Vero 4K+ Issues and questions

Help and Support
24

  1. I have two 3D TVs, both are passive types. An LG OLED65E6, which is 4K, and a Vizio E3D320VX, which is only 1080p.
    I’ve read quite a few opinions on this, including one that says the HTAB is the wrong option, because you’re actually getting 1/4 of the vertical resolution. Regardless, I have movies in both formats, and I have personally ripped the same movie in both formats, for comparison purposes, and to my eyes, HSBS looks a little better than HTAB.

  2. Depends on how the upscaling is done. If I were to take an existing HSBS movie that’s 1080p and upscale it to 4K, then no, there’s no point, the TV would probably do a better job at upscaling it.

My way of doing this is to upscale the original BluRay movie, to 4K, then it gets the left and right frames compressed to half the width and combined into a single split frame. All this gets done in a single pass by the software. Since the image is upscaled first, then compressed to half width, that half width is actually still 1920px wide on the 4K frame, so if there is any loss, it’s minimal, plus I get the added benefit of enhanced vertical resolution.

I know it’s all subjective, but I’ve had quite a few folks look at an MVC, a standard 1080p HSBS, and a 4K HSBS version, and most can tell the difference between a standard 1080p and a 4K, and some even thought the 4K was slightly “sharper” than the MVC.

Personally I can’t tell the difference between an MVC or a 4K, but I can tell the difference between these and 1080p.

25

Hi Sam, so I followed the instructions you provided, and yes, the performance is way up there, > 950Mbps

iperf3
iperf31600×900 258 KB

I then tried speedtest-cli again, and once again I got weird results. So I followed the instructions on OOKLA SpeedTest website to remove the older version, then re-installed the latest version, and the results are “dramatic” to say the least.

ookla
ookla1600×900 240 KB

I don’t know if I want to re-scrape those TV shows again after all the work I put into them, so I’ll just chalk up the previous issue to poor performance on the database end at TMDB or TVDB.

So, right now the only remaining issue is the 4K 3D. While it’s not necessary, it would be nice to see if that can be resolved.

26

It’s mostly about semantics, but I wouldn’t call this an issue to be resolved, but rather a feature request. :wink:

30

@Dudeman, can you ssh to your Vero and send me the output of the following command?

cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/disp_cap_3d
31

Here’s the output:

osmc@osmc:~$ cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/disp_cap_3d
480p60hz TopBottom SidebySide
720p60hz FramePacking TopBottom SidebySide
1080p24hz FramePacking TopBottom SidebySide
1080p30hz TopBottom SidebySide
1080p60hz TopBottom SidebySide

32

Does that 4k HSBS video play fine on both of your TVs or only on the 4k one when you’re not using the Vero for playback?

33

My Intel NUC, running Nexus 20, is connected to a Vizio 1080p TV, and plays the 4K 3D files just fine in 3D, and triggers the TV’s 3d mode automatically. KODI is actually playing the file in 4K, but the ouput is only 1080p, since that’s all the TV can do.

snapshot_003
snapshot_0031600×900 256 KB

In the living room I have a Fire Cube connected to the LG 4K, as well as the Vero. The FireCube plays the file in 4K, but I have to manually set the Mode on the TV, since the Fire Cube doesn’t send out a 3D mode triggering signal.

I removed the Vero, and connected the Libre Computer, and it can play the 4K 3D file fine, and trigger the TV’s 3D mode automatically.

snapshot_004
snapshot_0041600×900 259 KB

I think I also know the next question, what are CoreELECs 3D support capabilities. Here is the output:

CoreELEC:~ # cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/disp_cap_3d
3D support lists:

480p60hz TopBottom SidebySide
576p50hz
720p60hz TopBottom SidebySide
1080i60hz TopBottom SidebySide
1080p60hz TopBottom SidebySide
720p50hz
1080i50hz
1080p30hz TopBottom SidebySide
1080p50hz
1080p25hz
1080p24hz TopBottom SidebySide
640x480p60hz
800x480p60hz
800x600p60hz
852x480p60hz
854x480p60hz
1024x600p60hz
1024x768p60hz
1152x864p75hz
1280x600p60hz
1280x768p60hz
1280x800p60hz
1280x960p60hz
1280x1024p60hz
1360x768p60hz
1366x768p60hz
1400x1050p60hz
1440x900p60hz
1600x900p60hz
1600x1200p60hz
1680x1050p60hz
1920x1200p60hz
2160x1200p90hz
2560x1080p60hz
2560x1440p60hz
2560x1600p60hz
3440x1440p60hz

34

Let’s concentrate on the 4k TV first. Can you ssh to your Vero and do the following:

cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/disp_cap_3d >.kodi/userdata/disp_cap_3d

then edit that file in .kodi/userdata/disp_cap_3d and add the line

2160p24hz SidebySide

then save the file and reboot your Vero. Then give one of your 4k HSBS files a try. If it doesn’t work then please post a new log.

36

So I did as instructed, I now have the disp_cap_3d file in the user folder with the added line.

When I tried playing one of the 4K 3D files, the screen goes blank and after about 10 seconds I get the “Open Input List” message from the TV, because it has lost the video signal. If I stop playback, the video signal is restored after a couple of seconds.

So whatever this is doing, it’s sending something to the TV, that it doesn’t like.

