Videos cropped and black screen while seeking
#1
Hi everybody. I own two MBOX MXIII media players. One is the 1GB/8GB version and the other is the 2GB/8GB version. I had both for about six months and they've been working great. Recently I noticed that every video I play is zoomed in exactly 5% so I'm only actually seeing 95% of the video, and the rest is off the screen. This issue only happens when hardware acceleration is enabled and does not seem to happen if I switch to software decoding. I checked my screen calibration settings (both in Android and in Kodi itself) and everything is perfectly calibrated, so the issue isn't with my configuration.

If I go into the video settings and change the zoom amount from 100% to 95% then the video fills the screen perfectly. This works for every video and the zoom amount is always the same. However, I must manually change the zoom to 95% for every video I play, every time I play it. I tried the "Set as default for all videos" option, but that doesn't work properly. After setting that option, the next video I play will have a black border around it (exactly 5% of the screen) and inside that black "box" the video is cropped to 95% once again. Then if I go into the video settings and manually increase the zoom back to 100% and then back down to 95%, everything looks good again. Yeah, I know it sounds very strange, but it can be reproduced every time.

I was using Gotham 13.2 for a long time, because it was working well, until I noticed this issue with video playback. So I tried upgrading to the latest Kodi, but that has the same issue. In fact, this issue is present on all versions of Kodi all the way from Gotham 13.2 to the latest Kodi beta / RC / nightly release. But now I discovered a new issue while trying to fix the zoom problem. On every version of Kodi after Gotham 13.2 the screen goes black every time I seek in a video. On 13.2 the current frame would just freeze for a fraction of a second while it was was seeking and that's normal, but on every other version the screen turns completely black for a fraction of a second while seeking. Since I watch TV mostly in the dark and I frequently seek around in my videos, the black screen thing is extremely irritating and hard on the eyes.

Out of frustration, I went and upgraded my media player's firmware from 110k4 to 112k4, hoping it would fix the issue. Unfortunately that actually made things worse. Now even Gotham 13.2 has the black screen while seeking in videos, and the zoom issue is there on every version of the program too. I also tried every available version of SPMC and they all have the black screen thing and the zoom thing as well. But on SPMC if I manually lower the zoom to 95% and then use the "Set as default for all videos" option, it actually works properly and every video from then on displays at full size. The bigger issue is the black screen while seeking and I haven't found a solution for that. I'm completely out of ideas about what else I can try to fix these problems. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

PS. - These are the specs of my media player, in case it makes a difference.

Model: MXIII (MX3)
CPU: Amlogic S802 Quad Core up to 2.0GHz (Cortex-A9)
GPU: Octa core ARM Mali-450 GPU up to 600MHz
System: Android 4.4.2
Kernel Version: 3.10.33
Firmware: 112k4
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#2
Over 100 views and not a single idea or suggestion... Can anyone at least recommend an android box on which Kodi works properly?
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#3
Hi xKashim,

for you "95%-problem" it seems that you have found a solution by using spmc. An other idea would be to change the settings for all your videos by direct accessing the kodi-library. (MYVideo.DB) I am using "sqllite browser" - but you should be a little bit familiar with SQL-statements.

The amlogic-boxes should run well with spmc and kodi - better the most others.
My personal impression is, that the helix-kodi is not the best solution for android-boxes. There are a lot of improvements in mediacodec and libstagefritht which are only implemented in kodi 15 nightlies and alpha 01 and in spmc, but not in helix-versions.

I would suggest to write koying, FernetMenta and memphiz a PN with a link to this thread.
You should make a debug-log for your black screen-problem an append this to this thread.

SaEt9000
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#4
Hi everybudy,I recently delete kodi from matricombox 3 and I reinstall kodi helix 1.4 so every time I try to lanch it the screen goes black how I can fix this problem
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#5
(2015-03-21, 14:40)SaEt9000 Wrote: for you "95%-problem" it seems that you have found a solution by using spmc. An other idea would be to change the settings for all your videos by direct accessing the kodi-library. (MYVideo.DB) I am using "sqllite browser" - but you should be a little bit familiar with SQL-statements.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I haven't really found a solution for either problem. Using SPMC solves the "95% problem" but my bigger issue is the black screen while seeking, and every version of SPMC has that problem. Changing the settings for all my videos wouldn't work either. Changing the video zoom on any version of XMBC/Kodi only works one time for each video. Every video has to be changed manually every time it's played.

(2015-03-21, 14:40)SaEt9000 Wrote: I would suggest to write koying, FernetMenta and memphiz a PN with a link to this thread.
You should make a debug-log for your black screen-problem an append this to this thread.

I don't know who any of those people are, but I guess I'll try messaging them. Although in my experience people (especially developers) don't like to be messaged by random people asking for help on forums like this, but I'll give it a shot. I'm not sure how to dump the Kodi debug logs, but I'll look into it and post the results.

(2015-03-21, 18:36)edilson Wrote: Hi everybudy,I recently delete kodi from matricombox 3 and I reinstall kodi helix 1.4 so every time I try to lanch it the screen goes black how I can fix this problem

Hi edilson. Your issue is completely different from mine. I'm getting flashes of black while seeking in videos, your problem is related to staring up the program and getting a black screen. Please try the search function on the forum and then start your own thread if you can't find a solution.
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