choppy video when upgraded to alpha 3

[martinl]

Hello!

I have some mkv files with 720p video (H264, ac3) which all previous versions of xbian played great. When I have switched to alpha 3 I get the following behavior:

- Video becomes choppy or pauses while audio stays fine
- After the video is choppy for a bit, it does a strange 'fast forward' to catchup to the audio.

What has changed? Is there some update or setting change which has now causing this choppiness?

I have never changed any of the video settings. I have always left everything as default except for changing the overscan stuff from within xbmc.

I am not sure it is related, but one other big change I noticed was that with alpha3 the subtitles are now much cleaner. Before they had extra timing info and junk displayed in them (the same thing mplayer used to do a few years ago) but now they are nice and clean and formated around the display properly.

Any suggestions on what I could try to get rid of the choppiness?

(Note that on all the other RaspberryPi XBMC distributions these same mkv files always have had the above choppy behavior.)

Thanks!

[rikardo1979]

Did you use update to Alpha 3 or fresh install ?

If you updated, maybe you can try to do the fresh install of Alpha 3 ?

There should never be a problem to play 720p video under any circumstances as the RPi is more than capable to handle this files so it makes me think that you have something somewhere what is bugging.
If you have all as should in HW part and use the Alpha 3 (or even the earlier versions back to 0.6.x) it should play 720p or even 1080p smoothly.

Please do a backup before you do your fresh install on SD card ( use XBMC Backup Add-on from official XBMC Repo) or try it on spare SD Card if you have some

[martinl]

Hello! Thank you for the quick response!

This is a fresh clean install, not an update. I do not even do backups. My setup is so barebones that a backup is not necessary. It only takes a few minutes to customize things.

I think I found the problem. I just tried the same segments that get choppy with the subtittles disabled and the video is no longer choppy. It seems to be that the subtitles are causing the issues.

Any thoughts/suggestions on how to get rid of the issue?

I have another RPi I can borrow later today to try things out (but it does not have the license keys purchased... not needed for this test, but nice to have).

Edit: I tried overclocking to the predefined 950Mhz mode and it did not help. When subtitles are enabled the video is still choppy.

[rikardo1979]

is still should play smooth with or without subs
weird issue here
can u get the log file and pastebin here ?

[martinl]

Here is the pastebin. I included the dmesg.

http://pastebin.com/Gfi6X8te

The problem happens with mkv's from multiple different sources.

To generate the log, I:

- Booted.
- Played one mkv and skipped to a seciton I know has issues, let it run for 2 minutes.
- Stopped, and played another two other mkvs that has issues too, but not as bad as the first one.


Note that I am playing these files from the SD card. I normally do it over the network. Before alpha 3, these files were fine over the network or played from the SD card. Now with alpha 3, they are choppy no matter if I play them over the network or from the SD card.


EDIT:

I ran the first mkv that has the most problems with the subtitles disabled and pasted the log here. Note it was smooth and not choppy with the subtitles disabled:

http://pastebin.com/Z9eJVxQf

[martinl]

Just a quick update. I tried another RPi (bought at a completely different time) and it still had the same problems. Disabling subtitles fixes the problem.

[rikardo1979]

still cant figure out what is causing your issue ...
any one can see what causing this guys having this issue ??
What ever I try on my 256 or 512 RPi im still able to play all files smooth no matter if SD,720p or 1080p, any formats, sizes,etc..
I can see this as a lack of power but he is reporting that with same HW it was OK on pre-Alpha versions
running out of ideas here

[rikardo1979]

can you try the old XBian version again if is still OK ? I mean the 0.8.x version

(28th Dec, 2012 04:31 PM)martinl Wrote:  Just a quick update. I tried another RPi (bought at a completely different time) and it still had the same problems. Disabling subtitles fixes the problem.

[martinl]

(28th Dec, 2012 08:59 PM)rikardo1979 Wrote:  can you try the old XBian version again if is still OK ? I mean the 0.8.x version

Hi!

I tried XBian 0.8.3 and there is no choppinies, so 'problem solved'. BUT... the subtitles look totally different in the older version supporting my theory that it has something to do with the subtitles.

Here is a picture of how the subtitles look with 0.8.3. I captured an instance where they get sort of messed up and show extra info: http://imgur.com/XUu2W ... alpha 3, the subtitles actually look nice and do not get messed up. In alpha 3, the subtitles look identical to how they look in the other two RPi xbmc distributions and those also have this choppy problem (I came and posted here because pre alpha 3 versions worked). Note that the times when the subtitles are messed up in 0.8.3 do NOT correspond to the choppiness in alpha 3.

