Kodi Community Forum

Debug log: http://goo.gl/UfLh6B
Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS (up-to-date as of 2015-08-16)
Kodi 15.1 Git:d496682
Hardware:
- Intel G530
- NVIDIA GT218 [GeForce 210]
- 4 GB RAM

I've started seeing severe stuttering during playback of files hosted on the local drive, to the point where some files will simply freeze, displaying a "Buffering... n%" message. The UI remains responsive at this point, but attempting to stop the video completely locks up the machine for several seconds before playback is actually ended and the home screen comes up.

This behavior seems to only occur with the most-recently-added files, including some low-quality TV episodes, at least one HD TV episode, and an HD movie (which I've tried in two encodings.) Other files, both high- and low-quality, most of which have been on the drive for a longer time, appear to play fine.

fsck reports no problems with the disk with the media on it.

I have very few plugins installed, but if that might be the problem, I can post a list.

I've seen threads about buffering with similar log messages, but they appeared to be network-related; there isn't (or shouldn't be) any network activity when this issue occurs.

Any help would be great!

Can you update the nvidia driver, please?

From the looks of the logs and the NVidia website, I appear to have the latest version (340.76.) Should I try a beta/unstable driver?

352.x shoild be the latest stable and 355 the latest beta. NVidia has its owm ppa now..

http://kodi.wiki/view/Kodibuntu/FAQ#How_...ariants.3F

And below is the list of available proprietary drivers...

https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/...ubuntu/ppa

Will those drivers work with my card? The nvidia website says the latest for my GeForce 210 is 340.76.

You are right, sadly. I have seen a lot of issues with 340.76, sadly and most users fixed it with upgrading.

Hmm... I'm getting an error when following the instructions for grabbing drivers from the graphics-drivers ppa, as specified on http://kodi.wiki/view/Kodibuntu/FAQ#How_...ariants.3F

After adding the repository and performing a sudo apt-get update, I still seem to be missing a package:

it's libvdpau1

Ah, thanks! Unfortunately, after upgrading to the the 352 nvidia drivers, my machine can't get past the login screen; Kodi crashes immediately. Here's the crashlog: http://xbmclogs.com/pyqqgd5jw

(I'm also on the #kodi-linux IRC channel right now, if someone would like to help me debug this in real-time.)

Can't you just remove the nvidia card and use what the G530 provides?

Would you expect that to be sufficient for decoding HD? When I first installed XBMCbuntu on this machine a few years ago, the framerates were horrendous until I added the discrete card.

Yes. I expect so.


is enough. Please also provide, after that:

DISPLAY=:0 vainfo | pastebinit
dmesg | pastebinit (cause it might be that nvidia altered your kernel boot config)

Interesting, I'll give that a try this evening.

Alright, I've pulled the Nvidia card and gone back to integrated graphics. This seems to have solved some issues I was encountering with initial loading of files, but I'm still seeing buffering during playback.

Debug log here: http://paste.ubuntu.com/12133437/

Here's the vainfo output: http://paste.ubuntu.com/12133428/
And the dmesg output: http://paste.ubuntu.com/12133444/

The logfile looks good ... the only point where something is dropped is after fast forward, no render drops, nothing. Can you describe what you see?