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Hi

I'm having an issue with XBMC where if I'm watching a movie and then stop it and play a different movie the playback will suddently become very very slow like when your CPU is maxed out and then the playback will freeze. I can will stop the frozen movie but replaying it or a different one will do the same thing until I restart the computer.

Some time ago I posted about playback slowing right down until it finally freezes up. I think this is probably related as the issue I was having before when setting the number of speakers to higher than 2.0 seems to still remain.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=136701

I'm running the XVBA build from the testing branch, built Aug 21, 2012 from ppa:wsnipex/xbmc-xvba-testing.

My Setup
XBMC 12.0 Alpha, built Aug 21 2012.
Ubuntu 11.10
Radeon HD 5670, 12.6 drivers,. VAAPI enabled and working.
2Gig RAM
2.0Ghz duel core CPU
HDMI cable from media PC to TV

Thanks



That almost certainly means an audio setup issue. Post a Debug Log and some info on your audio settings
Thanks for your quick reply. The new audio engine sounds much better than the previous one.

I've just upgraded to the build dated 30 Aug 2012 from the testing ppa mentioned above and unfortunately the problem still happens.

I've created two logs.

This one is when the number of audio channels is greater than 2.0: http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=7751
This one is when the number of audio channels is 2.0 and after I've played several movies: http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=7752

I hope they help. Let me know if you need more info.

Thanks
@clOud:

If you set your speaker config to 5.1 (speakers), you have to be careful as fglrx only provides two real channels. This is great confusion here, as the user counts the number of speakers (5.1) and sometimes AE opens 6 channels, which the card does not have.

On AMD fglrx systems:

Set your Speaker settings to 5.1 and only enable AC3 and DTS (if you receiver supports them) in the Audio Settings.
Please disable all the others: DTS-HD, True-HD, LPCM. fglrx cannot do them at the moment.
There is only one reason to set speaker number to 5.1, this is AC3 transcoding to get surround sound when DTS-HD, True-HD is transcoded. All other stuff that require 6 channels won't work.

Additionally don't enable Upmix Stereo to all speakers.
You can enable: Boost level on downmix.

I recently commited a patch, that DDDamion pushed, to not bail out if the channel number does not match and continue playing on "the number" available.

Edit: if your receiver cannot do AC3, set speaker number to 2.0
Thanks for your reply fritsch. I'm experience this issue with XBMC set to only 2.1 channels. In the case of 2.1, is it because AE is trying to open 3 channels but only two channels are available?
@cl0ud:
yes

Adapt the settings from above and retry.

How are those speakers connected? HDMI? Via Optical from your TV?

If your TV cannot do AC3, set speaker config to 2.0

Btw: disable VAAPI, as you are using xvba.
Yes, setting it to AC3 solved the problem when dealing speaker configurations > 2.0, thanks for that.

There is still the issue of it slowing right down after viewing several movies even though the number of speakers is set to 2.0. The debug log for that is: http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=7752. Only seems to happen when resuming a movie. So lets say I watch one for a bit and then stop it and watch another one, then go back and resume the first one. Or if you are watching a movies, stop it and then change some system settings the resume the movie, it will do it, the fps will go down to around 2 of 3.
@cl0ud:
Which fglrx version are you running? Could you try to disable "menu sounds". Btw. stick to this version, don't upgrade to testing at the moment - it is somewhat broken.

If you do though - send valuable debug reports :-)
I disabled navigation sounds (menu sounds?) under appearance|skins. But it still has the same issue.

I'm using fglrx version 2:8.980. Catalyst version 12.6.
From your log:
18:06:47 T:3075767152 ERROR: CAESinkALSA::InitializeHW - Unable to open the required number of channels

Still a mismatch with channel settings somewhere in your setup (XBMC or Alsa). Fritsch has suggested some changes which will be implemented to try avoid incorrect settings by the end-user, but until then this seems to be the heart of your issue.
Yeah I though it was related to the issue of trying to open more channels than are available but I found it odd that it only happens after you have stopped and resumed a movie several times, rather than the first time you play it.

XBMC is definitely configured to only 2 channels. I'll check Alsa.

Thanks