V19 Feedback & a few oddities found

Howdy Sam & friends,

After spending time on v19 / 2021.08-01 with the RPI 3, Vero4K, and the new out of the box Vero4K+ I finally can give deep feedback for product improvement at your leisure.

While I must say that MOST of the major transition from v18 to v19 is really nice, I did find a few gremlins.

If you would like logs or additional info on anything below, kindly ask. My timeliness of response is still highly constrained, but I will do what I can over weekend block sprints as able (sorry ahead of time if this is slower than what you might like, life is nutty busy).

---------- On 1080p & 4K TV RPI 3 ---------------------------------------------------------------
Snappier Menu feel than v18
Player/Video
Adjust Refresh Rate Off
Sync Playback Off
Display 4:3 Normal
System/Display
No Whitelist

*Generally Buttery Smooth playback with crisp clear upscaled images:
Movie DVD.ISO – No Menu
Movie DVD.ISO –Menu (v18 was good, this is better)
TV DVD.ISO – Menu (v18 was good, this is much better)
Movie BD.ISO – No Menu
Movie BD.MKV 1080p – No Menu
Movie BD.MKV 720p – No Menu

*Generally Buttery Smooth BUT…
(Item 1) DVD.ISO has a very slightly almost unnoticeable stutter like behavior… almost like a single frame is skipped every few seconds. It is not bad enough for the remainder of the family to notice and it is not horrible.

Oddities
(Item 2) Movie BD.ISO – No Menu, resume from X:XX fails to frown face reboot
(Item 3) Movie BD.ISO – Rarely screen goes black while sound continues

---------- On 1080p TV V4K & V4K+ Differences from 1080p TV RPI 3 -----------------------------
Player/Video
Adjust Refresh Rate Off
Sync Playback Off
Display 4:3 Normal
System/Display
No Whitelist

Even Snappier GUI

TV DVD.ISO – Menu (v18 still had some troublemakers, v19 is much better)

(Item 4) Movie DVD.ISO Upscaling looks even better however randomly through the movie for about 1-2 seconds the entire picture is filled with scrambled colors. Used the original PSU with the Vero 4K and the new PSU with the new 4K+

---------- On 4K TV V4K & V4K+ Differences from 1080p TV V4K & V4K+ -----------------------------
Player/Video
Adjust Refresh Rate Off
Sync Playback Off
Display 4:3 Normal
System/Display
No Whitelist

Movie BD.ISO & MKV looks even better than on the 1080p

(Item 5) DVD.ISO & TV.ISO are unwatchable.
If I turn off MPG2 acceleration then the movie is smooth but SLOW and eventually drops to a black screen.
With acceleration and upscaling on the picture is very choppy and frequently pixelated. A movie with letterbox, the letterbox will ripple like a wave on the top and bottom.
Followed the OSMC Whitelist guide which results in a low resolution picture that is still too choppy and frequently pixelated.
I had to stop (nauseating actually)

---------- Some More RPI 3 notes ------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------

The RPI3 now has a significant heatsink array.

The Codec Status under OSMC App shows MPG2 & WV1 as both enabled when updating from 2020.11-1 in 2021.08-1.

Can you post full logs so we can check settings are ideal?

Sam

This should be set to On Start/stop or Always and make sure that the GUI is set to 1080p (there is a bug where sometimes it’s set to 1080i. Do not set it to resolutions over 1080!

As always, thanks folks!
The GUI is set to 1080p (first thing I had to change on the new V4K+ / Fresh install, ty)

---------- MediaInfo --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mediainfo for DVD.ISO https://paste.osmc.tv/ipijibujoj.tex
Mediainfo for BD.ISO https://paste.osmc.tv/puxukekawi.tex

---------- On 1080p & 4K TV RPI 3 ---------------------------------------------------------------
@bmillham On the RPI 3, no whitelist and On Start/Stop disabled the playback is really good on both the 1080p & 4K TV (outside of the 3 items noted below). Display 4:3 videos as ‘Normal’ results in preferred legacy media playback.

(Item 1) DVD.ISO has a very slightly almost unnoticeable stutter like behavior… almost like a single frame is skipped every few seconds. It is not bad enough for the remainder of the family to notice and it is not horrible.
…… https://paste.osmc.tv/agirudekod

(Item 2) Movie BD.ISO – No Menu, resume from X:XX fails to frown face reboot
…… how do I submit a log when triggering the issue causes an automatic crash?

(Item 3) Movie BD.ISO – Rarely screen goes black while sound continues.
…… Sometimes the screen stays black. In this logged case the screen went black for about 1 second then resumed video playback
……https://paste.osmc.tv/hizicujiha

---------- On 1080p TV V4K & V4K+ Differences from 1080p TV RPI 3 -----------------------------
@bmillham On V4K & V4K+ no whitelist and On Start/Stop enabled. Display 4:3 videos as ‘Normal’ and Display 4:3 videos as ‘Use HDMI AVI Signaling makes no difference’
(Item 4) Movie DVD.ISO Upscaling looks even better however randomly through the movie for about 1-2 seconds the entire picture is filled with scrambled colors. Used the original PSU with the Vero 4K and the new PSU with the new 4K+
……https://paste.osmc.tv/cepirezeki
……
@bmillham On V4K & V4K+ adding the whitelist… playback looks rough compared to no whitelist.
……https://paste.osmc.tv/ifaninoyon

---------- On 4K TV V4K & V4K+ Differences from 1080p TV V4K & V4K+ -----------------------------
(Item 5) DVD.ISO & TV.ISO are unwatchable.
……https://paste.osmc.tv/ … will provide in next sprint.

