I’ve had issues with the Vero 4K and ARC for a long while now:
The issue comes and goes - I have some weeks where it happens every day, and then I get no issues for months. I’ve tried different HDMI cables, but the problem still persists. I’ve never found a way to reliably reproduce it, so I haven’t had much to offer on the forums to help with getting to the root of the problem. Anyway, I’ve noticed a pattern.
When I start to play some video files, after approx 10 seconds of perfectly fine playback I get a blank screen and no sound for a few seconds. The same files play back fine locally on my laptop via VLC or a desktop Kodi installation. This is a consistent thing - always the same files, always the same drop out at always the same timestamp. This has been going on for a long time and it hasn’t really bothered me (it’s only with some of the kid’s TV shows). So my son has started to watch some of his older shows recently (with this drop-out weirdness), and this seems to coincide with the return of the ARC issue.
I start playing the file at 21:23:54. The drop-out seems to happen at 21:24:06 (there’s interesting stuff in the log about the framerate - hopefully it means more to an experienced eye). If I switch off “Adjust Display Refresh Rate” then the dropout goes away - makes sense. If I change the setting to “start/stop” then I still get the drop out. Kodi seems to pick a display config based on the file being played, then after 10 seconds or so changes its mind, which isn’t really “start/stop” - it’s more “start/change my mind after 10 seconds/stop” - but maybe it’s just semantics and Kodi feels that changing after 10 seconds is still “the start”.
Anyway, I left the setting off, and the kids have carried on watching their shows, no drop outs, and no ARC issues either. Which is great, but if I play a 4K file then I have an obvious problem.
If anyone can help to link the two things together then I’d be very grateful. Having to yank the HDMI cable out of the box each morning is annoying the wife and kids…
When you enable Adjust Refresh Rate, Kodi will change video output to match the refresh rate of the source video. This provides smoother playback.
We try and do this as early as possible, however sometimes there is an additional switch. This usually only happens on content that has been ripped and needs remuxing.
When you start the video, Kodi checks the container (MKV, AVI etc) and queries the characteristics of the video. Your display is then switched to match the reported refresh rate. If the container is correct, then no further adjustment is required and this will happen early on. Some TVs are faster to switch than others, and some projectors on long cable runs can certainly take a few seconds to switch.
However: when the video starts playing, the refresh rate is evaluated again; this time for the video stream itself. This is done because a lot of containers report incorrect frame rates which would result in unsmooth playback. You can see this from the sync errors in your log.
I don’t believe this would be related to ARC issues, but my recommendations (to start) are:
Enable HPD Lock under Settings -> Display (reboot after this change)
Ensure Adjust Refresh Rate remains on
Ensure you are standby’ing (using Suspend) on Vero 4K instead of removing power to it or selecting Shut Down
No need for apologies Sam, I didn’t really have much to go on until this week. Until I suspected the display switching might be related to the ARC issue, I couldn’t really supply a log file because I didn’t know what might be triggering it. It’s still only a hunch, but since I switched Adjust off it hasn’t happened. It’s only been a few days though.
Many thanks for the background info - makes sense that there would have to be a sanity check in case the container reported something different to the actual stream. It might be easier for me to try and fix the containers on these files.
I’ve already got HPD Lock on, so that hasn’t seem to have helped over the past few months. Your mention of Shut Down is interesting though. I don’t actually shut or suspend the Vero when it isn’t in use. I use a Harmony and when the Activity ends it doesn’t send anything to the Vero to “power off”.
This is one of those annoying issues - hard to track down, and could be coming from the other equipment I have in my HDMI chain. I’m grateful for any insight really.
If they are MKV, you can use a tool known as mkvtoolnix (it has a GUI).
You remux the container: which effectively takes the video, audio and subtitles and puts it in a new container. This isn’t transcoding: so it’s usually very quick (just a few seconds). It’s also a nice way to reduce space by removing things you don’t need, like foreign audio tracks.
If you are just leaving the Vero 4K on then I don’t anticipate it causing problems, or rather being the cause of the problem. But I’d like to know if choosing Suspend helps. You’ll be able to wake it up with another remote press, but suspend mode turns off the TMDS (HDMI) clock.
I’ll see if I can add some debugging for ARC. I need to check what’s available to us.
Ah, I’ll look into that tool. Cheers for the pointer.
