[Matt_C]

I've been using XBMC for years, mainly on a 1st gen Apple TV, and finally upgraded to a FireTV box (again, 1st gen, for the optical output for my amp) as my ATV isn't supported anymore and I can't run anything over XBMC v11 Eden (plus lock of support for TMDB scraper, etc)

So I got a 1st gen FTV, loaded 16.1 onto it, spent most of the day setting up my sources, loading library, refreshing movies it scraped wrongly, customising sets, etc etc. But I've come to some strange (at least to me, maybe they're common place in the FTV world) hiccups/problems I'm wondering if anyone can shed some light on;

1) Jerky playback on certain video files. I've noticed some video files play back quite jerky and very "un-smooth", then realised it was all the 720p resolution xvid files. 720p miv's encoded with .246 or AVC are fine, and SD xvid files are fine, only 720p xvid files. This is weird to me, as with my ATV, 720p xvid's played fine, but 720p 264/avc files did not, until I upgraded to the Broadcom CrystalHD card. Weird this is the other way round. I have set video refresh to "always" but no difference.

2) Airplay. I cannot Airplay ANYTHING from my iPhone (6) to Kodi, and yes I have turned Airplay on in settings. I can Airplay both music and video from iTunes on my MacBook, but nothing from my phone (my MacBook is an older one, and does not support Airplay mirroring, so I can only Airplay from iTunes).

3) Volume irregularities. It seems the volume is varies widely for pretty much all sources with this box. Airplay (or AirTunes) from iTunes on my Macbook to FTV Kodi box is ridiculously quiet, audio from the DD/DTS encoded .mkv's I have seem about normal, anything I can get to play via streaming add-on's vary, and a video Airplay'd from iTunes is super loud. With my ATV, the audio streaming (AirTunes) from my MBP compared to the DD/DTS mkv's were about the same volume, when the volume was set to say 50% on my MacBook. Now to get the AirTunes volume at the same level, I have to nearly max the volume on my MacBook (which of course is no good if a stupid website starts playing audio or you get a pop up in the background you haven't seen that suddenly starts yelling at you cos your MacBook volume is way high)

Is there anything I can do to fix these issues, as even though it's nice to have an up to date Kodi build, and a snappier box for zipping around, the con's are making it less useable for me than the old ATV (even tho that box is sluggish, won't exit XBMC anymore without a hard power off, no TMDB support, no XBMC support, and no add-on app support - YouTube doesn't even work on it)

[JxPx]

Very interesting. I have both a Gen 1 and Gen 2 firetv box setup with the SPMC fork with an extensive local library with various formats and encodes and don't have any playback issues with the exception of H.265 on my gen 1 is a little choppy, but fine on the Gen 2.. Think that's a hardware issue, not Kodi related. Have not tried the airplay piece, but I will when I get home and let you know if I run into any issues with it. How are you serving the media?

[Matt_C]

Everything is stored on a NAS upstairs, connected to an Apple Airport Extreme via ethernet cable (wifi is purely for iPhone and MacBook - anything static is hardwired)

Re the formats, for example The Dark Knight is AVC (in MKV) and 6000 Kbps video stream (with DTS 5.1) and plays fine. Yet Iron Man, XVID (in AVI) with half the bit rate (and 5.1 DD at a third the bit rate of DTS) is choppy - almost as if it's missing every other frame and doesn't play smooth. Weird, as an SD XVID (AVI) plays smoothly and perfectly fine. I've run all the HD XVID's I have (all 720p) and the result is the same. I haven't tried converting one to h.264 yet to see if that fixes it

[Matt_C]

Quick update on point #1 - I converted a section of one the XVID files that wasn't playing so good with MKVTools so it's an h.264 stream inside an mkv container (same audio) and it plays fine. So it's definitely an issue with it not liking the XVID codec at that resolution, rather than it being the video file itself.

So I can simply trans-code the affected files and sweep point 1 under the carpet.

Point #3 isn't even the end of the world either, as I couldn't AirPlay from my iPhone to my 1st gen ATV either, as even with AirPlay turned on in v11 Eden, my iPhone wouldn't see it.

Point #2 is my biggest problem, as the volume varying thing is crazy. To get a sensible level for movies and TV shows to play back at, the music played from iTunes on my MacBook (via AirPlay/AirTunes, whatever you want to call it) is so low it's unreal. To get it to have any real power and volume you have to turn the Mac volume way up to within 2 or 3 blobs from max - which isn't practical. So I'm hoping there's a fix for this...? Otherwise I'll probably have to get an Airport Express and use that for AirTunes duties behind the amp - which will work, but just a shame as it's yet another device to have on and running all the time (as it will be handling internet passthrough duties) and means this FTV wasn't the one box solution I was hoping ti would be... Especially since my ISP seems to be blocking all the best video Add-Ons, it looks like the FTV will simply be a locally hosted media player

[JxPx]

Is your volume in kodi turned up all the way?

[Matt_C]

This is what I don't know - as I've no idea how to change the volume in it. On the ATV, in XBMC, if anything was playing that wasn't DD or DTS, such as music (iTunes AirTunes or other) or a video with AAC/MP3 2ch, I could adjust volume using the + or - buttons on the ATV remote. But that doesn't work on Kodi with the FTV remote - it just navigates using either up, down, left or right on the remote

[Matt_C]

After doing some more reading and digging, looks like the AirPlay issues (as in, from iPhone to FTV/Kodi is down to iOS9, not a fault in Kodi. Plus, this is am Android FTV box not an Apple iOS/tvOS box, and AirPlay is a propriatory Apple thing, so I get that.

