Stuttering Out of Sync Playback on distinct channels from MythTV/SiliconDust

I am running several RPIs with OSMC 11.1/Kodi 18.9 as front ends for Mythtv 30 and utilizing multiple HDHomeRun tuners. I receive about 35 channels (mix of HD and SD), and all except four (actually one channel with four sub-channels) come in great.

The four channels that give me trouble are low definition and low power, but I get good solid signals at the tuners. These channels lose the synchronization between audio and video, the content stops and goes, sometimes pixelated in fits and starts. They are unwatchable and the longer I try to watch them, the worse it gets.

When I play the same channels/recordings through the Mythtv front end (or video players like VLC, etc.) they play perfectly so I’m thinking the problem is somewhere in the Kodi/OSMC end of the equation. This behavior is the same for live tv and recorded programs on the four channels but no other channels display this problem. If I resample/transcode the programming from these four channels (most simply by just “resampling” the recording over the top of itself) they play as expected and the quality is quite nice, but I obviously can’t do that with live TV. In the past, although I’m not exactly sure how far back, (maybe 1 or 2 versions of OSMC back) there was no problem playing these channels.

What suggestions can be shared to track down why these particular channels are not playing correctly in Kodi? I’ve been all over the setting in Kodi and tried adding filters, etc. in Mythtv but nothing works satisfactorily.

To get a better understanding of the problem you are experiencing we need more information from you. The best way to get this information is for you to upload logs that demonstrate your problem. You can learn more about how to submit a useful support request here.

Depending on the used skin you have to set the settings-level to standard or higher, in summary:

  • enable debug logging at settings->system->logging

  • reboot the OSMC device twice(!)

  • reproduce the issue

  • upload the log set (all configs and logs!) either using the Log Uploader method within the My OSMC menu in the GUI or the ssh method invoking command grab-logs -A

  • publish the provided URL from the log set upload, here

Thanks for your understanding. We hope that we can help you get up and running again shortly.

OSMC skin screenshot:

Hi.

Sorry, I just noticed a few minutes ago that you replied…

I performed the steps you outlined above and the link to the log files, etc. is:
https://paste.osmc.tv/womomakaso

I also included video that shows how these particular channels play through Kodi contrasted with roughly the same clip as it is stored on the MythTV server below. This behavior is only present on the four broadcast channels mentioned previously. Other channels play flawlessly.

Clip playing on Kodi:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-YOCzebiq1JQnNWOaN0ln75BQpvbv4sY/view?usp=sharing

Clip as it exists on server:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FyEuFIlQO63RSjWnbZnmX6eShSRAg_q1/view?usp=sharing
Media Info:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yyrQaX9ywSdXandYFXRmYhAhfbGOuMR0/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for your help with this.

While your playing the video open the playback settings and turn deinterlacing off and see how you get on with that.

Makes no difference except the picture quality suffers without deinterlacing.

Try going into settings>player>videos> and disable OMX and see how you get on.

Sorry this is a bit trial and error but I’m not currently running any older Pi’s or Kodi 18. I did a couple weeks ago and it was working well with a Flex 4K I recently purchased. I just forgot the details already as the older RPi’s no longer worked very well for Live TV once I moved them to Kodi 19 so they got upgraded to new hardware.

No change. I tried disabling OMX, MML, etc. I fiddled around with all the settings systematically and there’s no change.
I would think that there’s something wrong on the other end, but all of the stuff on these specific channels (live and recordings) plays fine outside of Kodi.

Kodi v18 is EOL.

If you can still reproduce on v19, upload logs.

I’ll give it a shot but I thought v19 didn’t do live TV on a RPi…

You’ll get deinterlacing in software – so as long as you avoid HD channels, you’ll be fine.

Otherwise, you need to change hardware unfortunately. OMX/MMAL are deprecated in Kodi upstream.

I appreciate the suggestion, but giving up the HD channels for a handful of SD channels doesn’t seem like a winning strategy. It would be interesting to give it a shot just to see how these problem channels fare. OMX/MMAL don’t seem to factor into this problem as disabling both/either seem to make little or no difference.

I’ve done without these four channels for quite some time but figuring out why they don’t work in Kodi (while the 30-odd others work impeccably) has become more urgent than watching those channels anyways.

I don’t know much about “broadcasting”… could it be something they’re doing differently at the source? I don’t see anything different about the program streams but I don’t know what I’m looking at necessarily.