Kodi Community Forum

Preface:
This howto assumes, that you are able to create a file on a linux filesystem. Furthermore it assumes, that you are able to apt-get.

Make sure to read the part about how to fix the GPU HANG by installing a kernel >= 3.18.4 kernel, as described below.

14/09/11 Overview

VPP BOB was made working in the meantime on SNB, IVB and HSW. IVB supports MADI (Motion Adaptive Deinterlacing), though there is a little bug in the driver that it produces little artifacts. On HSW even MCDI (Motion Compensation Deinterlacing) and MADI is working now. Though, you need a special driver that wsnipex is packaging in his vaapi ppa (see beneath). Ubuntu Trusty does not ship a new enough version, as a result VAAPI-BOB will produce green artifacts on HSW and MCDI and MADI will jump like hell.

Standard kodi from the team-xbmc ppa can automatically use a high quality software deinterlacer Yadif or BOB OpenGL Deinterlacer starting version 14.0 Helix. It can seamlessly use the before mentioned GPU Deinterlacing (VAAPI-BOB, VAAPI-MADI, VAAPI-MCDI). Those methods can be selected when watching a specific movie by changing the relevant options via the movie reel. VAAPI-MCDI is not available on a Baytrail as this is an IVB based chip.

The best quality of the cpu deinterlacers gives the filter called Deinterlace that is the implementation also referred to as Yadif - that costs a lot of CPU cycles (so be warned here). If you have a HSW chip you can use the VAAPI-MCDI deinterlacer which has awesome quality while keeping CPU load low. On Baytrail chips I currently suggest using the OpenGL Bob deinterlacer - cause the GPU is maxed out when using any of the VAAPI methods. I hope we can optimize this in the future when using the new EGL surface sharing API which was introduced in libva 0.3.6.

All the described features work starting with official libva-driver-intel version 1.5.0 and corresponding libva. Wsnipex provides them for Ubuntu users in his ppa. A kernel >= 3.18.4 is required to fix the GPU hang on HSW systems. Other issues are listed below, especially for IVB and BYT.

Summary:
HSW: VAAPI-MCDI
IVB: VAAPI-BOB (cause of the artifacts mentioned above)
Baytrail / SNB / In general HD2000: BOB (which is done in the renderer and costs nearly nothing, not VPP-BOB).

This ppa provides a helix version of current master. The code is in OpenELEC 5.0 - OpenELEC 4.2 is still Gotham based.

Some visual comparison:
Bob: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...h1-bob.mp4
Yadif: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...-yadif.mp4

Installation
-1.) Hardware Requirements / Software Requirements
SNB, IVB, HSW Intel Hardware
Ubuntu Trusty mini iso installed x64. Download link for example here: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/t...t/mini.iso
If you have a UEFI only system, you need to use the server iso as your basis, as the mini iso won't boot in UEFI mode. Server iso is http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/...-amd64.iso

0.) Basic Installation and script tuning
After the mini iso is installed, continue with the following steps:


Allow every user (everyone) to start X11

Create the kodi user and it add it the relevant groups. If you have created the kodi user during installation only do the usermod part.


To use the following upstart procedure you need to create /etc/init/kodi.conf to start kodi via upstart. That scripts does only wait for your HDMI device, if you want to wait for networking, you have to add that.

edit /etc/security/limits.conf and add before the end. remember kodi is the username, not the application. This will allow your user to get the audio thread a bit more priority.

Last thing is missing some permissions to shutdown, suspend the computer, therefore create the file /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/custom-actions.pkla with the following content (don't introduce line breaks, especially the Action= line must be exactly one line (especially no linebreaks or auto ".." in freedesktop.udisks.*), verify this):


1.) Installation of the repository and the new packages including Kodi 14.x

3.) KODI settings
System->Settings->System->Video Settings:
Vertical Sync: Let Driver decide

System ->Video->Acceleration:
Enable HQ Scalers for scaling above: 20%
Allow hardware acceleration (VDPAU): off
Allow hardware acceleration (VAAPI): On
Use Mpeg-2 VAAPI: Yes
Use Mpeg-4 VAAPI: if you like
UseVC-1 VAAPI: off (this causes vc1 interlaced to segfault, when on)
Adjust Refreshrate to match video: On

If you experience kernel hangs (dmesg will tell), you can set Prefer VAAPI Render: Off that will force the swfilter even when progressive / VAAPI BOB is in use.