About ARC - do you think that there will even be anything available at the Vero end? The Vero seems to block the TV reestablishing ARC back to the amp (for when we’re using the TV’s in-built apps), but it isn’t involved in the ARC process itself (well, not intentionally anyway!)
Not when it occurs, no. The sequence of events tends to be:
Kids watch stuff in the day, mix of Vero (audio/video fed into the amp, then on to the TV) and Netflix TV app (video is native to the TV, audio fed back to amp via ARC). They go to bed.
The wife and I watch a mix of stuff, Virgin V6 (A/V into the amp, same as Vero), Netflix, Vero maybe.
Go to bed. Everything goes into standby (but not the Vero - that just stays “on”).
Kids wake up next morning, try to watch Netflix app on TV, but no sound. Amp display shows no audio format selected (some logos light up to show Dolby being used normally, but nothing)). If I pull the HDMI cable out of the Vero, wait 10 seconds, ARC between the TV and the amp reestablishes and everything is fine.
(4) doesn’t happen all the time of course. I think I remember one morning pulling the power cable out of the Vero first and the problem was still there. And then I pulled the HDMI out (with the vero’s power off at this point), and then it started to work. Which is strange. Not quite what you said there, but using some of the same words.
I’ve left it a week, but unfortunately I was wrong and having adjust refresh rate set to off hasn’t solved it. It’s happened regularly. It’s currently in a locked-up ARC state right now, so I’ve switched inputs on the amp to and from the Vero and the TV (arc) and nothing helps. I know that pulling the HDMI cable out will sort it of course.
I also been experincing ARC issues like you Andy.
I have the Vero 4K connected to a Denon AVRX2400H AV reciver/amp which in turn is connected to a LG49SK8000 TV.
When the Vero 4k is connected to the amp I loose ARC connectivity from the TV like Andy I get no sound from the TV built in apps. As soon as I disconnect the Vero 4k HDMI from the amp and restart the amp ARC sound starts working.
I have recently changed TV as well I did have an LG UH850V and had issues with that as well. I have disabled CEC on the Vero 4k but it still messes up ARC/ CEC between the amp and TV.
It is a bit of a pain having to keep disconnecting the Vero 4K.
Hi Sam I believe so I went to power and selected suspend the Vero 4k led went to red and pressing a button on the remote change dit back to blue and it came back to the same screen.
I am just installing the latest update to see if that helps …
It’s possible that TMDS being killed actually causes this issue.
In which case, I suspect that enabling HPD Lock under Settings -> Display, and then just leaving the device on (for the purpose of testing) would resolve this.
Seems that @AndySmith says this doesn’t help though.
Thanks Sam that would make sense.
I have done the updates that were pending the version is still the June 2018 update but at the moment it appears to have done the trick Arc is working with the Vero 4k on and connected.
It has been a bit intermittent this issue so I will monitor and try the HPD lock if the issue returns.
I would like to say a huge thanks for your hard work I have been using your operating system for many years going back to the RaspBMC days on raspberry PI before purchasing the Vero 4k last year which is a fantastic product.
So, I had the Vero in it’s bad state yesterday again, but I had been thinking more about things I could experiment with.
Having a Harmony, one of the first things I do is switch CEC off everywhere. It just gets in the way. But to get ARC working from the TV back to the amp, I had to switch it on at the TV end. The amp allows me to activate ARC without “HDMI Control”, so I did that. The absolute minimum.
So I wondered about how the amp deals with the Vero, and why pulling the cable establishes the ARC connection, but pulling the Vero’s power doesn’t. So I switched on CEC in the Vero and the amp, and then played around with some of the Vero’s CEC options (of which there are a lot). Eventually, after trying lots of permutations with ARC still borked, it finally worked and ARC came to life without needing to yank the HDMI.
After this, things seem to have calmed down. It’s hard to reproduce the original problem so I’ll give it a few days, but so far the kids have done a lot of switching between sources today and ARC has reestablished every time. So maybe more CEC was the answer, or at least an answer - helping to inform the amp when things need switching around.
This kind of issue must be incredibly hard to diagnose when you’re dealing with a chain of equipment pretty much unique to each customer.
I’ll keep track of this thread as I had the same issues with my setup and none of it is 4k, to the point I sent the Vero back and as you say turning off the Vero actually did nothing, only removing the cable sorted the issue.
It must be something in the way the Vero hardware is talking to everything. Since switching it off surely means the software is taken out of the equation?