Posts by jd17

  • [BUG] S905X - BT.2020 video issue

    I can at least confirm for my Mini M8S II, that HDR10 is properly output.
    The TV goes into HDR mode and colors + black level appear correct.
    HDR and BT.2020 are shown when checking with TV info button.

    I do however not know, if 10 Bit color depth are output from the box, since the TV does not show that information.

    I hope that helps. :)

  • [BUG] S905X Krypton: Bad chroma upsampling

    Quote from mmpp


    I do not see any difference in upscaling between Jarvis and Krypton on my S905 devices. I have a lot of SD and 720p content, all displays are 1080p.

    Can you upload a short sample video that highlights the problem?

    Thank you for checking...
    Maybe S905 devices behave differently?

    There is really no point in uploading a sample...
    I see the bad upscaling in all SD or 720p content, it is not limited to only a few cases.

    I think a screenshot would help most - can I somehow take a screenshot in Kodi that shows the already upscaled image?
    [hr]

    Quote from glitch


    I'm sorry if you misread my response in a condescending manner, those were not my intentions whatsoever. I'll assume it's when I wrote "to explain it in what I would hope is a sound and logical manner for you", which I could see how it would be easy to misinterpret. Really, it was more or less a long winded way of saying "I hope I make sense" and was not intended to challenge or mock your level of knowledge.

    Don't worry about it. :)

    Quote


    I've reloaded my SD card with Krypton to test and compare with my internal Jarvis build, and I truly see no difference between the two.

    Is your device a S905 or S905X?
    And is there any chance, that my M8S II behaves differently than other S905X?

    Quote


    When hardware acceleration is enabled, all scaling is offloaded to the GPU to process. My understanding after some research is that the s905x Mali-450 GPU is only capable of bilinear scaling in the first place. To enable anything other than that or nearest neighbor options, you'd have to disable hardware acceleration in Kodi settings. Are you sure that in Jarvis you didn't perhaps enable "Post-processing" in the video settings menu only accessible during playback, or maybe disable hardware acceleration to try one of the other software renderers that would then show up? Enabling "post-processing" essentially adds a blurring/smoothing effect on top of the scaling that would perhaps explain why you perceived an improvement in quality. Try enabling it in Krypton and see if it helps.

    Do S905 chips have the same Mali-450 GPU?

    It is possible, that the hardware upscaling method is only Bilinear.
    What I see in Krypton however is so much worse than Bilinear scaling.
    I tested both hardware acceleration on and off in both Jarvis and Krypton.
    When hardware acceleration is off, I can choose between Bilinear and Nearest Neighbor when in the video - in Jarvis and Krypton.
    When hardware acceleration is on, there is no choice - but Jarvis looks fine and Krypton looks awful.

    I never enabled post-processing in any testing situation.

    Quote


    As for the suggested solution/workaround, it's been a long standing feature request for Kodi dating back to 2009 and still getting +1's as recent as two months ago. Page 13 seems to show that a fix of this nature was actually attempted and even tested in several RPI dev builds, but was unstable, buggy, and abandoned. It may be possible to work the feature in, but it doesn't sound like it'll work all that well.

    That's sad. :(

  • [BUG] S905X Krypton: Bad chroma upsampling

    Thank you for your help and explanations.
    No need to be condescending however. ;)

    The only other reference I have is an Android tablet (Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4) where Krypton also works fine and video playback has not degraded.
    Upscaling is just as good as it was in Jarvis.
    I deleted the original Android on the S905X box almost instantly, because I have witnessed before how messy Android-based Kodi generally is - so I did not see a need for it...


    I have a suggestion for a solution or at least workaround...
    It should be possible to let Kodi always output the native video resolution, right?
    This way we could make use of the generally better TV-internal scaling.
    Maybe just a box to click like "Output native video resolution (use TV upscaling) = on/off".

    Right now it is already possible to run Kodi in 1080p and still output 2160p natively... This should be possible for the other resolutions as well?
    What do you think kzsaq?

