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OpenELEC Testbuilds for RaspberryPi Part 2
(2013-10-04, 01:49)theneverstill Wrote: How do I tell what the bit rate is at specific scenes? Is there anything else I could check that would help?

You can enable the Codec Info overlay, which is "O" on the keyboard, as this will display real-time bitrates. You can also map this to a remote control button.

(2013-10-04, 01:49)theneverstill Wrote: Does anyone have a reply about if I should be including that advancedsettings.xml that is hosted on those two sites with the latest builds?

Absolutely not - the file on those sites just duplicates the system defaults in most cases and adding it is a really bad idea. If the defaults change in a future build you'll be stuck with old (and likely unsuitable) values. Any build should include suitable defaults so that it works out of the box without a user supplied advancedsettings.xml.

You can see your system default advancedsettings.xml file here:
Code:
cat /usr/share/xbmc/system/advancedsettings.xml

Specifying the exact same default settings in your own advancedsettings.xml file is a bat sh1t crazy thing to do.

Only add your own advancedsettings.xml if a) you know what you are doing and b) you really do need to tweak specific values away from the defaults.
Texture Cache Maintenance Utility: Preload your texture cache for optimal UI performance. Remotely manage media libraries. Purge unused artwork to free up space. Find missing media. Configurable QA check to highlight metadata issues. Aid in diagnosis of library and cache related problems.
This latest Gotham build (10/02) is booting nicely for me. And the MythTV comm skip/edl stuff is working very well too. Joy!

Minor thing: When I select Power Off via menus, or press the Power Off button on the remote, it always reboots (does not power off - but instead restarts).
@MilhouseVH

Gotcha! Thanks for replying and sorry if that has been stated numerously in the past. The only thing I use advancedsettings.xml for right now is storing the mysql connection information.

I'm looking at popcornmix's reply to you regarding the video info here

Let's see..

In the beginning of the movie (Iron Man 1) it goes for a good couple minutes at around "8,983.43 Kb/s", af 39%, vf 52%, aq 45%, vq 0%.

Then a little in we hit "9,375.09 Kb/s", af 23%, vf 8%, aq 45%, vq 0%... and stuttering begins.

Going forward from that point it plays nice for a maybe 15-20s and then another pause (4-5s) to refill the buffer. It looks like it refills the buffer to 70+%, that drains to zero, then af and vf drop, both get near zero, vf hits zero and af is right near it, then pause to refill buffer. The Kb/s bounces all around between 8000 and 9000, it doesn't seem to have much impact with how fast the buffer drops... it drops regardless.

My CPU is at 100% the whole time. Changing my output fps between 60 and 24 didn't seem to make a difference either.

Thoughts / suggestions?

I tried another movie (Get Smart) and it had the exact same issue. It was perfectly fine for the first few minutes (a little longer on this one), but then the buffer works it's way down to zero and random stuttering starts. Same 7,000-10,000 Kb/s.

---

As for my aforementioned delays in fanart loading.. it looks like after I went through each one it now loads near instantaneously. However, only one of my movies shows the 'HD' tag (all should show it).

---

Also - random: where the heck do I set the timezone?

Another random observation - I actually just noticed that handbrake has been encoding my videos to 1920 x 1088 rather than 1920 x 1080. I've read in a few places that a few systems have had a problem with this. Thoughts?
Quick question regarding the Gotham Builds. Am I right in thinking that I install the build from Gotham Popcorn mix for the newclock3 patches or does the build in the Gotham folder from the 2/10 also contain these patches?
In the latest Frodo build the spinning wheel is missing while loading a source.
(2013-10-04, 03:11)theneverstill Wrote: [...]
Also - random: where the heck do I set the timezone?
[...]

You should find it under System > Appearance > International
Gotham settings are being reworked . Still somewhat confusing to new users. You have to change the settings level to "Advanced", if I remember correctly.

(2013-10-04, 09:54)soupboy Wrote: Quick question regarding the Gotham Builds. Am I right in thinking that I install the build from Gotham Popcorn mix for the newclock3 patches or does the build in the Gotham folder from the 2/10 also contain these patches?

rbej's latest build includes popcornmix's latest newclock3 patches and a few others.
(2013-10-04, 03:11)theneverstill Wrote: My CPU is at 100% the whole time. Changing my output fps between 60 and 24 didn't seem to make a difference either.

