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Yep, it's been talked around quite a bit but any time a comparison between the Vero and any kind of Cubox is done all i hear is that it isn't a Cubox. That's fine. I'd like details on exactly how a Vero is different.
Can anyone that has a Vero with OSMC try some of the sample video files from http://solidrun.maltegrosse.de/~fritsch/ ?

My Cubox-i2 cannot keep up when playing the h264 1080i50 or 1080p50 files and I'm curious if the Vero does any better.

Edit: Sounds like the Vero experience is about the same, https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/vero-performance/2415/14

Edit 2: There was a pretty good discussion going on in the OSMC Vero forum referenced above but that thread was locked and Vero owners having any video playback issues were advised to use email to get help.
(2015-04-01, 14:52)zaphod24 Wrote: [ -> ]Edit: Sounds like the Vero experience is about the same, https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/vero-performance/2415/14

Edit 2: There was a pretty good discussion going on in the OSMC Vero forum referenced above but that thread was locked and Vero owners having any video playback issues were advised to use email to get help.

I'm not usually very vocal and have been quietly rooting for Sam for a very long time, but if they are attempting to censor user feedback that is extremely concerning. I've looked forward to recommending the vero to many of my friends/family for some time with the hope it would be a truly hands off experience for me once it was setup and running. I've supported openelec since its inception on at least 15 different devices for friends/family and there is always some minor issue that crops up during a software update that requires my assistance (I'm a huuuuge kodi fan/whore and push it on as many people as I can).

The vero was supposed to be my way out from under the support rock! I know better than most the tech industry culture of today is to ship products in a beta/alpha stage so teething issues on the vero while disappointing are not unexpected at all. Trying to cover them up is completely unacceptable and something I refuse to support.
This thread has nothing to do with OpenELEC at all. Let's stay on topic and discuss the "vero experience". The imx hw limitations (fractional modelines missing, audio dropouts, problems with sub rendering and the new architecture) are widely known (since even January) and were discussed in the beginning of this thread, too.

Most of the issues people are seeing with osmc's kodi experience is "hw platform limitation" and all the other distributions have the same issue (see my first sentence and the review of that i2 owner).

Edit: As someone noted on IRC, more clear: Fractional Modelines are hw limitation. Subtitle are currently architecture depending, which can _in theory_ be fixed with another massive change to how kodi renders subtitles. This currently involves the "old slow path" to combine the VPUs and copy the data arround, which is the reason for the slowliness.
Not sure what the subtitle issue might be (I haven't look at the new imx code).
I assume the "new way" is to use direct framebuffer (fb1?) to render video, right?

What's the issue with rendering subs on fb0 (overlay) and video on fb1, i.e. why do we have to use the "slow path" when there are subs?
Aml works this way...
(2015-04-02, 06:40)touser Wrote: [ -> ]The vero was supposed to be my way out from under the support rock! I know better than most the tech industry culture of today is to ship products in a beta/alpha stage so teething issues on the vero while disappointing are not unexpected at all. Trying to cover them up is completely unacceptable and something I refuse to support.

Yeah, that basically confirm my earlier concerns about the Vero not being sent for external review.
The Vero is currently beta, and early adopters are guinea pigs. This is to be expected, really, and I've no actual issue with that unless a selling point and a justification for the over-pricing is that it should be hassle-free.
IMHO, an honest way to handle this would have been to give a huge discount to pre-orders, like selling at cost (~$100).

Thank fritsh for helping Sam to backport the improved rendering path, or it would have been worse...
@koying: For the architecture (and the corresponding subs issue)
smallint Wrote:Excerpt of architecture:
- Instead of render VPU decoded buffers with GPU (which involves expensive memory copy operations in combination with de-interlacing) we now render exclusively to another hardware framebuffer (fb1)
- Rendering directly to this new framebuffer can be combined with de-interlacing in one step DP combines both framebuffers in hardware with alpha blending (if 32bpp) or colour keying (if 16bpp)
- Together with the optimizations brought in by @FernetMenta regarding video rendering we can now even achieve double rate de-interlacing of 1080i streams
- In a nutshell: video rendering with GPU is bad, IPU is good

In case of subs on fb0, data needs to be transfered. This is the reason why navigating menus while watching content or sadly subs make a penalty.
(2015-04-02, 09:33)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]In case of subs on fb0, data needs to be transfered. This is the reason why navigating menus while watching content or sadly subs make a penalty.
Well, no, that's the point. You can render the subs and gui on fb0 with holes and the video on fb1, so there should be zero penalty, unless there are imx-specific limitations.

