[druggo]

crashed in postproc-51-x86-osx.so, do you have an upscaler turned on ?

tested some deinterlacers, but then i removed that, still crashes...

[konan]

Konan: what is your resolution set on the ATV? I found out that if you set it to 1080p the XBMC playback stutters but at 720p it plays much better let alone the picture quality also better in my case because of a higher quality upscaler in the TV
If you have your ATV at 1080p set it back to 720p and things will improve massively

It's been known for quite a while that on ATV running Apple OS the output resolution should be set to 720p instead of 1080p. I do have it set to 720p and I still experience playback stuttering.

I have two ATV with almost identical configurations and one of them performs a bit better than another using RC2 and r174 but the difference is only in how much stuttering there is. I was not able to get rid of stuttering completely. Since some people report that they have no issues playing HD content on ATV with RC2 + r174 I am going to completely reinstall one of my ATV and see if a new clean install makes it performing better with RC2 and r174.

Yesterday I stumbled upon another phenomenon with RC2 and r174. One of the 720p movies (A Christmas Carol to be exact) H.264 encoded with DTS sound shows a lot of pixel artifacts during the playback. I've only noticed that yesterday because I've only watched it before on my windows machine that does not have such a problem. The issue is 100% reproducible and I am going to post log and MediaInfo soon.

To be honest I am starting to think of getting rid of my ATVs since I don't see much progress of HD playback on ATV platform. Since the March 2010 release it almost has not been any progress in terms of how well the ATV is able to play HD content. If nothing can be done to improve on this problem I just don't see the point to hang with the ATV since the cost of the low power Intel + ION compact platforms has gone down and XBMC for Windows works just fine.

[davilla]

Yesterday I stumbled upon another phenomenon with RC2 and r174. One of the 720p movies (A Christmas Carol to be exact) H.264 encoded with DTS sound shows a lot of pixel artifacts during the playback. I've only noticed that yesterday because I've only watched it before on my windows machine that does not have such a problem. The issue is 100% reproducible and I am going to post log and MediaInfo soon.

Some h264 content will pixilate under a bcm70012 card. The decoder can't quite handle the h264 flavor being used. There's nothing that can be done to improve this except to get a bcm70015 card.

[konan]

@konan, your attitude sucks.

If I were Davilla, I would not be inclined to help unless you are polite, post a full debug log on pastebin, answer all questions with the requested information as quickly as possible, and thank him profusely for all the work he's done.

My attitude only reflects the current state of the product that I really like and really sad to see not improving.

One of my goals of writing such "bad tempered" posts was to draw public attention to the issues and I am glad that I've finally achieved that at list partially. I do appreciate all the work that XBMC team is doing especially Scott Davilla since he seems to be the only person who actually works on improving the XBMC on ATV platform. Unfortunately I don't see much of the the progress here since the March 2010 release. Correct me if I am wrong regarding the progress.

I am myself a professional software developer with over 20 years of experience and I know exactly what is the difference between willing to write the good software and actually delivering it. At certain point a good developer should acknowledge problems if they exist and inform their audience about future plans for mitigating them. If there is no open communication there will be only bad attitude when users experience unresolvable problems.

I am willing to help but since I don't posses required development skills (I develop on Microsoft .NET mostly for web) I only see myself being useful in testing department and this is exactly how I am trying to help: test as much as possible and report all found problems hoping that those reports will help to improve the software. However when the reports are simply being ignored then what else I can do?

If you guys with "good attitude" know the better recipe for helping developers to improve the software then just share it instead of trying to teach other people "manners". Being "polite" is not a synonym of being "useful". Sometimes truth must be told openly.

[konan]

Some h264 content will pixilate under a bcm70012 card. The decoder can't quite handle the h264 flavor being used. There's nothing that can be done to improve this except to get a bcm70015 card.

Thanks for the response. Are you saying that there is no point of posting the log and media info? Correct me if I am wrong but based on my understanding of the difference between 012 and 015 is in supported video formats:

BCM70012
========
H.264/AVC HP at L4.1 1080i/1080p, 40 Mb/sec.
H.264/AVC HP at L3.0 480i/480p
H.264/AVC HP at L3.2 720p
SMPTE VC-1 AP at L3 1080i/1080p, 40 Mb/sec.
WMV9 (VC-1 SP and MP)
MPEG-2 MP at ML
MPEG-2 MP at HL

BCM70015
========
H.264/AVC HP @ L4.2 1080p60, 40 Mb/sec.
VC-1 Advanced Profile @ L3.0, 45 Mb/sec.
SMPTE VC-1 AP @ L3, 45 Mb/sec.
WMV9 (VC-1 SP @ ML and MP @ HL)
MPEG-4 Part-2 SP and ASP 1080p30
MPEG-2 MP @ HL, LL, and ML, 80 Mb/sec.
DivX® 3.11, 4.1, 5.X, 6.X, XviD

Based on that here is the question: if the media info shows that the profile does not exceed BCM70012 limits should not the media play correctly?

