions haven't changed and I'm not aware of any Kodi bugs that break anything. Use the 'box' image and set the dtb name in uEnv.ini to something suitable for whatever the box is (S912 devices are all very simliar).

LE 9.0 image is on the downloads page: https://releases.libreelec.tv/LibreELEC-Odro…rm-9.0.2.img.gz

Nexus testing imiage is here: https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…droid-c2.img.gz

You can use Etcher or any other SD card writing app to write the image to the card.

LE images for Amlogic are using the upstream kernel. H264 is fine. HEVC works great in older SoC generations like S905X, but needs work with the newer devices like S922X. However, if you only need 1080p, you can always disable hardware decoding completely and use software which is no problem for the CPU on N2+ .. and while it will run warmer the N2/N2+ boards are basically a huge heatsink with a small board attached so it's no drama. The VDEC stuff is being poked, slowly. You also have the option to run CE with Amlogic legacy kernels.

S905X3 devices aren't well supported by LE at this time. CE would be better, but I don't use it so can't really offer an opinion on it.

The LE11 images in my share are updated with changes that restore hardware-decoding in ffmpeg, thanks to Raspberry Pi Foundation devs who are interested to see their v4l2_m2m patchest for RPi working on other devices - which is a bit of a detour from their day-job but will help them upstream RPi support at some point. Seeking in playing media does not currently work, but we are still exploring how that might be done. It won't be a quick thing to solve, but keep your fingers crossed.

One rather positive outcome of more-stable ffmpeg is 8-bit HEVC working nicely on GXBB/GXL/GXM devices, and on GXL/GXM this now allows 4K/HDR media playback to work (Yes, HDR!). GXBB also supports 4K HEVC, but as most 4K HEVC media is HDR (which GXBB lacks) and 4K H264 is not implemented in the current driver; so in practical terms GXBB remains a 1080p device.

On newer G12A/G12B/SM1 hardware support for 8-bit HEVC media should be okay, but 10-bit HEVC media (most/all 4K HDR media) crashes the hardware decoder and locks-up the board. It's something that needs to be poked - or perhaps we can disable the 10-bit path and force 8-bit ouptut to make things more usable until someone has time to investigate it properly.

All things considered, it's been a good week for progress

Some kind of NUC like device is good. RPi4 is good. TV boxes are 50/50. The X96-Air will be supported by CE, but LE images are still rather WIP on newer Amlogic hardware (better on older). There is zero upstream support for S905X4 currently.

The box is probably booting and you can login over SSH to get logs which will explain the issue. Logs will also show what the hardware is and what LE version is installed .. else we can only blind guess at your issue, and generally we suck at that.

crazyturk Are you using a full-size SD card or a micro-SD in an adapter? - I have problems with adapters; most of the ones I have do not work with the box, but one "works enough" for the box to read mainline u-boot in the first 1MB from the SD card, and this will then search and find extlinux.conf on a USB stick to boot the box. Once I was able to boot into LE I could download the image to /storage and write it to eMMC with "emmctool".. and from that point I no longer need the USB stick and SD card arrangement. It helps to watch the boot process; the DB9 port on the rear is wired for UART.

The dedicated Hub image is for my experiements with mainline u-boot (on SD card) which requires the emmc storage to be erased. It works well for WP2 but not Hub for some reason - to be investigated sometime when I have time. If you have vendor u-boot installed still the 'box' image is the one to use.

PCM audio still has some issues with channel mapping but Pass-Through HDMI audio should work fine.

LE uses /flash/config.txt .. use "mount -o remount,rw /flash" to make it editable from SSH.

Boot the RPi4 and check the MAC address for the wlan0 interface, then reboot, and check the MAC again. Does the MAC remain the same, or does it change with every boot?