Just need to sort out the varying volume issue then, if at all possible.

[wrxtasy]

Sideload SPMC and then got into Kodi > Settings > System > Video > Acceleration

And select "HD and Up" for mpeg4 video acceleration

[Matt_C]

Some more info - I installed OSMC (Kodi 16.1) on my 1st gen ATV via USB stick, and the AirPlay volume issue still exists. I queued up a track directly in Kodi and it played at what I would call a normal level, then played the same track via AirTunes from my MacBook via iTunes and it's half the volume, if not less. The only way to get it to play at the same volume is to turn the Mac volume up fully. Interestingly, turning up the volume on the ATV/Kodi using the ATV remote does make the music louder, but it does it by increasing the Macs volume, not it's own amplification (which it never used to do on XBMC 11.x on the same box)

So I'm wondering if it's a bug within Kodi, perhaps?

[Matt_C]

Sideload SPMC and then got into Kodi > Settings > System > Video > Acceleration

And select "HD and Up" for mpeg4 / xVid video acceleration

I don't think I've got a method of side loading anything onto it to be honest, as I don't have an Android phone or tablet...

EDIT 1) Ok, so I did a bit of reading and found you can install it using the ES File Explorer app on Amazon, so I did that (http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-spmc...n-fire-tv/) and it launched Kodi, and I found those settings you mentioned. But once I exited Kodi and went back into it from the main FTV screen, those options were no longer there and the XVID files played choppy again. So it looks like I have to run Kodi from within this SPMC app in order for it to work..??

EDIT 2) - which doesn't seem to fix it anyway (from *that* Kodi inside SPMC, I looked up one of the choppy XVIDs and played it - still choppy even with the "HD and up" set (or "always", for that matter)

[JxPx]

Sideload SPMC and then got into Kodi > Settings > System > Video > Acceleration

And select "HD and Up" for mpeg4 / xVid video acceleration

I don't think I've got a method of side loading anything onto it to be honest, as I don't have an Android phone or tablet...

EDIT 1) Ok, so I did a bit of reading and found you can install it using the ES File Explorer app on Amazon, so I did that (http://www.htpcbeginner.com/install-spmc...n-fire-tv/) and it launched Kodi, and I found those settings you mentioned. But once I exited Kodi and went back into it from the main FTV screen, those options were no longer there and the XVID files played choppy again. So it looks like I have to run Kodi from within this SPMC app in order for it to work..??

EDIT 2) - which doesn't seem to fix it anyway (from *that* Kodi inside SPMC, I looked up one of the choppy XVIDs and played it - still choppy even with the "HD and up" set (or "always", for that matter)

No.. SPMC is a fork of KODI, so you run it by itself. Did you uninstall the original Kodi first then install SPMC. They would both appear very similar once loaded, so chances are you went back into your original Kodi install and that's why those options weren't available.

[Matt_C]

Yeah that's what I figured when it opened a "fresh" version of Kodi, that none of my movies and TV shows weren't populated in. So like I said in Edit #1, when I excited that SPMC version of Kodi, like you say the options weren't available in the version I already had set up. But then like in Edit #2, I went back into that SPMC fork and tried it there, with those options configured, using the same XVID file, and no joy - it still played choppy.

Plus, I couldn't figure out a way to easily get into the SPMC version of Kodi without having to go through loads of menus to load it, so I didn't bother with it and went back to the original one I installed, since I'd spent ages configuring etc.

I'll just have to trans-code the XVID files (which is only half a dozen or so) and reload them. Not the end of the world. The volume issue is the main one. I'm just streaming a movie on it now and it's pretty quiet (compared to the local stored files I have in the library) and the dynamic range is mental - low speech and dialogue, but sound effects are incredibly loud.

[JxPx]

EDIT 1) But once I exited Kodi and went back into it from the main FTV screen, those options were no longer there and the XVID files played choppy again. So it looks like I have to run Kodi from within this SPMC app in order for it to work..??

So I guess maybe your above statement is what is confusing me. So when you first exited SPMC, did you go back into SPMC or Kodi??

EDIT: disregard my melted brain today. I did not read the rest of your post above. Got it all now.. Damn Fridays

[Matt_C]

Still having to juggle my volume settings so as to not blow the house up when switching from one device or source to another. Seems the 1st gen ATV must have been somewhat special when it came to it's audio levels, as it was pretty good at balancing it's levels from AirTunes from my MacBook to playing DTS/DD tracks from XBMC - the AAC 2ch stuff was nearly always louder, but the easy to use volume made that simple (and quick) to rectify. I just installed an AirPort Express to handle the AirTunes stuff, and whilst that works better than Kodi's AirPlay service, that too is quieter than the ATV was when it came to playing music via AirTunes. However, it is louder than Kodi AirPlay, so that's a bonus.

Something I have just noticed. When playing AC3 or DTS on passthrough, the volume options within the playback are greyed out, which is fairly normal. However, I just noticed that when playing something with 6ch AAC and you let Kodi transcode it on the fly to AC3 (awesome little trick that, btw) the audio options are available, just as they would be with 2ch AAC or MP3. Makes sense, but I hadn't realised until now (mainly because the transcoding didn't work so well on my ATV1 - it would break up and stutter a lot, as it just didn't have the processing power I guess)

[JxPx]

So do you airplay all your content?