[jonmitch]

Afternoon Everyone,

I've been a member for years, but not posted in a very long time - the system just worked ... until recently.  I'm hoping you can help advise whether it is worth me continuing to try to get this working, or to just buy some new hardware.

For what must be nearly 10 years, I have been running Kodi (might have been XBMC originally ...) on a Mac Mini (mid-2011).  The Mac Mini is an i5, 2.3GHz with 4GB RAM.  The Kodi Wiki suggests that this will still be sufficient to run Kodi.

So - I was running Kodi v16.1 for ages.  It was all good - everything worked fine.  Then recently I found that some newer .TS video files weren't playing (stuttering badly or just green noise on screen).  I originally put it down to the edit or file wrapper - but tried them in VLC and all seemed OK.  I tried Kodi v18.9 and this seemed much better ... but at times still stuttered a little.

Thinking I'd maybe reached the limits of what my old version of Kodi (and my old OS) could do, I decided after so many years it was worth a rebuild.  As my video files are all stored on external HDDs, I did a full reinstall of the OS and built the machine back up again (not entirely pain-free, due to the age of the machine, but it went OK).  Now running OS X 10.13.6 (High Sierra).  Sadly, it really isn't working too well.  Lots of stuttering, and occasional crashes - like the machine can't handle the work it is having to do.  Looking at System Info, after watching one of the badly stuttering h264 file (only 720p) the System Memory usage was up at or above 90%.  System CPU usage was over 100% !

So ... the big question.  Should I keep working away at this, trying to get it working - or is it time to just buy something with more grunt ?  Am I flogging a dead horse ?  I'm a cheapskate (!) and get great satisfaction from making something work that most people would give up on - but life is short and I don't want to waste my time if it just isn't practical.  Not sure I'd go Mac next time either - good though it is, I'd probably go Pi ?  Last time I managed to pick up a Mac mini fairly cheap, so for how easy it was to set up it was a no-brainer.  The price of the things now though ...!

Thanks all,

Jon

[salata]

It all depends how much your time is worth. I'm also a big fan of reusing older equipment because of waste, but in the end technology evloves and after 3 years the gap is already too big.

If you want to tinker around odroid n2+ or rpi4 is the way to go. N2+ seems to be more powerful device. If you want less hustle and huge compatibility the shield tv remains the king. A year ago I bought FireTV 4K max for playing around and realized I can play anything with this stick and it works really fast. It can't play HD audio like truehd, but supports DA and DV with a small adjustments.

You can always repurpose your Mac mini for different project.

[jonmitch]

OK - an update.  And it is an odd one.  After much testing and trying different things, I am thoroughly confused...

So my Mac Mini (mid-2011) now has the latest OSX it can run - High Sierra.  I have both Kodi v16.1 and Kodi 19.5 on there.  I should point out that the slight OS upgrade seems to have made zero difference to this problem.

Problem 1
Recent HD (1080) TS files extracted from my Humax PVR aren't playing right on either Kodi version.  Older HD (1080) TS files from the same Humax PVR are fine - this problem is only a problem with newer recordings - suggesting it is something that has changed at the transmission end.
On Kodi v16.1, some of these newer HD TS files play but are extremely stuttery (audio runs through fine) - but some of the files show just show a green blocky screen.  This seems to only be a problem with the HD TS files from the last few months.  My current suspicion (needs more investigation tomorrow) is that the audio channels on the newer HD TS files are a higher bit rate or different format (I think I saw that on one of the files I recorded - but need to check & compare).  Is this, in your experience, likely to have caused issues with Kodi ?  Can different audio within a file cause it to fail so basdly ?

Problem 2
This is where it gets weird ... MP4 files (both SD and HD) play perfectly on Kodi v16.1, but are stuttery on v19.5.  Even an SD MP4 (video bitrate of only 1.5Mbps) stutters badly (like dropped frames ?) on Kodi v19.5.  I can't explain this one at all, as these files shouldn't be stressing the hardware (they have played fine for years) and shouldn't be stressing the software (played fine for years, and they are low bit rate).


If I believed that it was an issue with my Mac Mini not being up to the job, I'd order something new tomorrow - but as it stands it looks like:

a) something has changed in the HD transmissions which I am recording on my Humax PVR, which is causing Kodi to struggle to play them (as is suggested by Problem 1 above);

b) something has changed in the way that Kodi handles some files (eg: MP4), between v16.1 and v19.5;

c) my Mac Mini is old and not able to cope with the demands of the new Kodi v19.5 and/or the slightly different new HD TS files;

d) a combination of some or all of the above.


My day got more surreal when I decided to test things using my (work-provided) MacBook Pro.  This thing is very new, has an M1 chip, 16GB RAM, etc - so if the problem was lack of grunt from my Mac Mini I'd expect Kodi to work fine on my MacBook Pro.  Spent a good couple of hours chasing similar problems there, as I was trying to test with it plugged into my TV (via HDMI).  Looks like there's a substantial bug in Monterey that affects the audio over HDMI ... plug HDMI from MacBook into TV, and ensure TV is selected as output device - as soon as TV is selected, video & audio starts stuttering and then the video stops playing or the app crashes.  Then I noticed it was happening with system sounds from the MacBook as well, then tested with YouTube via Internet (not app or add-on) and it happened there too (in fact, as soon as "TV" was selected as Output device, the YouTube video would stop or jump on to the next video).  So what I thought was progress actually proved nothing other than Apple aren't anywhere close to being as good as they used to be !


I'll continue investigating tomorrow, and try to get more details of the TS files that do and don't work.  The MP4 files are a real mystery though - and potentially will prevent me from upgrading from v16.1.  Hopefully tomorrow will bring enlightenment and/or clarity to my testing ...

Thanks,

Jon

[kambala]

regarding your mini, you should be able to add more RAM (it's of old type and should be cheap) and replace internal HDD with SSD to make the machine run faster in general. You can also use OCLP project to install modern OS version if you don't like being stuck on 10.13.

[jonmitch]

Evening All,

Latest update is even more weird.  It just started working for no reason - all problems disappeared.  Then (seemingly) randomly problems appeared again, then disappeared.

After a few days of this, I figured that the problems go away when I have connected to the Mac Mini via Remote Desktop (Mac screen sharing) from my MacBook Pro.  That seems odd - I would have expected the Screen Sharing to place more burden on the MacMini, but somehow this seems to fix it !

All I can think of at the moment is that by connecting to it via Screen Sharing, this somehow affects the resolution of the MacMini output such that it is happy ?

All seems very odd to me - but does this give any of you any clues ?

Thanks,

Jon

[kambala]

sounds like GPU is having some issues.

I'd suggest to make a side-by-side clean install of macOS (external disk would also work) and test there. You can also run some benchmarking software to see if GPU crashes under heavy load.

[jonmitch]

Thanks for the reply.  I have done a full clean install (the Mac was desperately in need of an update anyway).  The problem was evident before the update, as well as after - but didn't spot the pattern with remote accessing the machine until after the upgrade (it may have still been that VNC to the machine fixed it - but I didn't spot that at the time).

I'm thinking it must be some kind of GFX setting somewhere, but I just can't find it.  Honestly at the point of giving up !  I tried running it on my much newer MacBook Pro to see if that would fix it (or prove that it was the age/spec of my Mac mini causing the issues) - but due to other issues (see my notes earlier in the thread), that proved nothing.

I'll keep trying, but it's getting a bit boring having to have my laptop sitting there VNC'ing into the Mac mini every time I want to watch something !