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tret · 2014-07-07, 21:51

I'm hoping someone knows if there are any workarounds (updates, tweaks, etc.) other than disabling hardware acceleration. Higher bitrate videos become choppy w/ software decoding.

Symptoms:
During playback, a video freezes while the audio continues to play. Key presses are non-responsive and the PC needs to be powered off/rebooted to regain normal function.

Config:
Asus Chromebox w/ standalone openelec v4.0.6 install. Media is being pulled (over SMB) from a NAS on a 1Gb link. The same content works fine on an older Zotac zbox w/ celeron CPU and nvidia GPU.

I believe this is the associated bug, there haven't been many updates unfortunately. Does anyone know if progress has been made?
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78960

tret

**fritsch** · (This post was last modified: 2014-07-07, 21:56 by fritsch.)

No progress.

Go to Video -> Acceleration (Turn on Expert Settings view) and enable "User SW Filter" ... that will workaround this bug.

klingel_one · 2014-07-08, 11:14

I'm suffering from the same problem.
But I found a workaround, I switched to VDPAU HW acceleration. Since I swithced not one freeze anymore.
I actually don't understand why this helps (because VDPAU for Intel Graphics card wraps VAAPI, at least I thought).

Perhaps it works for you, too

**fritsch** · (This post was last modified: 2014-07-08, 11:26 by fritsch.)

Quote:But I found a workaround, I switched to VDPAU HW acceleration. Since I swithced not one freeze anymore.
I actually don't understand why this helps (because VDPAU for Intel Graphics card wraps VAAPI, at least I thought).

You won't be able to open the vdpau decoder at all, as the wrapper does not provide the required interop. Choosing vdpau will just disable hw acceleration completely in the end and this is not what you want.

Edit: The above mentioned workaround (Use SWFilter) bypasses the vaapi render and copies the surfaces back to system memory via sse4 algorithms (it will produce a bit more cpu load) but far less than turning off vaapi completely. This workaround is only available on OpenELEC builds, as this code is not in mainline yet.

klingel_one · 2014-07-08, 11:34

Thanks for the explanation!
I'm not using openelec so I'm just hoping that my cpu has enough power to keep things fluently, until hopefully there will be a fix.
Was this bug also prominent in Frodo?

**fritsch** · 2014-07-08, 11:37

It's not an xbmc bug. It was most likely introduced in Mesa 10.1 - a gpu should never hang whatever you do with it. It's not yet fixed in Mesa 10.2.2.

What CPU do you have? (If you are not yet running fernetmenta master ppa, don't install today - it was broken yesterday by an upstream commit), tomorrows ppa should be fine again. If you want to build from source, check my master branch on github, I rebased last night to make it running again.

Here are some stats from a "slow" corei5 4200U:

So it won't really harm for bluray content.

klingel_one · 2014-07-08, 11:44

I'm running a Intel Pentium G3220, so not the best. But so far I had no problems.

I'm acutally on the fernetmenta master ppa, because of the non-sdl. I had some problems in combination with ubuntu 14.04.
Why do you ask?

**fritsch** · 2014-07-08, 12:13

I ask, cause you were afraid your CPU won't be fast enough to use the swfilter. This G3220 is fast enough, it will handle this load easily.

klingel_one · 2014-07-08, 12:50

I meant the question if I'm using fernetmenta master ppa

tret · 2014-07-08, 17:07

(2014-07-07, 21:55)fritsch Wrote: No progress.

Go to Video -> Acceleration (Turn on Expert Settings view) and enable "User SW Filter" ... that will workaround this bug.

Thanks Fritsch, does the ASUS Chromebox CPU (1.4 GHz Intel Celeron 2955U Processor) do well with this workaround considering the increased CPU load you mentioned further down in the thread? If so this workaround is going to make me (and the wifey) very happy Smile

tret

**fritsch** · (This post was last modified: 2014-07-08, 17:34 by fritsch.)

Just try it ... :-)

tret · (This post was last modified: 2014-07-08, 17:12 by tret.)

(2014-07-07, 21:55)fritsch Wrote: No progress.

Go to Video -> Acceleration (Turn on Expert Settings view) and enable "User SW Filter" ... that will workaround this bug.

Also, perhaps this could/should be added to the ASUS Chromebox wiki page as the current section on playback restrictions recommends disabling hardware acceleration altogether. Perhaps an additional note recommending this workaround for OE users would be helpful to others.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Asu...imitations

(2014-07-08, 17:08)fritsch Wrote: Just try it ...:-)

Fair enough, I'll post my results. Thanks again!

**fritsch** · 2014-07-08, 17:35

The above option is not yet in any xbmc mainline build and therefore OpenELEC / fernetmenta master ppa specific. Will add that when we are ready to PR to mainline.

tret · 2014-07-08, 18:07

(2014-07-08, 17:35)fritsch Wrote: The above option is not yet in any xbmc mainline build and therefore OpenELEC / fernetmenta master ppa specific. Will add that when we are ready to PR to mainline.

Sounds good Fritsch, thanks again.

Matt Devo · 2014-07-08, 19:30

(2014-07-07, 21:55)fritsch Wrote: No progress.

Go to Video -> Acceleration (Turn on Expert Settings view) and enable "Use SW Filter" ... that will workaround this bug.

this actually makes the issue worse on the ChromeBox on OE 4.0.6. With the software filter option deselected, the GPU will hang for a few seconds, then resume. If the option is selected, the GPU will hang indefinitely. I can reproduce this reliably, and will be testing the FernetMenta master with OE master as soon as it finishes building