Stuttering video with some 4K HEVC movies

I have an UHD clip (from Interstellar) that can cause playback problems, i.e. extreme stutter, on my Minix U9-H. I think because of the high bitrate in the clip. However, so far CoreELEC was able to play it just fine. Today I did some testing with CoreELEC-S912.arm-9.0-nightly_20181214 and the stutter was back. I hadn’t updated in a while so I could only revert to CoreELEC-S912.arm-9.0-nightly_20181111.tar, in which there is no stutter.

I uploaded the clip here if someone would like to try:

https://we.tl/t-ALqjOpAoLO

Is there a way to revert nightly builds in between, so I can check in what version the problem came back?

You can find an archive with older nightly builds here:
http://coreelec.pokey.de/?dir=archive

I’m not near my box and can’t test your clip currently.

1 Like

Thx!
So, I identified that the stuttering starts with CoreELEC-S912.arm-9.0-nightly_20181207.

Anything I can do to help find the problem?

@Huit The sample you have provided is corrupt, I had issues playing this on my computer never mind in Kodi.

On Dec 7th we made a change to fix some issues with HEVC decoding. As Adam has said, this may break things for badly encoded HEVC content. Find a better source, and everything will work great.

Thanks for all your feedback! My first thoughts were the same, that the sample was corrupt. However, it plays just fine on my computer both in VLC and in Kodi. Finding another source without being reencoded will be difficult I’m afraid. I have another sample from another movie that shows similar behaviour, although not as extreme. I uploaded it here:

https://we.tl/t-v1H0eyTIqr

At 20 sec. there is a slight slowing/delay in the video. As with the other sample this plays fine in the 12/06 build and on my computer.

@Huit, Can you upload mediainfo of all the files (not the sample files)? And it would be great if you have more information regarding the files, are they remuxes, encodings etc. Is it playback from an external hard drive, NFS, SMB, Plex etc? I don’t suspect the high bitrate to be the problem as I have a S905X box which plays both Tomb Raider and Interstellar remuxes just fine on my 100 mbit connection from a server through PlexKodiConnect. I’ve not played them for the last couple of months, yet I played a remux of MI Fallout some days ago which has a bitrate of 67 Mbit and 70GB of size without any stuttering. With my gigabit usb adapter I’m able to play the 300 Mbit Jelly-fish clip without any stuttering. So the problem is more likely to be related to the encoding software.

Regarding the Interstellar sample file you uploaded, it seems to be corrupted as adamg mentioned and I can see from mediainfo of the sample that “ATEME Titan File 3.8.3 (4.8.3.0)” software has been used for encoding. This is information of relevance for further investigating of the issues as the problem might be with the encoding software.

I moved the posts to a new topic, now. :wink:

I tried your Interstelar Clip.mkv.
It does not play OK on my PC, but plays much better (maybe OK) on my X92 box set to 1080 resolution. It’s difficult to say how well it plays because the sequence itself is very jerky (not smooth and pleasant).

Some more info: I play the files from an NFS share on my Synology NAS, but I get the same behaviour when I play them from a drive attached to my Minix U9-H. Both samples only stutter at one specific location, which I captured in the samples. Audio continues, video halts for a short period and then pick up again. I have multiple other movies that play flawlessly. So best bet would indeed be some error in these 2 films. However, until the 12/07 build my Minix was able to play them fine. And one other funny thing, I can play the Jelly-fisk clips up to 300 Mbit without any stuttering with 12/06 build but in 12/07 build there is a very small but reproducable stutter in the 300 Mbit.

The files are supposed to be remuxes. Here’s the mediainfo:
Interstellar:

General
Unique ID                                : 64265226999145906620103756698794776120 (0x305908525104E232267BA1F6482AD638)
Complete name                            : X:\UHD\Interstellar.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 65.4 GiB
Duration                                 : 2 h 49 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 55.4 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2018-06-29 15:49:42
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v24.0.0 ('Beyond The Pale') 64-bit
Writing library                          : libebml v1.3.6 + libmatroska v1.4.9

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Commercial name                          : HDR10
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@High
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 2 h 49 min
Bit rate                                 : 51.7 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.260
Stream size                              : 61.0 GiB (93%)
Writing library                          : ATEME Titan File 3.8.3 (4.8.3.0)        
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : Display P3
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0050 cd/m2, max: 4000 cd/m2
Maximum Content Light Level              : 1242 cd/m2
Maximum Frame-Average Light Level        : 436 cd/m2

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : DTS XLL
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Commercial name                          : DTS-HD Master Audio
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 2 h 49 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 3 686 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 4.35 GiB (7%)
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Text
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : PGS
Muxing mode                              : zlib
Codec ID                                 : S_HDMV/PGS
Codec ID/Info                            : Picture based subtitle format used on BDs/HD-DVDs
Duration                                 : 2 h 47 min
Bit rate                                 : 25.1 kb/s
Count of elements                        : 3516
Stream size                              : 30.2 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : Dutch
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Tomb Raider:

General
Unique ID                                : 271612634408009585358362551111324929514 (0xCC56B0CA6086EE20FE97741D55EA0DEA)
Complete name                            : X:\UHD\Tomb Raider (2018) BluRay 2160p UHD HDR TrueHD.mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4
File size                                : 48.1 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 57 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 58.5 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2018-07-04 18:13:33
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v24.0.0 ('Beyond The Pale') 64-bit
Writing library                          : libebml v1.3.6 + libmatroska v1.4.9