System -> Video -> Playback
Sync Playback to Display: On (* This makes no sense when you want to use passthrough - with perfect display clocks it does not harm though)
Sync Method: Video Clock (Resample Audio) (This will automatically use Drop / Dupe when passthrough is active -> best from two worlds)
Adjust display refresh rate to match video: On Start / Stop

When playing some 720p file or lower (do you get why?) open the movie icon and set Deinterlace: Auto and Deinterlace Method to: Deinterlace (if it causes too much cpu load, choose Bob (Celeron Baytrail and Celeron 847 Nucs(!)) - also set Scaling algorithm to Lanczos 3 optimized (also not for Baytrail and Celeron Nucs, only for HD3000 and faster). Save for all files.

If you are running a Baytrail NUC or a 847 Celeron NUC or comparable - choose Scaling: Bilinear and Deinterlace-Method: BOB

advancedsettings.xml in /home/kodi/.kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml should contain (don't create that file / directory as root - use the kodi user, e.g. mkdir -p /home/kodi/.kodi/userdata/):

Especially the RSS Reader produces high CPU load. You can disable that one under Appearance setting.

Howto update kodi
As kodi is a normal ubuntu package, installed via the ppa, it's as simple as:

Fancy Splash? (Done by forum user teeedubb
Remeber to edit /etc/default/grub and to change:
to
Don't forget to run 'sudo update-grub' after you changed that line.

We are now done. A final reboot and everything should work:


Troubleshooting
In order to get any help, please provide the following logs.

Audio
Check if you audio device is muted
You can use alsamixer -c0 or alsamixer -c1 to do it manually, or use something like:

If you want to run pulseaudio, please see the kodi wiki before: http://wiki.kodi.tv/index.php?title=PulseAudio

IRC Channel
Out of historical reasons, you can join #xbmc-xvba for discussing this howto. The channel name shall make us remember forever, that best hardware is worth nothing, if there are no drivers for it :-)

Happy penguin:


Open Bugs, that we cannot solve:
Some Baytrails are fully freezing when entering CPU powersave mode C6 -> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=88012 (Fixed in OpenELEC and wsnipex's vaapi ppa, also in libva-driver-intel master)
Intel does not fix their deinterlacing vpp for BYT and IVB -> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79765 (Fixed with custom patch in OpenELEC, upstream discussion ongoing)

[History]
14/01/05: Update to kernel 3.13-rc7
14/01/12: Update to kernel 3.13-rc8
14/01/20: Update to kernel 3.13 final
14/01/30: Update to kernel 3.13.1
14/02/06: Told howto update.
14/02/07: Update to kernel 3.13.2
14/02/14: Update to kernel 3.13.3
16/02/14: Add code to set Display to RGB Full mode
14/02/22: Update to kernel 3.13.4
14/02/24: Update to kernel 3.13.5
14/04/09: Update to Ubuntu trusty
14/04/16: Coming from Saucy? Upgrade: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1677121
14/06/30: SwFilter Option has been removed. If you want to force a copy to system run disable the new setting: Prefer VAAPI Render in Video -> Acceleration. This is not needed in general, cause when Deinterlace or Bob is active this is automatically bypassed.
*14/08/23: Added wsnipex vaapi ppa to the howto. This will install an experimental intel-driver that can do MCDI and MADI. Beware it will crash roughly every 30 minutes when doing deinterlacing :-)
14/08/30: The crash has been fixed and you should be able to run MCDI without crashing
14/09/11: Rewrite of the indroduction part and settings.
14/10/20: Change The server iso to point to the trusty one.
14/11/18: Added login1 permissions to the pkla file. Replace yours if you don't have suspend / power off options anymore. Thanks to wsnipex.

Update 14/12/13 concerning the GPU HANG
Chris Wilson has finally fixed the GPU HANG! Thanks very much. It is included in any kernel >= 3.18.4 official kernel. Install it as follows:

Background:
Kernel 3.18.4 mainline has the patches we need included. Starting with this kernel and obviously also with kernel 3.19+ - the gpu hang is considered fixed.