Something else that’s weird, after I played a 4K 3D file, and got nothing, I stopped got the video back, then went to play another video, this time regular 1080p HSBS. The playback started correctly, but after I stopped it, things didn’t returned back to normal.

Everything looked overlapped, I momentarily saw the top popup that said KODI disbaled 3D mode, but the TV was still in 3D mode, and it was showing an overlapped image. When I took the TV out of 3D mode, the KODI GUI was only showing the left half, stretched to full screen. I had to reboot the Vero to get it back to normal.

And it gets better. After the reboot, trying to play any 3D files, results in 2D playback only. It says it’s playing in 3D, but the image is 2D only. The solution was to turn the TV off, then back on. The everything worked, as long as I didn’t try to play a 4K 3D file. I can replicate this behavior 100%. If I play a 4K 3D file, all subsequent attempts at playing regular 3D files end up doing this

I tried changing the frequency on that line I added from 24Hz to 30Hz, but then it reverts back to the previous behavior (the video plays as 2d).

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to add the logs. Here they are:
https://paste.osmc.tv/riwogaweru

FWIW, I can’t really tell whether the movie is actually playing when the TV screen goes blank, that’s probably because the audio on mys system is going out the HDMI only, and when the signal is lost, so is the audio??

37

Well, the really slow scraping is still there, despite the network and internet performance.

Today, I noticed that one of the TV shows, “What We Do in The Shadows” did not find any episodes, so I went to manage, and told it to refresh the information. It took about 45 seconds for it to find the show, then it took about 4 minutes to scrape the 10 episodes in the folder.

I switched to my Fire Cube, which is connected to the same TV, and the same network switch, and did the same thing, to the same TV show. It found the show in less than 2 seconds, and scraped the episodes in 3~4 seconds.

So, I had just finished compiling the last season of Picard and added it to my NAS, I first tried the Fire Cube. Went to the show folder and told it to scan for new content. It was done in 5 seconds (stopwatch in hand).

I switched over to the Vero, enabled logging, and did the same thing. It wasn’t as bad as What We Do in The Shadows, but it still took 50 seconds.

I uploaded the logs to https://paste.osmc.tv/dekeyatahu

And since I was looking at Star Trek shows, just for fun, I thought I’d try to completely re-scrape Star Trek the original series, 3 seasons, 82 episodes.

Fire Cube: 31 seconds, including the reaction time to select the correct show from the list (The TVDB puts Star Trek: The Roddenberry Vault at the top)

Vero 4K+: 6 minutes, 2 seconds, includng the selection time.

Another thing I noticed is that the Fire Cube TVDB scraper found a lot of more entries (11 of them), whereas the Vero TVDB scraper found only 2.

I looked at the 2 add-ons. The one on the FireCube is 3.2.8. The one on the Vero says The TVDB (New) and it’s version 1.0.3. So I downloaded the TVDB (New) on the FireCube and had it scrape the Star Trek folder. It took 1 minute 17 seconds to scrape the folder, which I thought it was long, so I did it again: The second time it took 1:13, so it is a lot slower than the “older” script, but even so, it’s substantially faster than how it runs on the Vero.

Last but not least, I noticed that TV scraping on the Fire Cube also downloaded the actor thumbnails, so I enabled it on the Vero as well and re-scraped. Even though it’s enabled, it doesn’t show the actors at all. The area on the right, were actor photos are supposed to be, is blank. It does scrape actor photos for movies, but not TV shows. Is this by design?

So I’m having a lot of issues with TV show scraping, and I need some guidance here.

Edit: Since I posted this, I also tried the TMDB TV scraper on that Star Trek TOS folder, it wasn’t that much better (5:45), and the TVDB v4 (6:10).

38

Thanks for the log, it was really helpful :+1: . There’s a bug in the resolution calculation. I’ll take a look and come back to you.

39

Can you do another test, please? When you start a 4k-hsbs clip and the screen goes blank then wait a second and then run the following command on your Vero:

cat /sys/class/video/dump_vreg

This command writes some CPU registers to the kernel log. Then post new logs.

40

I wasn’t sure if you just wanted the kernel logs, or the whole thing, so I posted everything

https://paste.osmc.tv/ezeduxosus

41

That’s weird, the register dump doesn’t fit SBS mode, it looks like an MVC video was played :frowning: . Can you do that test again, but reboot the Vero before playing the 4k HSBS video, just to be sure that there’re no leftovers from previous playbacks. And please enable debug logging in Kodi for that test.

Then post kernel + kodi logs please, thanks!

42

That was my mistake, I didn’t realize I was supposed to enable logging before doing that command. I though it would just append the info to the existing logs.

Anyway, here are the new logs:

https://paste.osmc.tv/abehepevac

43

No problem, I should have expressed myself more clearly. If you don’t reboot before a test, then some values in the registers can be leftovers from a previous run. Then I can’t tell if they’re leftovers or if they were set in the current run. That makes it hard to analyze what’s going on.

This time everything looks ok, I’m investigating now …

44

Does rebooting the Vero clear the logs completely? Or are new logs appended to the previous runs?

45

If you reboot, the kodi logs will be saved (~/.kodi/temp/kodi.old.log) and a new one will be created. The kernel log will be completely cleared. Almost all CPU registers will be reset.

46

@sam_nazarko
Hi Sam, anything on the slow scraping?

47

I think you’re using two different scrapers (one Python based; one binary based), which would explain the different results.