  • [BUG] S905X Krypton: Bad chroma upsampling

    I have to say that I disagree.
    Krypton builds for Raspberry Pi have basically been rock solid since very early nightlies and the new video player only improved things on RPis (perfect A/V sync).
    Video (and upscaling) quality has not degraded the slightest on the Pis in Krypton.

    However, I am not even able to reproduce that kind of flawless playback on the S905X with Jarvis.
    Audio is always slightly out of sync and I experience subtle micro-stutters, which are not put down as frame drops or skips...


    Anyhow - the video upscaling is left to the hardware on RPIs. It is my understanding, that this is the same for AMLogic devices?
    At least I cannot change the upscaling method when hardware acceleration is enabled, same as on Pis.
    If that is the case, a new video player (software) should not even have a negative impact...

  • [8.0.2e] LibreELEC 8.0 for S905/S905X

    Quote from kszaq

    Unfortunately I don't know much about the decoder, I can't promise they will be fixed. At the same time I don't see any frame skips except when browsing GUI during playback.

    Hi kszaq.
    I created two separate bug reports for frame skips and upscaling quality, please have a look:
    1. thread-4268.html
    2. thread-4269.html

    I hope the attached logs help you to identify the potential issues and maybe reproduce them.

    Thanks in advance for looking into this. :)

  • [BUG] S905X Krypton: Bad chroma upsampling

    EDIT:
    As it turns out, the root cause is not low quality upscaling, but rather bad chroma upsampling (due to forced deinterlacing) in general.


    All SD and 720p upscaling looks awful.
    Much worse than in Jarvis (7.0.3.012c), worse than on RPi2 and worse than even regular Bilinear upscaling.

    Device type:
    S905X
    Build:
    7.90.beta2
    Device:
    Mini M8S II 2GB/16GB

    How to reproduce:
    Start any SD video and compare to Jarvis.

    Sample:
    Happens with every SD or 720p video.

    Specs from video in log:

    Support logs:
    Attached.
    The video only ran for a few minutes.
    Even the SD video triggered 2 frame skips in that short period of time (other bug report).

  • [RESOLVED] S905X Krypton: H264 23.976p frame skips

    I have frame skips in all 23.976p videos.

    Device type:
    S905X
    Build:
    7.90.beta2
    Device:
    Mini M8S II 2GB/16GB

    How to reproduce:
    Frame rate switching is on (start/stop).
    Menu is on 1080p/60Hz.
    Audio is set to HDMI passthrough.
    Almost everything else is on default.

    -> Start any H264 23.976p video.

    Sample:
    Happens with every clean H264 encode.
    All the encodes tested work fine with 7.0.3.012c or on a RPi2 with any Krypton build.
    Specs from video in log:

    Support logs:
    Attached.
    The video only ran for a few minutes and more than 20 frame skips occurred.

  • [8.0.2e] LibreELEC 8.0 for S905/S905X

    Quote from jd17


    Negative (high priority):
    - My biggest concern right now: I have regular frame skips. These occur in various (all?) normal h264 and x264 encodes I tested, both 720p and 1080p. All are clean encodes which work flawlessly on the Pi. I think all were 23.976Hz. Frame rate switching is active and does seem to work. Am I doing something wrong? I did not touch the defaults for hardware acceleration. Resolution is on 1080p/50Hz in the menus. Since the old AVR is now between the box and TV, there is no 4K support anymore.
    - Upscaling quality of SD videos looks awful. Very blocky and annoying. I disabled hardware acceleration and tried software decoding and even Bilinear upscaling looks better than the hardware accelerated upscaler. Is there a way to change that? 720p does not look good either and is much cleaner on the Pi.

    Quote


    I just put the 7.0.3.012c on an SD to see if my issues may be Krypton-specific.

    - I did not see any immediate frame skips (nor were any in CodecInfo), but I need a bit more time for testing to confirm.
    - Upscaling of SD and 720p looks much better in Jarvis. No concerns here.