Thoughts / suggestions?

Are you overclocking? That should obviously help with CPU situation.

You said the videos had uncompressed PCM as audio stream? (posting mediainfo of an example file would make this clear)
I have a vague feeling that using PCM audio struggles more than DTS/AC3. Partly due to the high bitrate. Possibly it produces a very high number of packets from demuxer.
Something I need to examine.

An interesting test would be to produce a similar video with AC3 or DTS audio, and see if playback is better or worse.
(2013-10-04, 11:25)hudo Wrote: You should find it under System > Appearance > International
Gotham settings are being reworked . Still somewhat confusing to new users. You have to change the settings level to "Advanced", if I remember correctly.

Thankyou! - Haha, I like the first post in your link: "I fear many of us will simply go insane answering "where is X setting?" questions." Yep .. I'm totally not helping.

(2013-10-04, 12:17)popcornmix Wrote:
(2013-10-04, 03:11)theneverstill Wrote: My CPU is at 100% the whole time. Changing my output fps between 60 and 24 didn't seem to make a difference either.

Thoughts / suggestions?

Are you overclocking? That should obviously help with CPU situation.

You know, I didn't even consider to check the clock settings because I figured these builds would already include the overclock by default. Is that not the case? What are the default clock settings? (I can check when I get home, but someone else might be able to reply before I am able to do that.) I'd like to stick with the overclocks managed through the raspi-config utility. Has anyone had success with Turbo? High? Medium? I guess I'll try them all. If anyone reading this is having success with Turbo let me know.

(2013-10-04, 12:17)popcornmix Wrote: You said the videos had uncompressed PCM as audio stream? (posting mediainfo of an example file would make this clear)

Here is the media info for the first bluray-rip I was testing:

Code:
General
Complete name                            : E:\Media\Movies\BDs\Iron Man (2008)\Iron Man (2008).mkv
Format                                   : Matroska
Format version                           : Version 4 / Version 2
File size                                : 50.7 GiB
Duration                                 : 2h 6mn
Overall bit rate                         : 57.6 Mbps
Encoded date                             : UTC 2013-09-18 02:48:13
Writing application                      : mkvmerge v6.3.0 ('You can't stop me!') built on Jun 28 2013 20:09:41
Writing library                          : libebml v1.3.0 + libmatroska v1.4.0

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                                 : 2h 6mn
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 088 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 23.976 fps
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Writing library                          : x264 core 130 r2273 b3065e6
Encoding settings                        : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:-1:-1 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=tesa / subme=11 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.15 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=16 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=240 / keyint_min=24 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=60 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=10.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / vbv_maxrate=62500 / vbv_bufsize=78125 / crf_max=0.0 / nal_hrd=none / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709

Audio
ID                                       : 5
Format                                   : PCM
Codec ID                                 : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration                                 : 2h 6mn
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Channel(s)                               : 6 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

(2013-10-04, 12:17)popcornmix Wrote: I have a vague feeling that using PCM audio struggles more than DTS/AC3. Partly due to the high bitrate. Possibly it produces a very high number of packets from demuxer.
Something I need to examine.

An interesting test would be to produce a similar video with AC3 or DTS audio, and see if playback is better or worse.

Yes, it is uncompressed PCM. I didn't even consider that that would be more difficult than dts/ac3 since it isn't compressed. Right now I'm testing the 1920x1088 vs 1920x1080 issue -- the BD encode should finish sometime tomorrow morning (constant quality 10 and placebo is painful Sleepy) .. I'll have to mux it with a few different audio formats to test it out. I'll include a downmixed 2-channel 16-bit pcm, dolby digital if it has it (since I can try passthrough on this since my tv supports it -- I'll also turn off passthrough just to see the results), as well as the best pcm. If anyone uses eac3to.. does this look like the right command to downmix to 2ch 16bit wav:?

