[ruudjewee]

Unfortunately I am still struggling with the video stuttering issue. (logs in my previous post)

When I try do diagnose the issue with the Birds sample video. I clearly see that the video "hangs" for one (or mabye two) frames roughly every second. The interval between the occurrences seems to be constant.
The issue is easy to notice when many things are moving in the video, in more quiet scenes I do not notice the issue at all.

I tried disabling passthough and setting "Sync Playback to Display" to On, with "Adjust Refreshrate to match video" off, so that I can configured a fixed refresh rate. With these settings I see that higher refresh rates (50 or 60 hz) seem to make the videos a bit smoother. I suspect that the video hangs for one frame only, and the hang itself is shorter in this case.

I also tried tuning with the xorg config file (e.g. enabling the TearFree setting), but that did not seem to make any difference.
I have tried to downgrade kodi to 2.17.6, but that did not resolve my issue (so I upgraded again).

I did found one recommendation on stackexchange which I did not try yet. Which is uninstalling the xserver-xorg-video-intel package.
The package info (apt-cache show xserver-xorg-video-intel) states

 The use of this driver is discouraged if your hw is new enough (ca. 2007 and newer). You can try uninstalling this driver and let the server use it's builtin modesetting driver instead.

Is there any reason to not use the builtin modesetting driver?
Any other suggestions for things to try which can resolve my video stuttering issue?

[fritsch]

Update to a nightly first. Some stuff was fixed in EGLSync

[ruudjewee]

Switched to the nightly kodi build but unfortonately this does not resolve my problem, below are the logs when I reproduce the issue using the nightly build.

$ dpkg -l |grep mesa
https://pastebin.com/tLTsBZ6T
$ DISPLAY=:0 vainfo
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment.
libva info: VA-API version 1.1.0
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/i965_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_1
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
https://pastebin.com/MSTveAe6
$ cat ~/.kodi/temp/kodi.log
https://pastebin.com/RkdPVssF
$ dmesg
https://pastebin.com/tLL96dtr
$ id
https://pastebin.com/eUtsA5Lf
$ amixer
https://pastebin.com/k16J3FTc
$ cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
https://pastebin.com/nFVQ0DTC

[fritsch]

Okay, then no idea.

You could try LibreELEC from an USB-Stick and see if you experience the same issue. Also for testing unplug the CEC adapter.

[yasij]

I've noticed stuttering on 1080i interlaced content with the i965 VAAPI driver as well. In the "o" player process menu, "Deinterlace" alternates between vaapi-none and vaapi-madi. If I use the iHD intel-media-driver VAAPI driver instead, it's fine and I get no alternation between vaapi-none and vaapi-madi. If I use vaapi-bob as the deinterlacer with the i965 driver, I also don't see the stuttering.

log file

[fritsch]

I only see broken mythtv streams in your log, other than that nothing. We never supported the iHD intel-media-driver and never tested it. If you can provide a sample to reproduce, please file a bug on github - all my livetv content is 1080i50 and I cannot reproduce, therefore cannot help, I even run on a very slow Apollo Lake J4205.

[BigL-New]

Hi fritsch,

Thank you once again for your great support and just to inform you that instructions in post#1 about enabling permission to shutdown, suspend the computer miss part described in this thread - https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=311630 - in post by BytEvil. The part about changing grants in few places in /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.login1.policy

I've done fresh install of Kodi on Ubuntu 18.04.2 server based in 100% on you guide. And power menu was missing entries to shutdown, suspend the computer. After fix described above everything is OK.

[paaja]

Hi,
firtly, thank you for the how-to!

Could you please add to install package mesa-va-drivers from Paulo's ppa (sudo apt install mesa-va-drivers) to the "AMD users" section?
I bought a little beast ASRock DeskMini A300 with AMD Athlon 200GE, followed your how-to (Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 with HWE kernel 4.18) and in Kodi, only VDPAU showed for video acceleration.
I was wondering where the problem is, simple "dpkg -l | grep mesa" showed me only mesa-vdpau-drivers were automatically installed. After installing mesa-va-drivers package, I was able to set VAAPI acceleration in Kodi.
By the way, it works great :-).

Thank you again

[DaVu]

Hi,
firtly, thank you for the how-to!