Did you guys had a look on how it's done for aml, i.e. RENDER_BYPASS? I did exactly the same in SPMC for experimental RK-on-fb (https://github.com/koying/SPMC/tree/heli...gefrightRK) and it works fine, too.
Thx for that information. I will let wolfgar and smallint akso know. Perhaps we can achieve something similar. That would be great for that platform.
Seems like this thread covers two topics.
VERO and OSMC (and possibly IMX and cubox)

These two IMO can be different entites and the hardware Vero is affecting OSMC software. also since OSMC in the future will run on many platfroms I'm considering on isolating this thread to deal with VERO (hardware) only and thus renaming this thread
" get Vero"
and to start another thread "OSMC", giving users wishing to discuss OSMC on other platforms, i.e Pi, cubox i etc.
what do users/devs think? I will leave it alone if you feel this thread feels okay.
I certainly understand some level of frustration in having a user that doesn't own a Vero (and didn't pay OSMC $199 for it) posting in a Vero forum about video playback performance and wanting to compare with a Cubox-i2. Once actual Vero owners responded with similar issues, however, I think that thread became a legitimate way to discuss experiences and suggestions to improve video playback. At least 2 users reported that playback of the interlaced H264 video was perfect for them, but unfortunately the thread was locked before any discussion could take place as to how or why playback was good for those users and not for others. My guess was that they were running at 720p and not 1080p, but now we may never know because Sam had a tantrum and locked the thread. It isn't the first time he's had one and packed up his bat, ball and glove and went home as he's suggested this thread also be locked.

(2015-03-23, 22:15)Sam.Nazarko Wrote: [ -> ]Clearly OpenELEC and GeexBox have not provided you with enough, or you would not be posting here. We don't lock down our bootloader: so users can do whatever they want with a Vero.

Can we actually have people who purchased Vero comment here? Instead of a paranoid developer who sees his user-base slipping by the day and disgruntled CuBox users?

I think this thread should be locked and a new one made, where people that have actually bought a Vero can comment in it.

This will be my last post in this thread. We work on improving the Vero experience, and the Vero experience only. Please start a new thread for i.MX6 issues.

As for having locked the thread I started about video playback performance in the Vero forum on the OSMC site... Certainly a valid option, but it leaves myself and others wondering why

(2015-04-02, 06:40)touser Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not usually very vocal and have been quietly rooting for Sam for a very long time, but if they are attempting to censor user feedback that is extremely concerning. I've looked forward to recommending the vero to many of my friends/family for some time with the hope it would be a truly hands off experience for me once it was setup and running. I've supported openelec since its inception on at least 15 different devices for friends/family and there is always some minor issue that crops up during a software update that requires my assistance (I'm a huuuuge kodi fan/whore and push it on as many people as I can).

The vero was supposed to be my way out from under the support rock! I know better than most the tech industry culture of today is to ship products in a beta/alpha stage so teething issues on the vero while disappointing are not unexpected at all. Trying to cover them up is completely unacceptable and something I refuse to support.

Is it better to have a discussion about potential video playback performance issues out in the open, or are Vero/OSMC customers better served by using email or private messages? I favor the former and it seems Sam favors the later (a cynic might say to avoid negative feedback being public, in which case why not just delete the thread). Perhaps the conversation can continue here instead and playback performance for all i.MX6 devices can be improved.
Yeah. Worse part is that we will be the ones solving his issues while he packs the money Wink
I very much doubt he is able to solve this subtitle thing on his own, or any kodi/imx issue whatsoever. So the "3 yrs support" just hangs on us continuing to support/improve the imx platform.

But yeah, that's basically the case for all most businesses having Kodi at their core, really...
I do hope that any businesses that make money by redistributing Kodi and wrapping it up in a nice OS, etc. do at least contribute either money or help/coding back to the Kodi community...
Heh. Some do, but the vast minority.
(2015-04-02, 16:13)Koying Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah. Worse part is that we will be the ones solving his issues while he packs the money Wink
I very much doubt he is able to solve this subtitle thing on his own, or any kodi/imx issue whatsoever. So the "3 yrs support" just hangs on us continuing to support/improve the imx platform.

But yeah, that's basically the case for all businesses having Kodi at their core, really...

Still makes me sad ..
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