[davilla]

Thanks for the response. Are you saying that there is no point of posting the log and media info? Correct me if I am wrong but based on my understanding of the difference between 012 and 015 is in supported video formats:

BCM70012
========
H.264/AVC HP at L4.1 1080i/1080p, 40 Mb/sec.
H.264/AVC HP at L3.0 480i/480p
H.264/AVC HP at L3.2 720p
SMPTE VC-1 AP at L3 1080i/1080p, 40 Mb/sec.
WMV9 (VC-1 SP and MP)
MPEG-2 MP at ML
MPEG-2 MP at HL

BCM70015
========
H.264/AVC HP @ L4.2 1080p60, 40 Mb/sec.
VC-1 Advanced Profile @ L3.0, 45 Mb/sec.
SMPTE VC-1 AP @ L3, 45 Mb/sec.
WMV9 (VC-1 SP @ ML and MP @ HL)
MPEG-4 Part-2 SP and ASP 1080p30
MPEG-2 MP @ HL, LL, and ML, 80 Mb/sec.
DivX® 3.11, 4.1, 5.X, 6.X, XviD

Based on that here is the question: if the media info shows that the profile does not exceed BCM70012 limits should not the media play correctly?

That's the "official" specs for bcm70012/bcm70015. They both can exceed those "specs". Here's what you do, mediainfo that file. Compare to what you know plays and it same profile/level and you will see the difference. Most likely it's the number of reference frames.

[davilla]

One of my goals of writing such "bad tempered" posts was to draw public attention to the issues and I am glad that I've finally achieved that at list partially. I do appreciate all the work that XBMC team is doing especially Scott Davilla since he seems to be the only person who actually works on improving the XBMC on ATV platform. Unfortunately I don't see much of the the progress here since the March 2010 release. Correct me if I am wrong regarding the progress.

"bad tempered" go into my ignore bin. I just don't have the time to respond to such silliness. Dharma release is primary focus, as such I can't be changing things that would risk major breakage. Bug fixes only IF they can be done without major changes and I do have major changes planned for crystalhd. When we are in a release "mode", you will not see major changes.

CrystalHD has always been a moving target. The driver/lib API/Code keeps being updated to improve things. Do not assume that the driver/lib API/Code popped out and is 100 percent usable and bug free. This is a new driver/lib, it's under active development and will eventually settle down to become very stable. And before anyone starts bitching about it, just be grateful that I was able to get this driver/lib code exposed and into gpl/lgpl through several months of hard work with Broadcom devs and their legal department.

I've purposely kept XBMC's usage to support both old and new APIs as some users seem to get better performance with the older driver/lib under bcm70012. Once Dharma is out, old API goes away and I can focus on a refactor to new API only, plus new API things that I can't do right now. Plus changing path to renderer to reduce CPU usage.

I'm also busy elsewhere but I'm not taking about that right now. Rest assured that we are all buzzy little bees.

[interceptor121]

As I said in another post if you set the ATV display settings to 720p RC2 plays fine
I discovered that by accident, the issues are encountered only if you set the ATV to 1080p and then run XBMC (other than the occasional reboot needed)
Considering the ATV can't output 1080p anyway this is a reasonable workaround even if you like the interface at 1080p
Just change the setting restart finder and then XBMC will be just fine

[konan]

CrystalHD has always been a moving target. The driver/lib API/Code keeps being updated to improve things. Do not assume that the driver/lib API/Code popped out and is 100 percent usable and bug free. This is a new driver/lib, it's under active development and will eventually settle down to become very stable. And before anyone starts bitching about it, just be grateful that I was able to get this driver/lib code exposed and into gpl/lgpl through several months of hard work with Broadcom devs and their legal department.

Scott, thank you for taking your time and explaining things. I understand that it may be wasting of your time but communicating such things as the road ahead is very important to all the users who rely on your determination to continue support and develop on ATV platform. Without your efforts the platform will die very quickly especially considering that most if its users are more or less clueless about it since they were looking for an easy "black box" on the first place (as opposed to Windows where many are self-made experts). You used to write blog posts to keep the public in the know however you are obviously busy now and things are not straight enough with the Dharma on ATV. So once again thanks for your time.

