OSMC crashes on Raspberry Pi 3 before videos can be played

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

Fresh out of the Fedex box, with a 2.5-amp power supply bought as part of a kit. I am an utter, absolute novice with OSMC, the Pi and Linux.

Installed OSMC on the card successfully. Using a USB mouse and am connected to Wifi. Attached a Western Digital Elements 1 TB USB3 drive; I can navigate through the drive and play music with no problem related to the drive. However, all attempts to play Mpeg4 video result in a crash. I get a frowny face screen for a minute or so and then recover to the OS but without a mouse cursor. No other indications of what might be going on.

The crash occurs with several different .mp4 files, both bare and wrapped with Matroska. These are not .mp2 files; I have not yet bought the codec.

I see that the WD drive can draw up to 650 mA. of current. Not sure if that’s the problem (I guess USB2 is rated for half an amp.) But the problem occurs only with video playback – music is OK as is viewing photos from the WD drive.

Appreciate any info about known problems or suggestions for troubleshooting. I’ll play around with an old USB2 drive I have to see if there’s any difference. The WD drive works fine on other computers, including my laptop where it’s plugged into a USB2 port.

There are two other problems that I’ll post separately about.

Thanks for any pointers.

2

Well the first step with this kind of problems is to copy the file to the SD Card and play it from there. If you still have a crash then you know it is the file and not the USB drive.

But reading your issues I guess the drive doesn’t get enough power. Suggest to add max_usb_current=1 to /boot/config.txt and ensure that your powersupply is strong enough (2.5A might not cut the deal here). Alternatively connect the drive to a powered USB Hub.
Did you ever see the rainbow colour underpower square in the top right corner?

3

Thanks. I’ll try your suggestions. Should have thought of putting the file on the card myself. :frowning: The addition to the config file – does it increase the amount of power available to the drive?

I haven’t seen a rainbow square in the corner, but it’s the (full-size) splash screen when I boot.

4

Yes it increase the power available to the drive and at the same time (obviously) increases the power drawn from the power supplier.
You can set this option via MyOSMC.

5

max_usb_current has no effect on Pi3. It automatically defaults to 1.2A

6

I won’t tell my tale of woe even trying to put a video file on the SD card where the OS could see it. I just don’t know enough about Linux.

Anyway, thanks for your time in responding. I found a media center distro that works fine, so I’ll go with that for now. When I have time to play with the second Pi3 I just got, I’ll see what I can do.

Thanks again.