[miappa]

@yanggis
First, it does not crash for me, but you need to edit some stuff to get it to work. I don´t recommend using it though!

That skin is for Frodo and has not been updated for Gotham.
It will not work properly and I do not recommend using it for Gotham, there has been a lot of changes.

Another thing, that skin has the same id as the stock Confluence so you will have conflicts.
You need to edit addon.xml to not get conflicts, change 'skin.confluence' to something else eg. 'skin.confluence.raspbmc'.
After that, delete addon*.db and restart XBMC.

BUT, do I don´t recommend using it on Gotham, it will not work properly.

[yanggis]

You are really a genius.
Never noted that. Thanks.

[shadow]

May I make a suggestion for this to make it work more like the official Raspbmc versions.

Before using these test builds I used to be able to set all my audio settings according to my receiver setup (7.1ch and passthrough) then since I regularly move the Pi to a old CRT TV it would just work and output 2 channel stereo if no HDMI link was used.

Can you make these test builds work like that since now I have to manually change the settings every TV change or no videos will play when moving to analog from HDMI. If I forget the video just goes black and nothing happens until I open the menu and turn off passthrough then the video immediately starts playing.

Really if it was setup with basic knowledge no one should need to set any audio settings. It could get a list of compatable formats/channels through HDMI and if no HDMI link is detected just default to two channel stereo.

[yanggis]

Hi miappa.
Do you have any plan to add VPN support to RaspBMC?
As far as I know, OpenELEC has this function, although I dont like OpenELEC.

[miappa]

@shadow
I am not 100% sure I understand you, but I think I do...

That used to work because audio settings didn´t do anything, it was always downmixed to 2.0 (except passthrough).
Now, anything above 2.0 will output multichannel PCM (again, except passthrough).

This also confused many as they mistakenly thought that they had 5.1 on AAC/FLAC for example, or that they needed to set 5.1 to get passthrough (but passthrough only uses 2 channels).

The way it works now is... that it actually works so to speak.
This is also the case in recent Raspbmc builds though, but the Pi audio sink is not used there.

What will work out of the box though is if you set 2.0 and passthrough. If no passthrough support is reported you will get 2.0 PCM.
Does your receiver support multichannel PCM? If not there is no reason to set anything above 2.0.

If it supports multichannel PCM, may I suggest another approach: Use profiles (in XBMC).
You can also use different guisettings.xml (or different .xbmc), but then you need to rename every time you change location.

---

@yanggis
I am not a developer (and these are only XBMC test builds), but you can install OpenVPN in Raspbmc.
I have used it myself and it works well.
If you want a more native support (like many other features in Raspbmc) you should head over to the Raspbmc forum, there is a feature suggestion thread there.

[gekados]

To install XBMC build, SSH to Pi:

Code:

cd .upgrade
wget -O xbmc-13-20140214-nc3.tar.gz http://goo.gl/6Fs5sl --no-check-certificate
mkdir -p xbmc-13-20140214-nc3
pv xbmc-13-20140214-nc3.tar.gz | tar xzf - -C xbmc-13-20140214-nc3
cd xbmc-13-20140214-nc3/xbmc-bcm/xbmc-bin/lib/xbmc/system
cp /usr/local/lib/libdvdcss.so.2.1.0 .
ln -sf libdvdcss.so.2.1.0 libdvdcss.so.2
ln -sf libdvdcss.so.2 libdvdcss.so

I'm getting this error :

pi@raspbmc:~/.upgrade/xbmc-13-20140213-nc3/xbmc-bcm/xbmc-bin/lib/xbmc/system$ cp /usr/local/lib/libdvdcss.so.2.1.0 .
cp: cannot stat `/usr/local/lib/libdvdcss.so.2.1.0': No such file or directory

What am I doing wrong ?

[miappa]

You need to compile libdvdcss first (only needed once / setup), see post#1.

[shadow]

@shadow
I am not 100% sure I understand you, but I think I do...