Code:
eac3to input.pcm output.wav -down2 -down16
(2013-10-04, 16:18)theneverstill Wrote: You know, I didn't even consider to check the clock settings because I figured these builds would already include the overclock by default. Is that not the case? What are the default clock settings? (I can check when I get home, but someone else might be able to reply before I am able to do that.) I'd like to stick with the overclocks managed through the raspi-config utility. Has anyone had success with Turbo? High? Medium? I guess I'll try them all. If anyone reading this is having success with Turbo let me know.

OpenELEC isn't overclocked with default config.txt, that's only the case in XBian and RaspBMC. My rpi runs rock solid with a relatively modest overclock of

Code:
arm_freq=900
core_freq=333
sdram_freq=500
over_voltage=2

I don't like to go further to avoid instabilities and sdcard corruption, and it already performs very well with these settings. Of course, you have to try your own settings as every rpi performs different. The maximum for mine using openelec is around 950/350/510/6 for the above mentioned settings, but I don't feel like finding the exact best settings Wink Btw, a good way to test for stability and sdcard corruption is to scrape the entire movie or tv series library, provided you have a certain amount of files to stress the rpi some minutes.

With OpenELEC 3.2.2 official (Frodo), I can play fine a bluray remux version of skyfall with overall bitrate of 33.9 Mbps and a maximum overall bitrate of 48.0 Mbps from usb hdd (ntfs formatted), with dts hd master audio stream selected. The cpu reaches 100% for short instants, but the video keeps playing and doesn't buffer. So indeed, PCM could be the problem in your case, as your files even go beyond bluray specification for the bitrates.
(2013-10-04, 20:18)hpbaxxter Wrote: OpenELEC isn't overclocked with default config.txt, that's only the case in XBian and RaspBMC.

Thanks for the reply! I'll definitely have to overclock and test the results. I had only ever tried Xbian up til a few days ago so this is new, good information to me.

(2013-10-04, 20:18)hpbaxxter Wrote: as your files even go beyond bluray specification for the bitrates.

Indeed this is one of the drawbacks of handbrake / H.264 and trying to achieve the same quality as the original bluray -- you end up with a file size and bitrate that is larger than the original. I've tried a lot of sampling with different quality settings and can't get over the loss of quality when set to 18 or 16. I could probably live with 14 but I can still see a difference. 12 is getting very close, but if I'm going to do 12 I might as well do 10 because 10 was the point at which I could no longer see any differences between the encoded and the original.

Hopefully when pcm passthrough is setup it'll take some of the load off the pi because it won't have to deal with the massive 5.1/6.1/7.1 uncompressed pcm.
"Indeed this is one of the drawbacks of handbrake / H.264 and trying to achieve the same quality as the original bluray"- why reencode it, then?

Funny, at RF 20, I can't tell the difference between an HD original (recoded OTA), unless I freeze frames, go right up to the TV and look closely.
(2013-10-04, 11:25)hudo Wrote:
(2013-10-04, 03:11)theneverstill Wrote: [...]
Also - random: where the heck do I set the timezone?
[...]

You should find it under System > Appearance > International
Gotham settings are being reworked . Still somewhat confusing to new users. You have to change the settings level to "Advanced", if I remember correctly.

The International screen has been completely blank for me for several builds now, both Frodo and Gotham. After updating to the latest Gotham, the clock was an hour slow again but rebooting sorted it out.

More annoyingly, it now freezes playback if I try and skip forward in a TV recording, meaning I have to sit through all the adverts. It's only the video that freezes and I can press Stop to get back to the GUI. I don't think I had this problem with the 15/09 Frodo build I was using before upgrading.
You could always put location / timezone info in an advancedsettings.xml. Saves setting up, and unless your pi is a regular traveller...
(2013-10-04, 22:15)allan87 Wrote: "Indeed this is one of the drawbacks of handbrake / H.264 and trying to achieve the same quality as the original bluray"- why reencode it, then?

"spouse won't let me buy more hard drives" seems to come up a bunch ;)
(2013-10-02, 16:39)rbej Wrote: Updated Gotham Branch

- sync with Gotham Popcornmix branch (newclock3)

http://netlir.dk/rbej/builds/

http://lysin.me/rbej

Thanks, two minor issues:
1. Shutdown doesn't work (keeps rebooting)
2. SD LiveTV channels (MPG2=enabled) start fine and then stop after 2 seconds
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OpenELEC Testbuilds for RaspberryPi Part 223