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Full Version: Intel VAAPI howto with Leia v18 nightly based on Ubuntu 18.04 server
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For all Cubox users i personally can recommend OSMC and Xbian. I've tried OE but in longer time it was unstable and many times was hit by the bug sh33p described. Fritsch himself wrote few months ago that OE is no longer actively developed for Cubox.

All my problems were cured by OSMC - it's actively developed for Cubox platform, it's well performing, with latest stable Linux kernel (4.3.3 now) which has fixed bug with cpu and swap. I've done tests playing FullHD videos for 48 hours and without any problems. So at least you can give it a try.
Out of curiosity, how stable is the Jarvis dev version?

This would go on a Chromebox with OpenElec. I'm using the Isengard version right now but I have trouble with refreshrate switching (occasional blank screen on start/stop). So, I'm looking at the Jarvis version but since this will go on the "kids TV", I hoping for minimal stability. In other words, no problem for minimal testing on my side but I can't have an (too) unstable HTPC at this particular location.

Thanks for any info, and great work! I appreciate the hard work done here.

edit - Ah...! just saw that fritsch stopped working on this. Good luck in your new projects! I stay with the 15.2 version, hoping that we get something usable (i.e implemented) for Kodi 17.
@fritsch

Thanks for your significant contributions. Your work has made made Home Theatre experience significantly better. I think you already know that you will be missed. Missed here and over at Intel, I am sure there are many NUCs sold because of your work.

All the best with your endeavours.

Cheers,
LongMan
Hi Fritsch.

I am using "OpenELEC-Generic.x86_64-6.0.98-fritsch" on a Asrock N3700 motherboard but HDMI passthrough seems to not work, it's only working via optical output. Any advice? Many thanks.

Edit: oooops....seems Fritsch is gone Sad.
Hi Fritsch,
so sorry to hear that you left the team. We will really miss you: you were the example to any other dev out there, always willing to help, investigate, develop, and had the willingness to help even novice users. Not to mention the extraordinary job you did with Kodi making picture quality so much better. I'm very sorry that you decided to leave before your VAAPI-EGL work hit master in v17.

Thanks for all your contributions!

Of course, this goes to other devs too, and I don't want to mention names here.

I do have some very bad feeling that this (and many more) project(s) are abandoned now, which will be such a shame. I hope @FernetMenta reads this...
(2016-01-04, 11:47)gurabli Wrote: [ -> ]Hi Fritsch,
so sorry to hear that you left the team. We will really miss you: you were the example to any other dev out there, always willing to help, investigate, develop, and had the willingness to help even novice users. Not to mention the extraordinary job you did with Kodi making picture quality so much better. I'm very sorry that you decided to leave before your VAAPI-EGL work hit master in v17.

Thanks for all your contributions!

Of course, this goes to other devs too, and I don't want to mention names here.

I do have some very bad feeling that this (and many more) project(s) are abandoned now, which will be such a shame. I hope @FernetMenta reads this...

Just a short note here, as your last sentence seems to go into a wrong direction: FernetMenta is 100% (!) not the reason I left - he was one of the single reasons I stayed even as we had such discussions (*), concerning the future of kodi with others in the team 6 months before. Everything I learned over the last 4 years was guided and in cooperation with Fernet. Btw. VAAPI-EGL has already landed in v17 master.

This discussion now got into two directions:
(*) It was proposed, that platforms (Windows, Android, whatever) should get special branches and features should be allowed to be commited without honoring the cross-platform aspect, Those branches are then released as final versions. This does not fit into my philosopy of cross-platform development at all. I am not against features (as you see in this thread), but features that will degrade, break our code platform over time is a feature not worth it. Btw. the current discussion about this Android stuff - this is shield only (!) code - it won't work anywhere else (no other android box that you can buy without hacking) as of v16 release ... so risking a complete go down of complete kodi, just cause one out of thousand boxes out there would benefit from it ... is a very high price. A price not worth it at all, as fernet and I have implemented the way passthrough needs to work for shield's android version, a version that most likely be supported with the next android version (Android 6), not even in later beta yet (**). This code is already in v17. Yes, fernet and I have rewritten the entire audio engine for v17 - platform agnoistic, so that the new Android platform can use it without any major hickups, which is a proof that one can hold up high "platform agnostic" _and_ features.

You all in here wait since pre version 15.x for a stable version with VAAPI-EGL. It won't be in v16, cause other platforms were not ready for the jump (VideoPlayer adjustments for specific platforms, Renderer and so on), so in order to keep our cross-platform spirit wide open - fernet and I decided: Hey, let's do it right and correct and do it with v17 - just that others can catch up. If you see some of our github histories, you see that ~ 10 people constantly helped to work on this, so that VideoPlayer merge was possible. That was the spirit I see in kodi and which made everything worth it. We will loose all this for "short time honor".