    Hi kszaq,

    can you comment this?
    Are you aware of these issues and will they be fixed in a future release?

  • [7.0.3.012l] LibreELEC 7.0 for S905/S905X

    23.976Hz is not available on my Mini M8S II (S905X).
    Neither with 7.0.3.012c, nor with 7.90.beta2.
    Am I doing something wrong?

    23.976Hz videos are displayed with 24Hz, which results in a micro-stutter every 40ish seconds.

    I also cannot select 23.976Hz as refresh rate for the menus - only 24Hz, 50Hz and 60Hz.
    My RPi2 offers all 23.98Hz, 24Hz, 29.97Hz, 30Hz, 50Hz, 59.98Hz and 60Hz...

  • [8.0.2e] LibreELEC 8.0 for S905/S905X

    I just put the 7.0.3.012c on an SD to see if my issues may be Krypton-specific.
    Fortunately, many of them seem to be. :)

    - I did not see any immediate frame skips (nor were any in CodecInfo), but I need a bit more time for testing to confirm.
    - Upscaling of SD and 720p looks much better in Jarvis. No concerns here.

    - Full CodecInfo information.
    - No weird shaking while skipping in video.

    I will test if the other things are OK in Jarvis as well.

  • [8.0.2e] LibreELEC 8.0 for S905/S905X

    Hello kszaq.

    Thanks again for your great software support.

    I received my Mini M8S II 2GB/16GB (S905X) a couple of days ago and now had the time to test a bit.
    Setting up worked great (thanks to your very good manual) and I copied LibreELEC to the NAND after successful video tests.

    I am coming from a Raspberry Pi 2, which is of course a very mature platform.
    So I wanted to tell you what I noticed and what issues I am seeing at the moment.

    Positive:
    - 4K/HDR seems to work fine for me, at least with the few demo videos I tried. TV is an LG OLED65B6V.
    - Speed is really great, much faster than the Pi of course.
    - HD audio bitstreaming works fine on all files I tested, A/V sync seems to be good.

    Negative (high priority):
    - My biggest concern right now: I have regular frame skips. These occur in various (all?) normal h264 and x264 encodes I tested, both 720p and 1080p. All are clean encodes which work flawlessly on the Pi. I think all were 23.976Hz. Frame rate switching is active and does seem to work. Am I doing something wrong? I did not touch the defaults for hardware acceleration. Resolution is on 1080p/50Hz in the menus. Since the old AVR is now between the box and TV, there is no 4K support anymore.
    - Upscaling quality of SD videos looks awful. Very blocky and annoying. I disabled hardware acceleration and tried software decoding and even Bilinear upscaling looks better than the hardware accelerated upscaler. Is there a way to change that? 720p does not look good either and is much cleaner on the Pi.

    Negative (lower priority):
    - The information given by PlayerDebug (old CodecInfo) is very scarce. You get much more information about what's going on on the Pi.
    - Skipping (like 30s, 10min etc.) in videos looks a bit scary with black bars "shaking" the video, but it does not seem to have a negative effect when the video is picked up again.
    - I always use the add-on "Unpause Jumpback". When I press pause it skips back 4s so I won't miss any audio. This does work with the S905X too, but the picture actually does not go back but freezes and only picks up again once the audio caught up to it... A bit weird.
    - I am using a USB IR receiver with a PC MCE remote. This works with the M8S as well, but pressing a button sometimes triggers another action like home or back or up/down/left/right. This is a bit frustrating.
    - SMB (Samba) seems very fragile at the moment (share from Synology NAS). Not a very big issue for me right now, since I can use NFS, but it might be an issue to others. Many times no SMB share is found at all. Sometimes it works after a reboot, but not always. The same shares are always present on the Pi.


    I hope these observations help to improve the software.
    Maybe I am making some mistakes too and there is a simple solution for some things? :)