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How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - Printable Version

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How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - ewanroycroft - 2020-03-19

I'm trying to understand the video pipeline for the Raspberry Pi and how it differs from standard Kodi. I can see some good docs about earlier versions for RPi 2 & 3, but have a few questions about the RPi 4 version by @popcornmix. I can seeĀ from this FAQ that previous versions have used a mix of MMAL/OMXPlayer to accelerate video content, but what is the case for the RPi 4? OMXPlayer is not supported so I assume you have moved to using exclusively MMAL.
Is this the case, or are there some other methods being used? Also, where is this functionality patched into the source code?


RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - eltriplet - 2020-11-30

(2020-03-19, 15:07)ewanroycroft Wrote: I'm trying to understand the video pipeline for the Raspberry Pi and how it differs from standard Kodi. I can see some good docs about earlier versions for RPi 2 & 3, but have a few questions about the RPi 4 version by @popcornmix. I can seeĀ from this FAQ that previous versions have used a mix of MMAL/OMXPlayer to accelerate video content, but what is the case for the RPi 4? OMXPlayer is not supported so I assume you have moved to using exclusively MMAL.
Is this the case, or are there some other methods being used? Also, where is this functionality patched into the source code?
Please take a look here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=268356


RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - DarrenHill - 2020-11-30

Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...


RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - ewanroycroft - 2020-12-01

(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet


RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - eltriplet - 2020-12-05

(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet



RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - eltriplet - 2020-12-05

(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6


RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - ewanroycroft - 2020-12-08

(2020-12-05, 20:50)eltriplet Wrote:
(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6
I'm afraid not. I'm looking at adding video acceleration to Chromium and was interested to see if I could port Kodi's methods over to Chromium. Seeing as I didn't get any response here, and wasn't very familiar with the Kodi source code, I didn't pursue it further.


RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - eltriplet - 2020-12-08

(2020-12-08, 11:45)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-12-05, 20:50)eltriplet Wrote:
(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote: You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6
I'm afraid not. I'm looking at adding video acceleration to Chromium and was interested to see if I could port Kodi's methods over to Chromium. Seeing as I didn't get any response here, and wasn't very familiar with the Kodi source code, I didn't pursue it further.

In case you haven't already checked that HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24730408


RE: How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4? - ewanroycroft - 2020-12-08

(2020-12-08, 16:26)eltriplet Wrote:
(2020-12-08, 11:45)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-12-05, 20:50)eltriplet Wrote: haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6
I'm afraid not. I'm looking at adding video acceleration to Chromium and was interested to see if I could port Kodi's methods over to Chromium. Seeing as I didn't get any response here, and wasn't very familiar with the Kodi source code, I didn't pursue it further.

In case you haven't already checked that HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24730408
I haven't seen that thread, but am aware of most of the contents.

We are achieving video acceleration with the V4L2 M2M API, effectively a wrapper around MMAL. Further performance improvements by running Chromium outside of X.
https://github.com/bbc/chromium/commits/px-rpi

RPi engineers tell me they are looking at a similar V4L2 solution for their version that ships with Raspbian.