(**) Also then it is totally not clear if it works at all. Current implementation works (it is to my knowledge a shield specific backport of future android audio stack), cause the sink is fed with one packet always the same size (matching AC3, DTS, whatever packet), the very moment only a single byte of such a packet is not fully consumed - the approach won't work as the engine starts fragmentation ... and yeah even more funny is, that whenever a background process will run - it should cause stutter and dropouts, cause the packages are really damn small and underrun is easily possible, which is hacked arround by pausing the sink. So whenever you see your AVR blinking with DTS / AC3 and so on - you know why.
(2016-01-04, 12:10)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]Just a short note here, as your last sentence seems to go into a wrong direction: FernetMenta is 100% (!) not the reason I left - he was one of the single reasons I stayed even as we had such discussions (*), concerning the future of kodi with others in the team 6 months before. Everything I learned over the last 4 years was guided and in cooperation with Fernet. Btw. VAAPI-EGL has already landed in v17 master.

Thanks for your detailed answer, and I must say that I support your view totally and I agree!

My last sentence where I mentioned FernetMenta was intended to be the contrary, sorry if it was misunderstood! I tried to cry out for Fernet's help to don't abandon/leave usSmile I know you were working very hard together on all this, and you were THE TEAM for us.

Once again, sorry for not being clear, I wanted to say the contrarySmile
@fritsch I can totally understand you state of mind, and, indeed, I personally don't believe the synchronized cross-platform approach as it was thought off is valid anymore.

Now, I stepped down for this exact reason, because I'm not in phase with most of the team.
I however honestly am at lost as to why you choose to leave yourself as I basically recognized you are right about me not being aligned anymore, and so I choose to get out of the way...
(2016-01-04, 12:10)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ](*) It was proposed, that platforms (Windows, Android, whatever) should get special branches and features should be allowed to be commited without honoring the cross-platform aspect, Those branches are then released as final versions. This does not fit into my philosopy of cross-platform development at all.
Sorry for posting off topic, but just trying to catch up what's been going on.

I don't remember this being proposed to the Team at all? I'm certain by far the majority of the Team support your view of cross-platform development so I really don't see why you think your vision is at cross purposes with the rest of the Team leading you to feel you need to leave.

To me what should have happened is that the Jarvis passthrough code from koying should have continued to live in his github only with use at your own risk Jarvis builds being posted on the forum, so the v17 code would be the only code to make it into the official Kodi branches much in the same way work has been done by yourself for EGL and the work that afedchin was doing for DX11.
Just so that I don't pass completely for the bad guy, I was encouraged to do the PR / Experimental thingy, I didn't do it (completely) on my own, and it was done openly.
For the Team, see slack 20/12 ~15h00
(2016-01-04, 13:49)Koying Wrote: [ -> ]Just so that I don't pass completely for the bad guy, I was encouraged to do the PR / Experimental thingy, I didn't do it (completely) on my own, and it was done openly.
For the Team, see slack 20/12 ~15h00

Guys, just that is clear. Koying is not(!) a bad guy. He has a different vision, yes, but we live in a free world, which is fine obviously :-). I won't tolerate if I'd see public harm against him as a person (just in case). The future, vendor stuff, marketing, development and so on needs to be decided by the entire Team.

PS: also ignore the idiots on twitter that want to create Drama I do that, too.
(2016-01-04, 14:06)fritsch Wrote: [ -> ]PS: also ignore the idiots on twitter that want to create Drama I do that, too.

Lol. Definitely Smile
I'm just a normal user and don't have a say in this, but really appreciate what all you skilled people have done to make this great software available, and hopefully there will be reconciliation of some sort.
If you talented people are still burning for what Kodi originally stood for, if you can put it like that, there must be a way, but if the reason is you guys want other non-Kodi related interests, which doesn't seem likely from the posts earlier, that's completely understandable, and the project you fritsch have made for instance in this thread speaks for itself and the talent.
(2016-01-04, 13:15)Koying Wrote: [ -> ]@fritsch I can totally understand you state of mind, and, indeed, I personally don't believe the synchronized cross-platform approach as it was thought off is valid anymore.

I disagree and this entire thread shows it is still alive. Most of my and fritsch's work is cross platform. If I didn't do ActiveAE, you would have done hard to implement passthrough for Android. This thread has served for VAAPI testing but also for a lot platform agnostic code too. VideoPlayer revamp is mostly supported by the folks here and Raspberry Pi devs and users. But ALL platforms benefit from it. Looking at the stats on github I am most likely the top contributer for Android too because the majority of our code IS platform agnostic.
@FernetMenta That's not the point, here. I'm just trying to understand why @fritsch would be leaving while I don't see any reasons left.