Kodi Community Forum

Hello

I'm running Kodi - both 14.2 and 15alpha - on my LG Google TV (47ga6400), which is installed with Android 4.2.2

Whenever I tried to play a MKV file, either locally or over network, Kodi exits (crashes) abruptly if hardware codec option is on. I can play it with software codec, but it's quite slow. Thus I would like to use hardware codec as much as possible.

Looks like it's nothing to do with video / audio encoding format. I can play MP4 WMV and other container format with various video / audio encoding using hardware codec. However, if the file is using MKV container, it crashes.

I also tried XBMC 13.2, it didn't crash but the UI was stuck.

A sample MKV file can be found here:
http://jell.yfish.us/

WARN+ logcat for such crashes are like:

E/OMX_CosmoVideoCore( 1099): Resource size should at least be 1 while it's 0
E/OMX_CosmoVideoCore( 1099): setUpVideoEngine_l() failed.
E/ACodec ( 5269): [OMX.cosmo.video.decoder.avc] ERROR(0x80001000)
W/ ( 5269): Warning message AMessage(what = 'omx ', target = 1) = {
W/ ( 5269): int32_t type = 0
W/ ( 5269): void *node = 0x10
W/ ( 5269): int32_t event = 5
W/ ( 5269): int32_t data1 = 0
W/ ( 5269): int32_t data2 = 0
W/ ( 5269): } unhandled in root state.
F/ACodec ( 5269): frameworks/av/media/libstagefright/ACodec.cpp:3448 CHECK_EQ( mCodec->mOMX->fillBuffer(mCodec->mNode, info->mBufferID),(status_t)OK) failed: -2147483648 vs. 0
W/AudioTrack( 5269): releaseBuffer() track 0x4a6b2918 name=0x1 disabled, restarting
E/OMXNodeInstance( 1099): !!! Observer died. Quickly, do something, ... anything...
W/ActivityManager( 1593): Force removing ActivityRecord{2cb895f8 u0 org.xbmc.kodi/.Main}: app died, no saved state
E/MediaDeviceView( 1890): surfaceChanged

Did you try both mediacodec-only and libstagefright-only?

libstagefright-only is pretty much like software codec, stable but slow.

mediacodec-only kind of improves the situation - crashes are not so often. I'm figuring out how it is different than both mediacodec and libstagefright enabled

Interestingly, after switching to libstagefright-only and then back to libstagefright + mediacodec, it no longer crashes (at least up till now). I'm using 15.0 alpha 2.

Another issue I found is: with mediacodec, 720p 16:9 video would be scaled to a wrong aspect ratio with top and bottom black band, but my TV is 16:9 1080p, which apparantly can display 720p 16:9 with no black band

Does the tv play it without kodi? Using its native player?

Yes. Other player can play mkv, although they have other issues like not being able to display subtitle when using hardware codec.

I had a new discovery: looks like it crashes when memory is low.

The TV is equipped with 1GB, of which roughly 600MB is available for apps. When the free memory drops to 315MB, Kobi cannot play MKV, especially those with multiple audio tracks. After I free memory to set aside 343MB, the MKV files becomes playable.

So the 'Out of memory' message from ioctl makes sense?