Blank-screen playback of recorded .ts file with MMAL

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

I applied the January update to my OSMC Pi last night. This Pi runs with OMX disabled and MMAL enabled, as I find that OMX often gets the deinterlacing wrong with some BBC HD content, sometimes clinging on to film-mode when it should be recognising video content.

Anyway, I noticed that when trying to play back the recording of last night’s Match of the Day, all I had was a blank screen. My Vero’s play the file just fine. On a hunch, I enabled OMX and now the Pi is playing the recording ok. It seems to be specific to this recording, as MMAL was fine with a couple of test BBC HD broadcasts this morning.

This log was captured during the black-screen playback with MMAL, I then enabled OMX.

https://paste.osmc.tv/zecozojupi

2

We haven’t changed anything playback related for Pi in this update - but binary addons, including PVR addons have been updated

Sam

3

I had another BBC HD recording with black screen playback failure on my OSMC Pi via MMAL, so thought I ‘d try my LE Pi and it’s fine. So for now the OSMC Pi is out of service for PVR content as I need MMAL for reliable deinterlacing. Probably a niche problem, but in case anyone encounters the same issue, the update might help.

4

Are they both running the same version of Kodi?

5

yes, both running 18.5.

6

Are kernel and firmware the same?

7

Can you advise the commands I need to pull that data?

8

For the kernel
uname -a

For the firmware
/opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd version

9

Here are the details as requested. I’m going to keep the recording that breaks MMAL playback on the OSMC Pi in case useful for testing an update.

> LibreELEC (official): 9.2.0 (RPi2.arm)
> LibreELEC:~ # uname -a
> Linux LibreELEC 4.19.83 #1 SMP Sat Nov 23 01:55:35 CET 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux
> LibreELEC:~ # /opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd version
> Nov  5 2019 20:41:14
> Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
> version b60349918206bf0ce2310de058cf7c5dd0958699 (clean) (release) (start_x)
> 
> osmc@osmcPi:~$ uname -a
> Linux osmcPi 4.19.55-6-osmc #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Nov 3 22:15:28 UTC 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux
> osmc@osmcPi:~$ /opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd version
> Oct 23 2018 14:41:50
> Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
> version 724d81b3f87eb71045e938e572eca140fb8828ab (clean) (release)
10

I’ve updated the bootloader.
I’ll also give the kernel an update shortly.

Can you give things another go?

To test this update:

  1. Login via the command line
  2. Edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list
  3. Add the following line: deb http://apt.osmc.tv stretch-devel main
  4. Run the following commands to update: sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && reboot
  5. Your system should have have received the update.

Please see if the issue is resolved.

I also recommend you edit /etc/apt/sources.list again and remove the line that you added after updating. This will return you to the normal update channel.

11

I ran the update but the problem is not fixed. My Kodi version has changed to 18.6 but the kernel version is the same. The firmware version has changed.

osmc@osmcPi:~$ uname -a
Linux osmcPi 4.19.55-6-osmc #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Nov 3 22:15:28 UTC 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux
osmc@osmcPi:~$ /opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd version
Mar 10 2020 16:00:17
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version d5afe412e364adbdafc0394ac65e674091a56473 (clean) (release) (start_x)
12

It must be kernel related then. We will update that soon.

13

I stumbled across a fix. I had assumed that I had the Fallback framerate enabled in my PVR playback settings, and it turns out I did not on the OSMC Pi but I did on the LE Pi. Most recordings play fine without it, enabling the Fallback option fixed MMAL playback of the recording. If I disable Fallback on the LE Pi it too gives me black screen playback on this recording.