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+---- Thread: Release [obsolete - now in nightlies] Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements (/showthread.php?tid=371557)
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - fritsch - 2023-07-01
Yes, the feature rocks, no question. Sadly things are in the longterm not so simple as they seem to be. Yes, they are from enduser POV: DV works great with that, why isn't it already in. I can fully understand that.
From my pov - sadly as of my everyday job, I kindly asked my kodi members, that I don't have a say anymore there for anything, talk is cheap you know, doing and maintaining stuff over the coming years is way more hard. But obviously I have an oppinion on things, but - you get it - I don't speak for the team while there is no bad mood or any conflicts for me with the active team people, absolutely not. I fix here and there some Audio stuff when I get a chance. Chance is a good point: Kodi people got older (incuding me ;-)), there is family, there is real world jobs. All that changed for many of us, after university, phd studies, etc changed, familiy started. So, yes also here, time is very limited and today 20 year old people might have a different focus to a certain extent on average in comparison. That said, personal opinion:
Things in the longterm are a bit more complicated:
a) libdovi uses rust and for compilation it uses the rust module infrastructure
b) it currently only works on Android. Reason: Android is the only platform supporting DOVI. There might be some other platforms outside of kodi with DV support (amlogic bsp), but for kodi it's only Android
c) Especially a) might need some more love on our jenkins builders. Most likely a lot of things that need to be built now on top, can be made "binary dependencies" for the jenkins build jobs to generate the proper library faster.
d) Synergies towards rust as binary addons is still a long way to go. They way exists, yes - but multiple steps missing in that direction.
e) Time ... while we invested lots of time in fixing the PT audio outtage on Android, we in general lack multiple expert people for our central core components (ffmpeg, videoplayer, ...), every single well meant change in libraries or implementation might reveal new issues that no one can fix, due to timing or other things. Bad situation, a bit of an excuse, maybe.
From a user POV again, which I can fully understand:
- Hey give me DOVI conversion, cause I won't need it anymore in 5 years, cause until then my Shield is not existing anymore anyways.
So much about my personal opinion. I for my part highly appreciate the work done there and I also pushed some things out of the way so that it has a chance to work (Black screen / alpha issue on Android) and such things.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - quietvoid - 2023-07-01
Yes, it's probably more effort than is worth it as it likely won't be a useful long term feature.
I don't really mind if it just stays as a draft PR, in the end I just wanted to fix some issues with my devices in playback instead of having to convert files at the source.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - Nuklear92 - 2023-07-01
Funny thing is, before installing this build with the conversion feature and seeing how much the playback of DV improved for Remux UHD files. This feature or at least something similar is definitely needed in the official Kodi Omega before it’s released to the public. The DV playback is night and day different and in a positive way. I have both builds installed the official Kodi Omega Alpha 2 without this feature and quitevoid’s version. And going back to the official Kodi Omega and playing the same DV UHD Remux files makes Kodi unstable a little and there’s some weird skips freezing and audio cutouts which tells me that I am playing a P7 DV file. With quitevoid build every single DV file being P7 or 8 I can’t quite tell the difference because everything plays smooth and without audio cutouts, freezing or skips.
So, if there are team members watching this thread and everyone decided to introduce DV compatibility, might as well give this man’s PR a chance or at least work with him in ways his PR can be merged without potentially bringing any major issues to the official Kodi. I mean, this fix is mainly targeted to Android TV devices. And I’m sure there’s a lot of more Android TV users aside from me that will definitely appreciate this feature or if it end up being something different but provides the same end result which is making UHD Remux files in P7 profile playback nicely on Android TV Devices.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - fritsch - 2023-07-01
(2023-07-01, 14:27)quietvoid Wrote: Yes, it's probably more effort than is worth it as it likely won't be a useful long term feature.I don't necessarily agree with your first statement, cause I also find it valuable. Everything that makes something possible for a user when mainteinance efforts and non-breaking of other features is given, is worth it.
I don't really mind if it just stays as a draft PR, in the end I just wanted to fix some issues with my devices in playback instead of having to convert files at the source.
Kodi has some "transcoding" functionality for audio already avaiable encapsulated into for example Audio-Engine for Dolby-Encoding. While it would be good for "all platforms" if the processing would be integrated on that level ... the path where you implemented it is also a good decision.