For the Baytrail people, please only install and use the following kernel, which has an issue with a full freeze with the turbo fixed. This kernel also does not harm on other intel architectures.
150108: Updated everything to kodi, including the username.

A thank you to everybody involved. I currently use a i3 3220 with a GT610. The picture quality is great, but I'm wasting the built in GPU.

What are going to be the minimum requirements for T/S deinterlacing? The 3220 has
HD Graphics 2500, which is not really powerful.

Quote:Temporal / Spatial Deinterlacing will come during the end of the year. VPP is technically ready to use it, but - for now - no backend has implemented it (intel's job).

Nobody knows - cause it does not exist in the intel world for now.

OK. I guess I will have to wait for it to try. I really like T/S and the GT610 does of lot of it on my HTPC with 1080i live tv.

(2013-05-26, 00:23)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ](*) Some Sandybridge chips need to have RC6 disabled. This has nothing to do with this version, but is a hw, driver, mesa bug - which is also existing with other versions. You know, that you are affected when your machine freezes instantly while watching some channels. To workaround it:

Code:

sudo edit /etc/default/grub
change the following line:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet"
to read:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="i915.i915_enable_rc6=0 splash quiet"
afterwards:
sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

This workaround is not necessary if you disable RC6 in the Bios.
On the Biostar Celeron 847 Board RC6 can be disabled in the GPU Settings.

Yeah - no such bios setting on my Asus - and doing it in the OS has more flexibility. Did you already test the VPP? Does it work as you expected? You see the difference at all?

Hey Fritsch. I like to give it a try and preparing a fresh installation of Ubuntu. But before I would like to see how it look like before the change. Do you have video material where I have to deinterlace? I have no LiveTV :-(

Yes - of course: check that one: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5572...erlaced.ts
Check the horicontal lines while, moving and also check that it jumps like hell - if you enable "deinterlacing" with current code

Thanks. When I play the movie now (De-interlace video: Off) I see horizontal lines when the cow is moving.

When I change my settings to:

De-interlace video: Auto
De-interlace method: Auto select
Video scaling method: Bilinear

I don't see this horizontal lines. For me it looks good. But as it is cold outside, I like to make a new server base installation, I will try it out anyway.

Did you test with the "new" ppa? (obviously you did) Could you get me your xbmc.log? To see everything works fine, including vainfo?

I tested it with official one -> ppa:team-xbmc/ppa

I just finished installing the base system. If you want I can install my usual system to get you a log and vainfo, or I could use the new vaapi ppa and test it there.

What shell it be? :-)

With the typical ppa, there is no deinterlacing at all - it just has that option and seems to double fps. You will see a whole lot jumping pixel up, pixel down, especially when you watch the logo of the station on the upper right, this is the reason for this VPP testing :-). Here, I made another sample, to better illustrate: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55728161/tennis.ts

I tested the PPA this morning. Libva-glx1 was not updated automatically for some reason so first XBMC didn't want to start because of the video driver.

After that was fixed, everything seemed to work really well. Promising developments.

However I switched back to the GT610 because I couldn't fix the colorspace due to xrandr not working and swichting between refresh rates was really slow. I think I will give it a try again when there is a stable OE build with Gotham final.

Tested on Quantal by the way.

Thanks for the feedback, will add the libva-glx1 into the installation howto. Colorspace issues, can be workarounded or done via


you need a recent kernel (best 3.9.x for this to work). It may be that the 3.9.0 kernel correctly identifies your TV / Color Range out of the box without doing anything additional.

-> Gotham for now sucks balls on vaapi, as mpeg-2 is severely broken within ffmpeg, all you get is a nice segfault :-).

On Ubuntu installation is rather easy:
64 bit:
32 bit:

Ah I didn't do that. I am running the stock Quantal kernel, 3.5.0-31. I am stuck with that one because the HDHomerun driver will not compile on a newer Ubuntu kernel since they removed the dvb headers for an unknown reason.

Will there be an OE Frodo build with your patches? I am not interested in the Gotham builds since they are too alpha for my taste.