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I have been unable to collect enough information for a proper bug report, but what I've found so far is interesting enough that I thought I'd see what everyone else thought.

The issue

On some videos that used to play fine, Kodi 18.2 will seem to play them, but no video appears.

What I've found

For as-yet unknown reasons, in the debug log on affected videos I get:

DEBUG: Visible Behind request: true
DEBUG: GOT ANNOUNCEMENT, type: 1, from xbmc, message OnPlay


This does not seem to be format or codec specific. Copying the video of affected files verbatim causes the problem to follow the video. Transcoding the video to the SAME CODEC with ffmpeg results in a playable file. I don't yet have any samples of affected files that can be shared (part of the incomplete nature of this report...)

The XBMC code that logs that message is in XBMCApp.cpp line 443.

It appears to be caused by either resuming from a screensaver or on playback start. The latter seems to apply equally to both the video that works and the video that doesn't. In addition, that may not be the code where the above "Visible behind request" gets triggered since in both the visible and invisible play the log immediately prior is not a DEBUG level log. Instead in both cases the log shows:

DEBUG: No whitelisted resolution matched
NOTICE: Display resolution ADJUST : 1920x1080 @ 60.000004 - Full Screen (16) (weight: -0.000)


The last section that seems to set this true is the onNewIntent section. This is a complex section but I never see the 'Got intent' log in debug so it doesn't seem to be triggered.

Later on in the logs, I see what appears to be an effect of the above "Visible Behind" issue:

DEBUG: Inhibiting OS screen saver
DEBUG: CVideoPlayer::SetCaching - caching state 2
DEBUG: CDVDClock::SetSpeedAdjust - adjusted:0.000000
ERROR: CDVDVideoCodecAndroidMediaCodec::GetOutputPicture unknown index(-10000)
ERROR: Previous line repeats 14353 times.


Compare that to the working output from the same point:

DEBUG: Inhibiting OS screen saver
DEBUG: CDVDVideoCodecAndroidMediaCodec:: width(512), height(384), stride(512), slice-height(384), color-format(259)
DEBUG: CDVDVideoCodecAndroidMediaCodec:: crop-left(0), crop-top(0), crop-right(511), crop-bottom(383)
DEBUG: CDVDVideoCodecAndroidMediaCodec:: Multi-Surface Rendering
DEBUG: CRenderManager::Configure - change configuration. 512x384. display: 512x384. framerate: 25.00.


What is a good way to find out why the below lines appear for some files but not others?

DEBUG: Visible Behind request: true
DEBUG: GOT ANNOUNCEMENT, type: 1, from xbmc, message OnPlay


I realize this is somewhat incomplete info, but I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks,

  -- Steve
Since this could help:

Full log from playback of failing file: https://pastebin.com/LN83fsjs

Full log from playback of working file: https://pastebin.com/3rmJ0tJ4

(The SMB server name has been redacted, which is why those paths look odd.)
(2019-06-26, 02:44)sbonds Wrote: [ -> ]Since this could help:

Full log from playback of failing file: https://pastebin.com/LN83fsjs

Full log from playback of working file: https://pastebin.com/3rmJ0tJ4

(The SMB server name has been redacted, which is why those paths look odd.)

Here's some notes I collected while investigating a similar problem:

The -10000 value is the return value from `AMediaCodec_dequeueOutputBuffer` and this specific value is `AMEDIA_ERROR_UNKNOWN`, which means `translate_error` in `NdkMediaCodec.cpp` failed to translate an error from libstagefright. Luckily `translate_error` will write the original error code to your android log, run `logcat` and look for messages starting with "sf error code:". In my case the original error code was -38, which is `INVALID_OPERATION` (== `-ENOSYS`), which does not actually help me that much, but you might have a different problem and thus a different error code.

In addition I found this thread on StackOverflow which may or may not be relevant: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5767...one-device

It seems to imply that the error could be related to insufficient buffering or something? Not sure what to make of it.
I remember XVID causing some problems in the past. Could you try to convert the problematic videos to something else and then retry?
Hi, I was using kodi 18.4 for the first time and I have the same issue since 18.0.
Whenever I want to watch a movie from ext drive, it either doesn't start or there is just sound without video.
x264 videos usually work fine, but x265 not. I have a sony android tv - w800 so not the newest any more, but on kodi 17.6 it worked flawlessly.
I know I can rollback, but then I'll need to redo all the setup again...
BTW if I play the same video from beggining and forward it to the desired time it also works fine.