Kodi Live TV - choppy video

Freelance

Hello,
i've tested most of the video files 4K and others and all seems working OK, streaming via LAN.
The problem i have, and it is a major one is that the TV stream from own Tvheadend server is choppy. Like every second frame is skipped. It's not a buffer issue as recorded TV seems OK. I have S905 box with same Kodi version and everything works fine on that box. Same settings on both boxes. Streaming on RPi2 and my HTPC is also perfect. All on Gigabit LAN.
There is something wrong with this box and Kodi Live TV - some codecs or other issues.
This is a show-stopper for me. If this is not fixed i'll return the box ...

/ Freelance

snake2005

Freelance replied at 2016-09-30 23:09
Unfortunately this firmware does not fix the Live TV problems. Tested everything and the problem rem ...

They fixed this issue in the latest firmware but you should check in Kodi system>settings>video>acceleration if "allow hardware acceleration : amcodec " is ticked, if not just tick this option and it will use the proper hardware acceleration codecs for this box. (Don't forget to restart Kodi after)

An alternative app is TVHClient. (You need to have VLC player installed as well)

zemitras

I've also confirm this issue.
In my case sometimes the streams are like you described, and sometimes they work ok. I'm sure this is a GT1 problem, but I had the feeling that became better with the OTA upgrade. But still, not perfect.

snake2005

I've also confirm this issue.
I hope Beelink staff will fix this issue.

Svartalf

Look like common problem, only SD working well, HD and especially UHD playback terrible...

Svartalf

I've try to enable/disable acceleration on Kodi (surface codec/usual codec) but HD/UHD still unwatchable....

Freelance

Tested some more today,
on HD channels with ff-h264 where stream is 50fps the picture is OK but still some quality issues are present. Codec ff-mpeg looks good for 25 fps but again picture quality is much worse than my HTPC, it looks interlaced ...
Acceleration settings does not make any difference.
For ff-h264 Kodi is dropping and skipping frames rapidly, for mpeg2 frames are stable.
CPU utilization is skyhigh for ff-h264 , much lower for ffmpeg.

It seems that acceleration/codecs are not used for Live TV in kodi.

Same results with SMPC also so there is something wrong with the box/firmware

What a disappointment ...

Freelance

On my S905 box the codec says am-h264 pointing to a fact that Kodi is using Amlogic codecs as it should, while on GT1 the codec used us ff-h264, same for mpeg2video , on my S905 it reads am-mpeg2video but on GT1 says ff-mpeg2video

Can some of the developers check why Kodi is not using the amlogic codecs for acceleration?
As it is today the box is unusable without amlogic codecs ...

Freelance

And one more strange thing
playing Live TV stream is decoded with ff-h264 , playing same stream from recorded TV via videos is decoded with amc-h264, same goes for mpeg2 ...

The problem is that Live TV is not using Amlogic codecs and uses software decoding , that's why the video is choppy ...

Freelance

Did a factory reset, flashed the 103 firmware again, installed Kodi Krypton latest and the problem still remains.
How can it be that codecs are not used for Live TV in Kodi???
In Krypton you can clearly see that decoding is done in software - SW , for Live TV. For videos section all decoding is done in HW codecs. Recorded TV plays fine.

Something is really wrong with the firmware, i hope Beelink can fix it fast.

Downloaded Interlanced Live TV samples, all play OK with HW decoding. Why does Kodi choose to use SW deconding for Live TV???

Svartalf

Why does Kodi choose to use SW deconding for Live TV???

Imo not  Kodi choose, but firmware have some bugs that prevent Kodi to use hardware acceleration..