Intermitent black screen during play back

[GloW]

Hello

First thanks for this amazing distros, it is working great and far smooth than raspbian with xbmc over it.

I have a problem.

When i play a video in xbmc, it happens that there is an interemittent black screen of 0.5 seconds.

It is not regular at all, sometimes i got 4 black screen in a row, then nothing in the next 5 minutes.

Some videos have this problem, others have not. of course it is not in the video.

I suspect some kind of overflow, but i cannot see any terminal output to check on that.

So here my questions :
Do you have any ideas what can be the cause? and how can i fix this?

Is there any way to get the terminal output of the video player, in a log file for example ?

Is the video player used by xbmc omxplayer? i've tried to use omxplayer to play the video but the package is not even installed, so how xbmc play videos?

Thanks

Edit:
Here are some mediainfo :

NO BLACK SCREEN FILE :

Terminal

General
Unique ID : 179965827406413707256323989306792786177 (0x876428584449BF05ACF59C3F7B48B901)
Complete name : b.mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 434 MiB
Duration : 43mn 36s
Overall bit rate : 1 393 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2013-03-19 15:52:52
Writing application : mkvmerge v5.0.0 ('Die Wahre Liebe') built on Sep 25 2011 20:33:49
Writing library : libebml v1.2.2 + libmatroska v1.3.0

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 43mn 36s
Bit rate : 1 200 Kbps
Width : 1 024 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.085
Stream size : 366 MiB (84%)
Writing library : x264 core 98 r1649 c54c47d
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=2 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x111 / me=hex / subme=6 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=30 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1200 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 43mn 36s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 192 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 59.9 MiB (14%)

BLACK SCREEN FILE:

Terminal

General
Unique ID : 218862345834585499347943933466949820798 (0xA4A75AC40FD504B2A2AD961E7C91A17E)
Complete name : a.mkv
Format : Matroska
File size : 502 MiB
Duration : 44mn 13s
Overall bit rate : 1 587 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2013-03-19 09:50:04
Writing application : mkvmerge v5.0.0 ('Die Wahre Liebe') built on Sep 25 2011 20:33:49
Writing library : libebml v1.2.2 + libmatroska v1.3.0

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L3.2
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 8 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 44mn 13s
Bit rate : 1 200 Kbps
Width : 1 024 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.085
Stream size : 370 MiB (74%)
Writing library : x264 core 98 r1649 c54c47d
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=8 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x131 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=32 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=6 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1200 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 44mn 13s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 121 MiB (24%)

For me the main difference is the audio, black screen one got 6 channels.
I'm gonna check on that.

[GloW]

I was quite right, this black screen was an audio problem.

In xbmc settings, system->audio , i was configured in 7.0 , i've changer it to 2.0 and this black screen problem reduced a lot, but still not completelly.

anyone having same problem ?


i've found how to get the log, enable logging in system->logging then look in .xbian/temp/xbmc.log, but it's pretty extensive and incomprehensible.

I'm still unable to find the actual path to the omxplayer used in xbmc. or may be it is built inside it?

[Koenkk]

Omxplayer is built directly into the xbmc.bin

[GloW]

well thank you, i gonna use my raspbian image for direct use of omxplayer i guess.

[f1vefour]

(31st Mar, 2013 06:31 AM)GloW Wrote:  well thank you, i gonna use my raspbian image for direct use of omxplayer i guess.

sudo apt-get install omxplayer
sudo service xbmc stop

[kaname]

I have the same problem, I did a fresh install and the first 3 days did work perfectly.. then it started again.
I dont want to switch to another distro cuz I like xbian, but I have no choice until someone find the solution..

[IriDium]

Is "output to all speakers" in System -> Audio set?

This has been known to cause problems, so if it is set, remove it and see if that improves things.