Nightly builds

Development Development & Testing
3079

I apologize for the posts that have been published repeatedly.

Yes, it’s one old, but I tried playing this sample on an Google TV (same Xiaomi box) using the official Kodi 22 Piers Beta 1 app, and it plays without any issues, it’s smooth with no frame skips.
So I figured there was probably a bug.

Did you check the Player Debug Info regarding skip frames during playback?

That’s when I figured out why it wasn’t running as smoothly as it should.

I’d rule that out because on Kodi (on the Google TV side) on the Xiaomi box, it works without any issues, no frame skips, everything runs smoothly.

Which nightly build did you try?

3080

Just think about it for a few minutes.
Portisch said it´s an old sample with knows issues.

CE is a non-commercial product and You want to push the developers to waste time.
Why not re-encode as suggested?

3081

I see this from time to time when switching to another TV channel. The stuttering also disappears after opening a debug overlay and returns after closing it. This is a very old issue.

3082

I certainly hadn’t intention to waste anyone’s time. I only mentioned it because the behavior seems specific to a specific device.

Since CoreELEC works correctly on another box based on an Amlogic SoC, I thought it was appropriate to report it in case it indicated a device-specific issue.

I understand that transcoding or re-encoding was suggested as a workaround, but that would result in a loss of quality, so I thought it was still worth reporting the playback issue on that device as observed.

It seemed reasonable to leave feedback on a reproducible issue affecting a specific device.

My intention was simply to provide useful feedback in good faith.
I just wanted to explain why I reported it.

3083

Is it SW decoder? I never use it, only HW decoder.
The SW decoder part is very old.

3084

I didn’t try the SW decoder. The issue is real but very hard to reproduce, at least on my setup.

3085

It only can become stutter when connection is less than the media rate. HW decoder works with vsync.

3086

@dmitry1988 can you try this patch to see if this fixes the stuttering after pause/resume?

diff --git a/xbmc/windowing/amlogic/WinSystemAmlogicGLESContext.cpp b/xbmc/windowing/amlogic/WinSystemAmlogicGLESContext.cpp
index 7c339dc..9455b19 100644
--- a/xbmc/windowing/amlogic/WinSystemAmlogicGLESContext.cpp
+++ b/xbmc/windowing/amlogic/WinSystemAmlogicGLESContext.cpp
@@ -284,7 +284,7 @@ void CWinSystemAmlogicGLESContext::PresentRender(bool rendered, bool videoLayer)
     if (m_amlGBMUtils && m_amlGBMUtils->LockFrontBuffer(m_amlDisplay->aml_get_Device_handle()))
       m_amlDisplay->FlipPage(m_amlGBMUtils->GetFBId());
   }
-  else if (!videoLayer)
+  else
   {
     m_amlDisplay->aml_drmDevice_vsync();
   }
3087

I didn’t understand what needed to be done. But I think I’ve found a “solution”.

import xbmc, xbmcgui, random

win = xbmcgui.Window(10000)
prop = "osd_running"

if win.getProperty(prop) == "true":
    win.setProperty(prop, "false")
else:
    win.setProperty(prop, "true")
    video_win = xbmcgui.Window(12005)
    label = xbmcgui.ControlLabel(-50, 175, 1800, 50, '', textColor='0xFFFFFF00', font='font14_bold')
    video_win.addControl(label)
    monitor = xbmc.Monitor()
    
    while win.getProperty(prop) == "true" and not monitor.abortRequested() and xbmc.Player().isPlaying():
        try:
            random_number = random.randint(1, 10)
            label.setLabel(f"{random_number}")
        except Exception:
            pass
        
        if monitor.waitForAbort(0.0167):
            break
            
    video_win.removeControl(label)
    win.setProperty(prop, "false")

If you bind this to any button (or create smt like always running service-addon) and press it, it will fix stutterring if it started. And also, If the button was pressed at the start of playback, stuttering after pause/resume will never happened.

It seems like a duct-tape solution (creating rapidly changing text in an invisible (-50 x-coordinate) part of the display) and will likely have a negative impact on other things, but it completely solves this problem. With this script, /sys/class/video/frame_rate is always completely stable and the video is visually smooth, always.

3088

@dmitry1988 I will upload an image that include my patch in an hour or so. Can you test it?

3089

Did you check the Player Debug Info regarding skip frames during playback?
That’s when I figured out why it wasn’t running as smoothly as it should.
Which nightly build did you try?

Of course not. Why would I do that when I don’t see a single dropped frame, and I’ve watched this concert countless times - probably since the days of CoreELEC with Kodi 18?
But I will enable Player Debug Info and check it out…
Latest means latest available on CoreELEC nightly builds, so: 20260908

3090

If this helps, I still won’t be able to update until the fix is ​​made in the original CoreELEC.

Why hasn’t a single-line fix been fixed for so long? Are there other, less obvious, reasons?

3092

Then it will never be in the orignal CoreELEC because no one else can reliably reproduce the issue.

3093

Ok. I think I can try it tomorrow. Thank you.

3094

CoreELEC-Amlogic-no.aarch64-22.0-Piers_devel_20260908205337.tar

3095

Thanks for trying to help. However, your version doesn’t work.
First, I installed the official nightly_20260908 build on a clean microSD. Without changing almost any settings or installing any add-ons whatsoever, I confirmed that the problem was present.
Then, I updated to your version. In that version, the appearance of any subtitles causes the image to stutter. Likewise, any OSD - such as the one from the scripts in my recent posts - also causes stuttering.
After that, I reverted to the official nightly_20260908 build, and the stuttering during subtitle or OSD display was gone.

3096

You are describing 2 completely different issues. My patch is supposed to fix intermittent juddery video after stop/resume.

3097

Yes, I understand that, but your patch is the direct cause of serious problems that make it completely impossible to watch movies with subtitles.

P. S. My duct-tape solution (invisible osd with rapidly changing text) works perfectly :grin:

3098

Amlogic AM8 Pro hangs on stopping AV1 playback also on beta 2 and subsequent nightlies, screen goes black and audio keeps on playing the same short sequence. Not possible to produce a debug log which actually shows something useful and SSHing to the box doesn’t work when the hang occurs.

USB ports sometimes go unrecognized upon boot, I just had to reboot the device three times to be able to use my IR remote and keyboard.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, nightly 20260314 is the last one where these are not happening.

I’m happy to help debug these ones if needed.

3099

I worked with ChatGPT to build various combinations to try and find where the AV1 hanging issue actually appears. It’s impossible to say whether it’s the Linux kernel or common_drivers or both causing it, but I was able to narrow it down to this. In the tests, the repo was otherwise in the 20260317 nightly state.

Configuration AV1 stop
5.15.170 + old common_drivers + old media_modules WORKS
5.15.170 + old common_drivers + new media_modules WORKS
5.15.196 + b9cd0739 common_drivers + new media_modules HANGS
5.15.170 + later common_drivers does not build
5.15.196 + old common_drivers does not build