Playback improvements for 4K HEVC UHD content

Testing
23

Setting it to 9 was enough to get JW2 working. But not for the hiccup while playing Serenity. Needed to set it back to 10.

Will check The Mummy Returns in an hour or two.

24

Same here - JW2 and skipping fine on 9 but Serenity still exhibits the freeze. I donā€™t have The Mummy Returns to test.

25

Whatā€™s the time stamp where JW2 has issues?

26

About 1:40 just as the bike collides with JWā€™s car.

27

We have a report of problems with Atmos. Can anyone else reproduce?

28

Thanks.
Tried JW2, Mummy Returns and Serenity with a setting of 9 and still seems fine, and only Serenity seemed to have an issue with frame stirring after a rewind.

How do I revert the changes to the main line release?

29

I reported in the 4th post with logs of Cars 3 having drops. Nobody responded.

30

At least 4 people have looked at your logs. thanks for the report.

31

Can you try Cars 3 from local USB?

Iā€™ve changed the buffer margin to 10 by default now which should be a good compromise.

32

Hi @sam_nazarko
So we have to install the testbuild again or wait for an official build?

33

Itā€™s up to you

Sam

34

Regarding Cars 3 UHD I had a quick look tonight. With the latest stretch-devel update I didnā€™t get any audio dropouts, at least for the first 10 minutes which is what I tested.

This was with a remux of the UHD and the Atmos 7.1 track playing. The dynamic buffer margin parameter was set to 10. Playing over nfs.

Denon X2400H receiver.

Will have another look tomorrow, Iā€™ll let it play for longer.

1 Like
35

Thanks for this.

36

I tested Cars 3 again and still have audio drops pretty much the same as i reported in post 4. I donā€™t have a usb drive to test local playback unfortunately.

37

Unfortunately I canā€™t replicate the audio dropouts on my system for Cars 3. I used MakeMKV to create an mkv from the UHD and only included the video track, the 7.1 atmos soundtrack and english subs. Perhaps try re-creating the mkv if you can.

What I can do is replicate these Atmos dropouts:

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 UHD - 01:09:23 (this will even sometimes crash osmc lol)

PotC Dead Men Tell No Tales UHD - 00:02:51

I got the details from this thread:

https://club.myce.com/t/atmos-audio-drop-outs-details-thread/399840/17

Same dropouts on the Shield. Seems like Atmos dropouts MAY be an ffmpeg/kodi problem. Not sure if Sam can fix those. Might have to wait.

But the more people start ripping and playing UHD remuxes the more of a problem it will become.

38

Tested as well and also could play my problem file the first time without any hanger. Letā€˜s seeā€¦ will test some further moviesā€¦

39

Ok, bad newsā€¦

Tested againā€¦ American Assassin had again obe scene at which playback stops because buffer is running emptyā€¦

I also tested with different buffer settings in advanced settings. I started with 10
and were going down to 5. Cache size is 1gbā€¦

Hope there will be found away to improve this issues. Open speaking the vero 4k is promoted for 4k but in general itā€˜s not working correct with 4k!
And also itā€˜s a normal situation tjat 4k files are stored on a server, especially because of the size of the files!

Pls vero 4k teamā€¦ place an official statement! Will it be workable to play 4k hdr movies with a bitrate between 60 to100 mbit/s without issues from a networkshare without buffer issues. I really want to know because Iā€˜m really annoyed because your box is promoted becaue I donā€˜t need to tinker on it every day! But right now I have toā€¦

40

Thatā€™s a bit strong. We are talking about a few titles here.

41

I can play UHD Dark Knight Rises with no issues, and that has a sustained bit rate in the 100mbit/s range. Perhaps an infrastructure issue here? I have a fully wired network, Vero and NAS connected to a Netgear switch, NFS mounting of directories.

2 Likes
42

Sry, but weā€™re not in the US and therefore ā€œworkingā€ doesnā€™t mean in any setup/configuration and with literally every equipment one is using, if thereā€™s no extra disclaimer. Thereā€™re sometimes complications with network setups and 4k is evolving as UHD rips are just more and more common now. They werenā€™t available at the beginning of this product. In addition to that: all products playing back somewhat standardized formats have to be adjusted to changes every now and then. Itā€™s never a finished process (even standard Blu-ray players sometimes need updates for certain disc titles).

Especially as weā€™re talking about an open source product developed and maintained by a small group of ambitious people. This is a completely different situation than with products by big manufacturers which have big development teams and can put tons of money into pre-built, highly expensive licensed solutions (and still wouldnā€™t even reply to a complaint on a forum mostly, even less would they probably work on fixes for issues only a few users experience).

Common sense tells us that there are many pros for a box like the Vero 4k, but it cannot be perfect from the start with a format that is still evolvingā€¦ :wink: Please keep that in mind before complaining in such a general way!

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