Could you please add to install package mesa-va-drivers from Paulo's ppa (sudo apt install mesa-va-drivers) to the "AMD users" section?
I bought a little beast ASRock DeskMini A300 with AMD Athlon 200GE, followed your how-to (Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 with HWE kernel 4.18) and in Kodi, only VDPAU showed for video acceleration.
I was wondering where the problem is, simple "dpkg -l | grep mesa" showed me only mesa-vdpau-drivers were automatically installed. After installing mesa-va-drivers package, I was able to set VAAPI acceleration in Kodi.
By the way, it works great :-).

Thank you again

You haven't read everything from that how-to:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2051116

180527 - AMD users
AMD users that want to use kodi v18 with vaapi (Take care: v17 won't work), you need to install mesa 18.0.1 or later. You can do this via Paulo's ppa:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:paulo-miguel-dias/pkppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

[paaja]

Hi DaVu,
You mean the exerpt "..you need to install mesa 18.0.1.."? To be clear, mesa was automatically installed using how-to (later updated) from Padoka PPA (version 19.1.0) but only the package "mesa-vdpau-drivers" but not the "mesa-va-drivers". I had to install "mesa-va-drivers" explicitly. Maybe I didn't get it right :-).

Thank you for clarification
 

Hi,
firtly, thank you for the how-to!

Could you please add to install package mesa-va-drivers from Paulo's ppa (sudo apt install mesa-va-drivers) to the "AMD users" section?
I bought a little beast ASRock DeskMini A300 with AMD Athlon 200GE, followed your how-to (Ubuntu Server 18.04.2 with HWE kernel 4.18) and in Kodi, only VDPAU showed for video acceleration.
I was wondering where the problem is, simple "dpkg -l | grep mesa" showed me only mesa-vdpau-drivers were automatically installed. After installing mesa-va-drivers package, I was able to set VAAPI acceleration in Kodi.
By the way, it works great :-).

Thank you again

You haven't read everything from that how-to:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2051116

180527 - AMD users
AMD users that want to use kodi v18 with vaapi (Take care: v17 won't work), you need to install mesa 18.0.1 or later. You can do this via Paulo's ppa:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:paulo-miguel-dias/pkppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

[wsnipex]

yes, mesa-va-drivers are needed for vaapi on amdgpu:

Description: Mesa VA-API video acceleration drivers
 These libraries provide the Video Acceleration API (VA-API) for Unix.
 They provide accelerated video playback (incl. H.264) and video
 post-processing for the supported graphics cards.
 .
 This package enables support for VA-API for some gallium drivers.

@fritsch ping

[fritsch]

Thanks. Added in AMD-green in text and changelog

[paaja]

Thank you!

[manjur]

Hi all,

I did fresh ubuntu server 18.04 install on Asrock J3455-ITX using manual in first post
Kodi Leia 18.3 last stable from ppa

When I do 'systemctl start kodi', kodi starts and then closes after 2-3 seconds.
If I downgrade to Kodi 17.6 - it not drops and working for hours
Please give me advice how to start it to work

mesa
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/DWsnpbKgvW/
vainfo
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/W65QryWwKd/
kodi.log
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/YpZFXSHKQn/
dmesg
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Q5nfCq9tBN/
id
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/xHS7VQdYMQ/
amixer | pastebinit
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/h2BDRQK5xf/
Xorg.0.log
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/cjtbf9R6FK/

[manjur]

Hi all,

I did fresh ubuntu server 18.04 install on Asrock J3455-ITX using manual in first post
Kodi Leia 18.3 last stable from ppa

When I do 'systemctl start kodi', kodi starts and then closes after 2-3 seconds.
If I downgrade to Kodi 17.6 - it not drops and working for hours
Please give me advice how to start it to work

mesa
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/DWsnpbKgvW/
vainfo
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/W65QryWwKd/
kodi.log
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/YpZFXSHKQn/
dmesg
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Q5nfCq9tBN/
id
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/xHS7VQdYMQ/
amixer | pastebinit
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/h2BDRQK5xf/
Xorg.0.log
http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/cjtbf9R6FK/

Fix it, problem was not in kodi but in my systemd unit file. Working ok.