Is there a compelling reason to have an iso instead of remuxing to a mkv? It’s easy (and free) to convert to mkv. Unfortunately, the mediainfo shows no useful information for an iso file.

In the late 90’s I began converting my VHS collection to DVDs – almost always opting to purchase a DVD over going to the theaters. Then around 2001 some of this collection, which includes different region available only media (and the associated dedicated dvd players), began to rot and become unplayable. In 2002 nearly the entire collection was stollen.

In 2003, in response to having already lost significant media and in response to the inconvenience of having to sort through and store a massive collection (which was beginning to take up an entire room’s wall) I transitioned to using the fox to backup the media – at first just as a clone of the raw.iso (with the region lock removed for foreign flicks) which could later be copied back to disk if necessary. It wasn’t long before I was only storing a clone of the main movie’s raw file in the iso, and by 2005 I was using the ISO for playback on a dedicated HTPC and storing just the disk in the crawl for proof of ownership.

For years alternative containers had inferior quality. I’ve seen very little reason to switch over from DVD to BD (I own fewer than 20), as the upscaling available from playback devices (to 1080p) from the raw DVD.ISO looks as good as BD on our screens to our eyes – and our sound system is stereo.

My movies are stored in Server\Media\Movies\Genre\MovieName\MovieName.iso.

I have over 1,800 movies in this structure which makes the concept of conversion extremely daunting (in both capacity and time), particularly for something that has worked so well for so long.

While all of the media we’ve played so far has displayed the above mentioned issues/[items], If it would be helpful, I can remux the DVD.ISO and BD.ISO selected for these [items]/tests to MKV and rerun the tests to see if the issues persists.

You either have a terrible television or you need new glasses. :laughing:

If you want to give it a try on one or two, I suggest downloading MakeMKV as a first pass. Extracting the movie from a movie ISO is very easy; if you want to preserve all the extras as well, that’s a bit more fiddly.

If you’re using a hard drive (as opposed to a SSD) make sure you’re saving the MKV to a different drive from the one that contains the ISO file, or you’ll be there all day.

MakeMKV is a great way to convert with zero loss of quality. It also has a command line interface so a good share of the conversion could be automated.

So as @angry.sardine suggested, try converting a few of you iso’s to mkv and see if that solves your problem.

Just an update…

Converting the ISO’s to MakeMKV does the trick on the V4k+ for both BD & DVD: The Vero series (especially on a 4K tv) really does not play well with ISO containers on the latest Kodi. The last version of Kodi was not an issue.

On the RPI, ISO is generally ok but very occasionally gives the behaviour reported in August with the latest Kodi version. It doesn’t occur with MKV.

At some point I may buy a large HDD and script a conversion from the ISO’s to MKVs (especially as I’m in the minority for using this as a storage container of choice).

Great work & great offering folks. As always, thanks for the stellar… everything!
Happy holidays folks!

What exactly are the issues?

You might find that seeking is slow – but that’s because of the nature of ISO.

Howdy Sam,

Just wanted to say – as always – I’m super appreciative of you and the team. Thank you.

The issues below appear in v19.
MKV’s are buttery smooth – but I have very few of these currently.

TV DVD.ISO menus are much better. Those menus that failed under v18 now work on v19.

On a 1080p & 4K TV with RPI3: Generally everything has improved from v18 excepting 1 - Very rarely DVD.ISO has a stutter then resumes like normal, 2 – BD.ISO resume from time X fails, & 3 – BD.ISO rarely fails to a black screen though sound continues.

On a 1080p TV with V4K & V4K+: Movie DVD.ISO Upscaling looks even better however randomly through the movie for about 1-2 seconds the entire picture is filled with scrambled colors.

On a 4K TV with V4K & V4K+: DVD.ISO & TV.ISO I just couldn’t get to work. The pictures are choppy and pixelated. Letterbox’s appear to ripple like a wave. Tried the OSMC Whitelist guide and played with various settings.

I posted logs to a number of these. With ISO’s I’m unable to provide a useful mediainfo return. Once converted to MKV, the issues go away.

Can you please provide a log so I can check this?
Or should your previously provided logs cover this.

(Sorry – but lots of threads at the moment)

Cheers

Sam

Thanks Sam!

The previous logs above capture most scenarios. If you’d like any others, feel free to ask.

No rush or pressure :slight_smile:

Cheers.

1 Like

Hi @Landspeeder – sorry for late follow up.

Do you have a sample you could provide so we can look in to this?

Sam

Howdy @sam_nazarko!

I sent you a DM.
Thank you greatly.