Kodi Community Forum

Full Version: Playing video get black screen then lose audio device in Helix
You're currently viewing a stripped down version of our content. View the full version with proper formatting.
I recently updated my Gotham XBMCBuntu box (Zotac Ion Atom 330) to Helix and sometimes find that video/audio stop working when playing a video.

The sequence of events is as follows: I start playing a video and get a black screen but normal audio. When this occurs, the box does not respond to the remote control and I have to log into the box and restart Kodi. It seems to restart ok, but when I then try to play a video again I get a picture but no audio. Once the box is in this state, restarting Kodi doesn't help, I need to reboot the box to get audio working again.

Once the box is in the "no audio" state (after Kodi has been restarted) there is no HDMI audio device present in the list of available audio devices. Usually I use "HDA NVidia HDMI 0" as my output device but once it is in the broken audio state I only see "HDA NVidia ALC662 rev1 Analog" and "HDA Nvidia ALC662 rev1 Digital S/PDIF". When I reboot the HDMI device comes back.

Initially I thought the problem might be related to this thread: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=212572, but I am running a direct Kodi session so it can't be Unity that is interfering with things.

I have "Sync Playback to Display" enabled. It could be coincidence, but the last time it happened was when I changed the A/V Sync Method from Video Clock (Drop/Dup Packets) to Video Clock (Resample Audio). I have not seen the problem occur when "Sync Playback to Display" is disabled.

The log leading up to the black picture state is here: http://pastebin.com/YHbL3f7g

The log after restarting Kodi, attempting to play the video, and getting no audio is here: http://pastebin.com/CfmnmCnN

Any help would be most appreciated.

james
Your logs indicate that you are running 13.2. I suggest that you first upgrade to Helix.
I have definitely upgraded to Helix... not sure why the log is showing 13.2. I get the Kodi logo when it starts up and not XBMC.

Oh wait... I reflexively grabbed the xbmc.log files (from the last time it was run as XBMC) and not the kodi.log files... ugh. And now the box has been rebooted so the logs will have been overwritten. I will try and get the problem to happen again and post the right log files when I can. </embarrassment>
OK, that didn't take very long... got it to happen after 2-3 tries.

The log when I start the video and there is a black picture (but normal audio) is: http://pastebin.com/YHbL3f7g

The log when I've restarted Kodi and there's no audio (but normal picture) is: http://pastebin.com/CfmnmCnN

I'll update my original post to have the new links
I would try a more recent version of NVidia driver.
When I first did the upgrade (I did "apt-get upgrade" rather than just "apt-get install kodi") my driver got upgraded to version 304.125. I almost immediately started having this problem so I downgraded to 304.117, thinking that maybe since those drivers worked fine with Gotham that they might work better with Helix. Obviously this is not the case. I'm not sure if there's a newer version that 304.125 but I'll see if the x-swat repository has a newer version tomorrow and report back.

I've just used the box pretty extensively and had no problem so long as I keep the sync method as "Video Clock (Drop/Dup Packets)". Things go bad if I change it to Resample Audio, when it happens every 2nd or 3rd time I play a video.
304 drivers are more than a year old. I would try 340
Thanks for the tip. I tried upgrading to 331 and got the black screen almost immediately. I then installed 340.65 from xorg-edgers and so far it's been good - started and stopped various videos about 20 times and haven't seen the problem yet. Will see how it goes.

Thanks again,

james
After a few days it happened again for me with the 340 driver. Admittedly it is a lot better than before but it's still happening. Logfile is at http://pastebin.com/vzPpLgRi. The last video played with a black screen and I had to restart XBMC to get it back again.
Again also here the question: Does this only happen if you are using samba? Can you play the same file from local / usb disk?
(2015-01-10, 09:37)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]Again also here the question: Does this only happen if you are using samba? Can you play the same file from local / usb disk?

I've only seen it happen with Samba, but I hardly use anything else. Since installing Kodi I think I've only once plugged a USB stick into my Ion box. It happens quite rarely now so it's hard to reproduce, but I'll make a concerted effort to try it on some local media and report back.