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Commercial name                          : HDR10
Format profile                           : Main 10@L5.1@High
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration                                 : 1 h 57 min
Bit rate                                 : 52.4 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth                                : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.264
Stream size                              : 43.1 GiB (90%)
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics                 : PQ
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primaries        : BT.2020
Mastering display luminance              : min: 0.0050 cd/m2, max: 4000 cd/m2
Maximum Content Light Level              : 2971 cd/m2
Maximum Frame-Average Light Level        : 112 cd/m2

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : MLP FBA 16-ch
Format/Info                              : Meridian Lossless Packing FBA with 16-channel presentation
Commercial name                          : Dolby TrueHD with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID                                 : A_TRUEHD
Duration                                 : 1 h 57 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 3 214 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 5 520 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 8 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs Lb Rb
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 1 200.000 FPS (40 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 2.64 GiB (5%)
Title                                    : TrueHD Atmos 7.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Number of dynamic objects                : 11
Bed channel count                        : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration                : LFE

Audio #2
ID                                       : 3
Format                                   : DTS XLL
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Commercial name                          : DTS-HD Master Audio
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 1 h 57 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 2 328 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : C L R Ls Rs LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless
Stream size                              : 1.92 GiB (4%)
Title                                    : DTS-HD Master 5.1
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Audio #3
ID                                       : 4
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : A_AC3
Duration                                 : 1 h 57 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 448 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Channel layout                           : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Bit depth                                : 16 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 378 MiB (1%)
Title                                    : DD 5.1 AC3
Language                                 : English
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

Text #1
ID                                       : 5
Format                                   : UTF-8
Codec ID                                 : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info                            : UTF-8 Plain Text
Duration                                 : 1 h 56 min

I’ve tried the Tomb Raider sample on a fresh install of 8.95.6 and it plays fine with no issues on my U9-H. I can’t seem to replicate the issues your having. I was playing the samples from the eMMC.

Yes, I checked and in fact both samples play fine in 8.95.6. So can we conclude from this that something has changed for the worse in the 9.0 build from 12/07?

And just for my interest, can I downgrade from 9.0 to 8.95.6 without a fresh install?

  1. Yes, you can.
  2. Refer to my post: Stuttering video with some 4K HEVC movies

Thx :slight_smile:

Ah ok, I understand … the fix isn’t in 8.95.6 yet.

I guess it’s not possible to alter the fix so that it is still able to play these samples fine? I won’t argue whether there are errors in the samples or not, but I’d still prefer a player that plays files smooth even if there is an error in it.

Not really, that fix was a compromise as it is.

When testing the 2 linked files on my S912 boxes using a variety of recent nightly builds, the Interstellar clip stops at 4 seconds in and resumes at 13 and plays perfectly from there.

The Tomb Raider clip plays perfectly.

I have however discovered one particular test file that plays perfectly well on a Libreelec build from wrxtasy (LibreELEC-S912.arm-8.2.5.1-444-1000nits) but has noticeable stuttering in Coreelec and which I have yet to see play smoothly in any version that I have tried ( and I’ve regularly tested all recent nightly builds).

It can be downloaded from https://4kmedia.org/sony-camping-in-nature-4k-demo/

I’d be interested to see what others find with their boxes (MX-III GII and TT S10 R-TV for me).

Update: On further checking, it seems that the file size in the link has changed since I first downloaded it, so perhaps has been updated. It does play better.

The one I used is still available though at this location, http://andytather.co.uk/panda/Files/Video/HDR/Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4

The interstellar clip clearly has issues as it’s problematic playing it on the computer, I will try the Sony clip later tonight.

The sony clip(all 3 versions of it) has been included in my collection of test clips since sometime early this year. I’ve never had a problem with it on the C2. Though with the holidays here I’ve not done any testing on any nightly builds this week.

I have just downloaded this clip and it does not even play in VLC, I can only assume either your upload is bad or your source is bad.

Just downloaded this sample and it plays on my PC with MPC-HC (v1.7.13) but not smooth. I suspect my PC does not have enough juice (all 4 cores at 100%) for such a demanding video:

General

Complete name : D:\Download\Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom)
File size : 1.12 GiB
Duration : 2 min 7 s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 75.8 Mb/s
Encoded date : UTC 2016-02-03 08:01:30
Tagged date : UTC 2016-02-03 08:01:30

Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5.1@High
Codec ID : hvc1
Codec ID/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Duration : 2 min 7 s
Bit rate : 75.6 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate : 123 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 (Type 2)
Bit depth : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.152
Stream size : 1.12 GiB (100%)
Encoded date : UTC 2016-02-03 07:59:49
Tagged date : UTC 2016-02-03 08:01:32
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics : SMPTE ST 2084
Matrix coefficients : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primar : R: x=1.000000 y=1.000000, G: x=1.000000 y=1.000000, B: x=1.000000 y=1.000000, White point: x=1.000000 y=1.000000
Mastering display luminance : min: 0.1000 cd/m2, max: 0.5000 cd/m2

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 2 min 7 s
Source duration : 2 min 7 s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 192 kb/s
Maximum bit rate : 197 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 2.91 MiB (0%)
Source stream size : 2.91 MiB (0%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2016-02-03 07:59:49
Tagged date : UTC 2016-02-03 08:01:32

Will try it later on my X92 box…