@sam_nazarko
In regards to playing DVDs stored as ISO files (SMB), the Latest Bump to Isengard appears to work fine with the Pi (B+ and 2), just as Helix did. While the Vero appears to have picked up a few ticks on the framerates, the Vero is still too choppy to watch anything.
Reminder that an older install of Geexbox works just fine on the Cubox i4 Pro AND on the Vero.
Any other info I can provide so that a solution can be found to allow me to begin using the Vero?
Thank you.
Can you upload a full set of logs with debugging enabled? You may have deinterlacing on. Does turning this off, even temporarily, help?
Sam
Deinterlacing to Auto the debugging GUI shows a FPS of 19.5 and low CPU utilization. The paste.osmc indicates FPS in the 50s. Video stutters
Deinterlacing to On the debugging GUI shows a FPS of 19.5 and low CPU utilization. The paste.osmc indicates FPS in the 50s. Video stutters
Deinterlacing to Off the debugging GUI shows a FPS of around 10 and low CPU utilization. The paste.osmc indicates FPS in the 50s. Video is much smoother (though still not up to Raspberry PI b+/2 smoothness)
Will test tomorrow – as an aside, you should ignore the FPS in the GUI overlay. We cap that for performance reasons and as such it will no longer represent the video frame rate.
Sam
Thank you Sam, I greatly appreciate it!
@sam_nazarko
Under System/Video turning the resolution to 720p from 1080p allows the Vero to playback DVD.ISO video smoothly (like Pi B+/2 set at 1080p)… but the video picture is a little fuzzy, the subtitles are difficult to read/blocky rather than smooth line rendering, and the GUI Big Icons are pixelated.
Interesting. This gives me something to explore.
Sam
Do you have a 1080p set? My TV is a 1080 Samsung unit. I have been testing the vero mostly on a 1080p 700 series but it has the same problems on a 1080p 600 series.
Is there a reason you’ve got the GUI set to 720p? Scattergun testing… Anything that appears as if it could impact playback I have been flipping the setting (and if no change flipping back). This is the first item that has made a noticible change to the video playback. When set to 1080p flipping off deinterlacing helped, but the video was still a little jerky. This setting allows smooth playback (but introduces other issues)
@sam_nazarko
Last night I and 2 others spent nearly 6 hours compiling non-anecdotal info. We used a scene approximately 11 minutes into Ex Machina that pans on a wall of Post-It-Notes ending with a hard-cut to the antagonist at his PC. Playing DVD.ISO files across SMB causes ‘stuttering’ – this ‘Stuttering’ appears to actually be X frames playing, then the frame freezes and after a few frame skips the video continues. This configuration of ‘grid’ post-it-notes makes the ‘freezing’ easy to see and count. This scene was repeated 10 times on each device in each configuration, and all 3 of us counted ‘stuttering’ occurrences.
This video segment was used via OSMC on the Vero, B+, and B 2. It was also tested on my GeexBox on Cubox-i4. This video was tested on my Samsung 700 series via a wired network, my Samsung 600 series via a Wireless Bridge, and my neighbors Sony Bravia via a wireless -> all 3 sets are 1080p.
Under System/Video with the resolution to 1080p
-----OSMC on the Pi B+ and B2 runs with no frame drops (plays smoothly)
-----The GeexBox on i4 runs with no frame drops
-----Vero Freezes an Average of 31 times during this scene using the Wired and Bridge connections, and an average of 37 times using the internal wireless. No run was +/-2 counts from these numbers, likely due to human error.
-----Note: Turning Off De-interlacing on the Vero results in a freeze count reduction of 5-6
Under System/Video with the resolution to720
-----OSMC on the Pi B+ and B2 runs with no frame drops (plays smoothly).
-----The GeexBox on i4 runs with no frame drops.
-----Vero Freezes an Average of 7 times during this scene using the Wired and Bridge connections, and an average of12 times using the internal wireless. Note: At first I thought this looked good, but after watching about half-way through a movie I felt nausea — the next day my daughter watched a movie and started throwing up.
-----Note: Turning Off De-interlacing on the Vero results in no reduction of the freezing
Reminder that from the suggested May 18th test, and confirmed from a 1-off test last night, that Geexbox installed for my Cubox-i4 booted into the Vero runs fine.
What else can I provide to enable usable DVD.ISO playback on the Vero?
Thank you
Hi Chris,
Are you referring to this film?
I’ll see if I can pick up the disc and replicate
Sam
Good day Sam,
That is the movie I am referring to.
All purchased DVDs stored as ISO with no compression (or menu items) using Slysoft products.
Infrastructure:
Couldn’t get my hands on the disc yet, but I am keen to fix this once and for all:
Sam
Yesterday my familiy and me first time tried to play a DVD-ISO and also landed in this frustrating situation of watching a surging video. Interestingly I observed that playing the film with the Vero the connected Panasonic plasma still stays at 1080p with 60 fps whereas the Raspberry Pi2 (also running OSMC) correctly switched to 576p with 25 fps which is the original resolution and frame rate. Of course the pi2 played the rest of the film in a perfect manner and safed this evening.
Manually setting the Vero to 720 x 576 resolution I detected that also the Vero is perfectly playing the DVD-ISO. So, is there a way to tell the Vero to use the original film resolution instead of doing this up-scaling playing DVD-ISOs?
The issue is caused by Kodi playing videos at the wrong framerate. This is why you are getting framedrops. Fortunately, we have identified the problem, now we just need to work out how to solve this.
Sam
We have found the issue and (hopefully) the fix. OSMC August update is scheduled for Sunday, Please let me know if things improve (or don’t) by then
Best
Sam
Just updated my Vero to OSMC 2015.08-1.
Playing ISO DVD-images works like a champ now in my environment.
Many many thx for this! Excellent Job!
JimKnopf 
Environment:
TV: Panasonic TX-P42GTW60 (Plasma) connected via hdmi arc
Surround receiver: Sony STR-DN840
Backup media player: OSMC with Raspberry Pi2
Excellent!
Peter has let me know that we may have some issues with still frames (such as menus), so we must keep an eye out for this.
You are on the August update, we have not published the official blog just yet.
Sam
This is working like a charm with august update. Correct refresh rate 25/50 Hz identified.
Maybe a bit ‘pixly’ (english?) with vero trying to output 1080p from dvd source. It looks low res or maybe like a low quality scaler/video renderer. Not sure though.
Only tried 2 dvds but i were unable to click or select anything in the dvd start/main menu.
@sam_nazarko & Co
Great job tracking down the DVD.ISO framerate drop bug on
the Vero.
Now that the framerates work… anything I can provide to eliminate
the grainy image (same issues noticed by @supersonicjohan85)?
This is similar to what I reported 24 days ago:
Under System/Video turning the resolution to 720p from 1080p
allows the Vero to playback DVD.ISO video smoothly (like Pi B+/2 set at
1080p)… but the video picture is a little fuzzy, the subtitles are difficult
to read/blocky rather than smooth line rendering
Almost the perfect pi replacement!
@Landspeeder – the DVD sample you sent me that you ripped was about 3.7Gb, which is quite small for a feature length film in MPEG2. I’d recommend you try a 1:1 rip and see if the ‘grain’ persists.
Assuming it does still remain, I think there are some hardware video scaler settings in Settings -> Playback when you have ‘Expert mode’ set in Confluence.
Re. menus: when using the hardware decoder, it is difficult to get single frames out. Still need to work on a solution for that. It may be that the solution in the August update is just a stopgap until we fix the framerate issue with software decode.
Sam