Is there some reference mkv with 720p video (H264, ac3) and subtitles I can test out? Maybe the problem is with the particular mkv files I have? Something bad? Something corrupt? I would share them, but they are 500MB. Maybe I can point someone to where I got them?

[rikardo1979]

I have just realised that you mentioned that this issue is on all distros, so I'm suspicious its file related and not the system
I have sent you PM with details to test the files

[rikardo1979]

OK, so now I know what you are about after tested your file.
There is something really odd in this file and the subtitles really affect the playback badly
To be honest I havent seen the mkv file with the subtitles coded in somehow, which you can turn on/off ...
To be honest I don't know why is this file having a problem with the playback as its not even having a high bit rate.

But I may have an idea how to solve this, even is a bit workaround

Try to not used the build in subtitles but download the subtitles from any source out there, in .txt or .srt format and try if that work.
This should work, im pretty sure but lets try it and post back. The file plays fine with built in subtitles off so this make me think that it will play fine with external subtitles.
I know its not ideal but it may work for you

[Casmo]

I have the exact same problem.

Anime mostly has the subtitles built-in.
It's quite hard to find the subtitles as a separate file sadly..

I just updated my Xbian to 1.0a4, and updating my media library currently (Which is taking a looong time..).
Hopefully this update fixes this.

I'll post the outcome when I can.

~Casper

[EDIT]
Currently it laggs even more, but that might be because I haven't rebooted it yet since it's updated.
Note: I updated it, I didn't do a clean install

~~
Even after the reboot it's still the way it was before the update.(Video out of sync, and then makes a run for it to catch up after a while and when there's singing in this anime it's very laggy (Probably because of the extra subtitles)

~~
Disabling the subtitles fixed it all, but I do need subtitles, as I don't speak Japanese.
[/EDIT]

[martinl]

(2nd Jan, 2013 12:27 PM)Casmo Wrote:  I have the exact same problem.

Thanks for the confirmation!

mkvtoolnix will separate out the subtitles (even comes with a gui for linux!). I have not tried it to see if then pointing xbmc to the separated subtitles will fix the problem... they may have to be converted to another format?

I will be posting a nice clear explanation in a couple days and offering up examples at the xbmc.org forum for RPi support... I think its the right place to get it fixed since it is a problem with all the distros:
http://forum.xbmc.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=166

You are welcome to post about it too! If I get to it first I'll post the link to the thread here so people can follow the trail.

[Casmo]

I found out about the subtitle extracting, so I tried that.
If I use the same subtitle file directly extracted from it (It's a .ass subtitle), it has the exact same lagg.
I now do have options to remove parts of the subtitles (I.e. where there are 3 lines of subtitles). Which makes the lagg disappear.

Code:

Style: Op English,Kozuka Gothic Pro B,22,&H00FFFFFF,&H00FEF1FE,&H003C0964,&H00EDD8FB,-1,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,1,2,2,2,10,10,8,1
Style: Op Romanji,Kozuka Gothic Pro B,22,&H00FFFFFF,&H00FEF1FE,&H003C0964,&H00EDD8FB,-1,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,1,2,2,8,10,10,8,1
Style: Op Kanji,Kozuka Gothic Pro B,20,&H00FFFFFF,&H00FEF1FE,&H003C0964,&H00EDD8FB,-1,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,1,2,2,8,10,10,32,1

I believe it has to do something with these styles mainly (These are specific for this anime ).
As you can see, it uses 3 subtitle tracks, which are displayed simultaneous.

Code:

Dialogue: 0,0:23:58.10,0:24:01.04,Op Romanji,,0000,0000,0000,,{\blur5\org(0,0)\fad(100,100)}umare kawatte amai yume
Dialogue: 0,0:23:58.10,0:24:01.04,Op English,,0000,0000,0000,,{\blur5\org(0,0)\fad(100,100)}A sweet dream of changing myself completely
Dialogue: 0,0:23:58.10,0:24:01.04,Op Kanji,,0000,0000,0000,,{\blur4\org(0,0)\fad(100,100)}生まれ変わって甘い夢

Maybe someone can do something with this information?


[EDIT] Full .ass file content: http://pastebin.com/CRfh0dDF [/EDIT]


Another edit, not sure if related:
Sometimes when I start an episode, with a separate .ass subtitle file, I get to see this:
http://i.imgur.com/VbuyU.jpg (Yes, the font is completely scrambled/unreadable.. )
And then when I stop the episode, and restart it, I only see the timer going further.
I see nothing, I hear nothing..

[martinl]

Got some cross referencing action going on here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=150640