[konan]

As I said in another post if you set the ATV display settings to 720p RC2 plays fine.

interceptor121, you are repeating yourself. Thanks for your explanation but in my case it's completely different. Something is seriously messed up with my ATVs (two of them). In particular when I look into logs I don't see a single sign that CrystalHD is being used. Davilla pointed that out too. At the same time the option 'Use hardware acceleration' is enabled and shines as a star in the Settings/Video/Playback. And this problem is absolutely the same on two separate ATVs. The only similarity there is the installation order. On both boxes I first installed r156 and Beta 2 then upgraded to r174 and RC2. Immediately after upgrade CrystalHD is gone and nothing brings it back except reverting to r156 + Beta 2. So I will be reinstalling the ATV from factory to the current r174 + RC2 to filter out any possible mess with upgrades and then I'll post the results.

[Abbyjack]

interceptor121, you are repeating yourself. Thanks for your explanation but in my case it's completely different. Something is seriously messed up with my ATVs (two of them). In particular when I look into logs I don't see a single sign that CrystalHD is being used. Davilla pointed that out too. At the same time the option 'Use hardware acceleration' is enabled and shines as a star in the Settings/Video/Playback. And this problem is absolutely the same on two separate ATVs. The only similarity there is the installation order. On both boxes I first installed r156 and Beta 2 then upgraded to r174 and RC2. Immediately after upgrade CrystalHD is gone and nothing brings it back except reverting to r156 + Beta 2. So I will be reinstalling the ATV from factory to the current r174 + RC2 to filter out any possible mess with upgrades and then I'll post the results.

In case you missed my post in another thread, I'm also seeing the same problem. CrystalHD support stopped working (either driver) after beta 4.
Neither RC1 or RC2 pick up the presence of the broadcom card on startup.

[_saint_]

Davilla,

Just a quick reply to say thanks for your hard work - I love what you've done with ATV/CHD/XBMC!

Regards

_Saint_

"bad tempered" go into my ignore bin. I just don't have the time to respond to such silliness. Dharma release is primary focus, as such I can't be changing things that would risk major breakage. Bug fixes only IF they can be done without major changes and I do have major changes planned for crystalhd. When we are in a release "mode", you will not see major changes.

CrystalHD has always been a moving target. The driver/lib API/Code keeps being updated to improve things. Do not assume that the driver/lib API/Code popped out and is 100 percent usable and bug free. This is a new driver/lib, it's under active development and will eventually settle down to become very stable. And before anyone starts bitching about it, just be grateful that I was able to get this driver/lib code exposed and into gpl/lgpl through several months of hard work with Broadcom devs and their legal department.

I've purposely kept XBMC's usage to support both old and new APIs as some users seem to get better performance with the older driver/lib under bcm70012. Once Dharma is out, old API goes away and I can focus on a refactor to new API only, plus new API things that I can't do right now. Plus changing path to renderer to reduce CPU usage.

I'm also busy elsewhere but I'm not taking about that right now. Rest assured that we are all buzzy little bees.

[druggo]

As I said in another post if you set the ATV display settings to 720p RC2 plays fine

Just tried using 720p as res on the atv, still crashes with exit status: 11 when playing SD material! HD works fine... no matter if i use 1080i in atv settings or 720p, really weird well, i can confirm bcm70015 w/ r174 and dharma rc2 35567 working with HD atleast... (but not HD channels streamed from tvheadend!)

xbmc.log: http://pastebin.com/xPeCWymL
CrashReporter: http://pastebin.com/m0JZur35

the file im playing, plays nice on my other setup, ion-based (see sig)

another shoutout to scott davilla, thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks, you rock!

[Ant1973]

I had issues with SD content crashing and generating error 11, solved by (a) disabling image enhancement on SD content and (b) setting interlace handling and scaling options for "auto". Then everything plays fine.

As for HD - occassionally I've seen that the crystalHD option disappeared on an update, but I re-an the driver install and did a hard reboot and then the option appeared again. Not sure that helps anyone, but it helped me

In general terms I have good performance on first starting XBMC under ATV OSX, but HD perfomance can degrade - again, a hard reboot solves the issues.

I've got CrystalBuntu on a USB stick and performance there (bar some crashes which are I think down to old Nvidia drivers) it works very well.

[davilla]

On both boxes I first installed r156 and Beta 2 then upgraded to r174 and RC2.

Order is very, very important. Update XBMC first, then always install/reinstall/update driver/lib.

The reason is PPA will install an incompatible version of chd lib. Opps that, the way it goes. So alway, always, reinstall chd after installing/updating xbmc.