Yeah - if it would be some C-Code only I think discussions would be easier at this point, but still: RUST is the coming technology, it has a place in Linux kernel, therefore laying infrastructure into kodi, which ships an entire python tunneled in an Android APK is for sure also not wrong.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - jogal - 2023-07-01
(2023-07-01, 14:45)Nuklear92 Wrote: I have both builds installed the official Kodi Omega Alpha 2 without this feature and quitevoid’s version. And going back to the official Kodi Omega and playing the same DV UHD Remux files makes Kodi unstable a little and there’s some weird skips freezing and audio cutouts which tells me that I am playing a P7 DV file. With quitevoid build every single DV file being P7 or 8 I can’t quite tell the difference because everything plays smooth and without audio cutouts, freezing or skips.
Two possible theories:
a) quietvoid's changes magical fixes "audio cuts" even is no changes in audio code.
b) You have two different builds installed: "official Kodi" plagued of addons, scrips, cache storage filled, etc. and used mainly for online "debrid" content (you say this in https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=371557&pid=3157739#pid3157739). Then you installed a fresh clean quietvoid's build without add-ons, etc. and tested only with local or network files. Obviously works better because is clean
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - Nuklear92 - 2023-07-01
Both builds installed with same addons, skins, etc. I wouldn’t compared something if it wasn’t exact same thing. One movie called “Crawl” the one that came out in 2019 which I think is in P7 DV the REMUX files available with the official Kodi without quitevoid’s feature the movie when it starts, I get a lot of skips, and after a few minutes the movie kind of freezes then comes back, etc which makes the audio cutout, nothing related to audio dropouts. Just that as the video freezes due to hard skips the audio suffers as well. Trying that same movie file REMUX in HDR10 has no issues. So, it’s definitely something wrong with the DV P7 layer in the Shield. With quitevoid’s build and having that P7 to P8 Conversion turned ON that same movie file plays without any skips or interruptions. So, that feature is definitely improving DV playing experience.
Again, both build I have the same exact addons, settings, skins installed without doing any cleaning of data or cache.
Edited: Also, both builds I use advancedsettings.xml for video cache so it’s not related to internet buffering either.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - fritsch - 2023-07-01
As they use a different app id, looks like your local cache in the old installation. So fresh Kodi install should exactly work the same.
Fresh as in: whipe .kodi directory.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - Nuklear92 - 2023-07-01
Doesn’t this get cleaned automatically when you install a new build. For example I just installed the latest nightly build from July 1st. And tried the same movie and still get those hard skips and unstable DV playback. With quitevoid’s version everything running smoothly. I’ll try I turning OFF the P7 to P8 conversion and see if I get the same result as in the official Kodi. 🤷♂️
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - fritsch - 2023-07-01
With your experience for now: Keep what works best and enjoy it as long as it works ;-)
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - Nuklear92 - 2023-07-01
WTH! This is some weird stuff… now all of the sudden I’m getting no skips with the official nightly build from July 1st too and playback is running similar to quitevoid’s build. 😵💫 Man, this Shield device is crazy… I have no clue now if this is a Shield or using nightly Kodi builds thing which you never know How each new build will perform compared to the previous one and I haven’t cleaned no data either as I said before. I’ll keep playing around with it though.
Either way, one thing is for certain and that is that this feature quitevoid brings to the table isn’t doing any harm either or at least from what I experienced with the shield in particular.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - masonlee - 2023-07-02
Why do you convert?
If you use kodi official build on your Shield TV pro, you don't have to convert DolbyVision profile 7 to profile 8.
The conversion is only needed on the devices which do not support DV P7 playback such as amazon fire tv.
The DV P7 playback is perfect with the current kodi official build.
This conversion build is necessary only for certain situations on certain devices and not related to solving the errors you have experienced.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - jogal - 2023-07-02
(2023-07-02, 04:49)masonlee Wrote: Why do you convert?
If you use kodi official build on your Shield TV pro, you don't have to convert DolbyVision profile 7 to profile 8.
The conversion is only needed on the devices which do not support DV P7 playback such as amazon fire tv.
The DV P7 playback is perfect with the current kodi official build.
This conversion build is necessary only for certain situations on certain devices and not related to solving the errors you have experienced.
agreed
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - quietvoid - 2023-07-02
Technically there are usecases where you would want to always convert to profile 8.1 as some metadata is removed.
And partial metadata application (for example with UHD Blu-ray FEL titles) may lead to an unintended image output.
At least if the device only reads the RPU metadata, like the Shield TV does.
Either way even with conversion the image might be tone mapped incorrectly.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - SkinnyPeteBB - 2023-07-25
Is there any way to convert from profile 7 to 5, because my Sony TV also plays those in DV profile 8 incorrectly.
RE: Build - Dolby Vision compatibility/quality improvements - quietvoid - 2023-07-25
(2023-07-25, 10:12)SkinnyPeteBB Wrote: Is there any way to convert from profile 7 to 5, because my Sony TV also plays those in DV profile 8 incorrectly.
No.