That used to work because audio settings didn´t do anything, it was always downmixed to 2.0 (except passthrough).
Now, anything above 2.0 will output multichannel PCM (again, except passthrough).

This also confused many as they mistakenly thought that they had 5.1 on AAC/FLAC for example, or that they needed to set 5.1 to get passthrough (but passthrough only uses 2 channels).

The way it works now is... that it actually works so to speak.
This is also the case in recent Raspbmc builds though, but the Pi audio sink is not used there.

What will work out of the box though is if you set 2.0 and passthrough. If no passthrough support is reported you will get 2.0 PCM.
Does your receiver support multichannel PCM? If not there is no reason to set anything above 2.0.

If it supports multichannel PCM, may I suggest another approach: Use profiles (in XBMC).
You can also use different guisettings.xml (or different .xbmc), but then you need to rename every time you change location.

---

Thanks for the explanation on what changed. My receiver does support multichannel PCM and I have some media that uses it, so I may just have to remember to change settings everytime. It will be easier on my use cases then profiles or renaming files (which would not happen when I'm not networked and only using a IR remote)

Note at one time I did leave the channels at 2 and passthrough on but it still didn't work on analog until I turned off passthrough off. If it did I may actually use that setup since I only have a tiny amount of multichannel PCM files and I don't watch them that often.

[miappa]

Ah... I didn´t think about analogue, to be honest I am not sure how it works since I only use HDMI and 2.0 myself.
And I think that PAPlayer and DVDPlayer might be different as well and I think it will probably be different in the future.
Perhaps popcornmix might share some info on this?

[Dilligaf]

Note at one time I did leave the channels at 2 and passthrough on but it still didn't work on analog until I turned off passthrough off. If it did I may actually use that setup since I only have a tiny amount of multichannel PCM files and I don't watch them that often.

Do you have force edid audio or any other audio settings in config.txt that would make the PI think it is connected to a passthrough capable device?

[shadow]

Note at one time I did leave the channels at 2 and passthrough on but it still didn't work on analog until I turned off passthrough off. If it did I may actually use that setup since I only have a tiny amount of multichannel PCM files and I don't watch them that often.

Do you have force edid audio or any other audio settings in config.txt that would make the PI think it is connected to a passthrough capable device?

No, but honestly it doesn't matter to much in the end since normally I am only connected analog and really under normal circumstanses I only switch to HDMI on one of my Pis every couple months when I bring the Pi home to connect it to the Internet and update it. With my other one not moving as much.

[miappa]

UPDATE: Build is updated with an additional commit, info added below.
New build is called *-nc3b, anyone with the initial build (called *-nc3) should update.

---

Updated Gotham build, XBMC master from Feb 17 + newclock3 commits.

Some info:
• OMXPlayer: Always enable timestamp fifo mode (makes avoid_fix_ts=0 unnecessary)
• OMX: Use generic texture queue for alloc/destroy (fix race condition on exit)
• OMXcodec: Only do essential calls in texture thread
• Update: Fix for files with no valid pts values
• ActiveAE: fix incorrect trigger for transition (should fix this issue)
• Several database and JSON fixes in master (+ more)
• + same newclock3 commits as previous build (koying´s libcurl/openssl PR reverted)

NB! Music database version has been bumped.

Update: Firmware from 17th of Feb recommended (Fix for hdmi audio crackles when sync video to display is enabled)

Recommendations, firmware update and additional testing (DVDPlayer etc.), see post #1

For me, this now plays all my DVD menus correctly (that's up to about 6 now).
So please test, and let me know what DVDs don't work (ideally upload a sample that shows any problems).

Deinterlace with dvdplayer should now be usable for DVD resolutions.
xbmc does struggle a bit, especially when overlays are up as deinterlace doubles the framerate and hence the GUI update rate.
But it seemed usable and no longer goes out of sync.

With omxplayer xbmc now effectively enables avoid_fix_ts=0, so all formats (not just avi) will test the normal and fifo timestamp and pick the best.
That should avoid problems with dodgy packed/unpacked bistream timestamps. (Not vprasinos' files which I haven't investigated yet).

To install XBMC build, SSH to Pi:

Code:

cd .upgrade
wget -O xbmc-13-20140217-nc3b.tar.gz http://goo.gl/03Iv1h --no-check-certificate
mkdir -p xbmc-13-20140217-nc3b
pv xbmc-13-20140217-nc3b.tar.gz | tar xzf - -C xbmc-13-20140217-nc3b
cd xbmc-13-20140217-nc3b/xbmc-bcm/xbmc-bin/lib/xbmc/system
cp /usr/local/lib/libdvdcss.so.2.1.0 .
ln -sf libdvdcss.so.2.1.0 libdvdcss.so.2
ln -sf libdvdcss.so.2 libdvdcss.so

Activate new build in "Raspbmc Settings/Nightly…/Switch…”, choose new build + restart XBMC.

[carmenm]

Thanks Miappa for those latest build. I have testing them quite a lot.
Globaly everything is amazingly stable. From skin navigation (using amber) to airplay support everything is perfect.

I should mention (maybe already did) that to prevent stutter while playing through airplay i had to totally disable visualisation (shouldn't it be disabled by default?) and that over 3 different pi.
Now about the video playing, i don't play dvds so i can't really help on that but i do play a lot of mkv and stuff:
For a few weeks now i have seen some kind of a regression while playing a movie. Showing the GUi interface (stop and such) while playing is a lot longer than it used to be. That is with omx.
Dvdplayer handles that differently. The first time it even hangs the video a bit, but the next times are instant and without any consequence on the video.

Now about the playing itself, omx seems smoother. I see a few stutter while playing 1080p with dvdplayer. Yet while omx crashes while playing some videos, dvdplayer seems to handle them better (even if there are quite big stutters).
I don't know if it is of any help but here are the specs of a video crashing on omx and stuttering on dvdplayer

Code:

RELEASE DATE......: 08/12/2013
RELEASE SIZE......: 15.8 GB
RUNTIME...........: 1h:51m:33s
VIDEO CODEC.......: x264, CRF 16.9, L4.1
VIDEO BITRATE.....: Variable @ 18.4 Mbps (56.6% of source)
RESOLUTION........: 1920x804
FRAMERATE.........: 23.976 fps
AUDIO.............: English DTS Core 5.1 @ 1.5 Mbps
SUBTITLES - SRT...: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English SDH, English,
                    Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Turkish (UTF-8)
CHAPTERS..........: Included (numbered)
SOURCE............: 1080p Blu-ray AVC DTS-HD MA 5.1-LAZERS


x264 [info]: frame I:1588  Avg QP:16.04  size:191111
x264 [info]: frame P:32327 Avg QP:16.95  size:126371
x264 [info]: frame B:126573 Avg QP:17.84  size: 89333
consecutive B-frames:  2.5%  1.6%  5.8% 13.7% 15.4% 40.0%  9.2%  8.1%  3.8%
encoded 160488 frames, 5.49 fps, 18758.94 kb/s

So for now i'll stay with omx (for now …)

Thanks a lot for amazing work!

[popcornmix]

I don't know if it is of any help but here are the specs of a video crashing on omx and stuttering on dvdplayer

dvdplayer probably won't ever play high bitrate 1080p without stuttering - it is less efficient than omxplayer (although I'll try to improve as much as possible).
omxplayer shouldn't crash. If you can cut that video into a few minutes sample file that shows the problem and upload it, I can investigate.

[Bohlendach]

dvdplayer probably won't ever play high bitrate 1080p without stuttering - it is less efficient than omxplayer (although I'll try to improve as much as possible).
omxplayer shouldn't crash. If you can cut that video into a few minutes sample file that shows the problem and upload it, I can investigate.

Why not let the dvdplayer be the default player for DVDs (iso, img) and the omxplayer the default player for avi, mkv etc. Is it possible?

I have more than 100 dvd's and the menus are handled well by dvdplayer