[gizmomel]

I have a 512MB Raspberry Pi with loaded with r12350 (using the r12350.img file here - http://resources.pichimney.com/OpenELEC/ - and no manual editing of config files etc.) and just wanted to report that 1080p GUI and 1080p MKV played fine.. CPU usage hovered in the 90% however.

just a quick query - if I prepare my USB movie drive with metadata (backgrounds, fan art and movie nfo scrape data) in directory with the same name as the MKV, should OpenElec see and use it straight away without doing it's own scape? The backgrounds would auto display, but none of the movie scrap data was used and I needed to perform a manual scrape. Is this correct behaviour? Thank you.

[Lemme]

Aha..I did not realise that with the APIPA, good explanation.
I should be able to get it working now.

Thanks a lot...!

Anything 169.254.x.x is an APIPA address ... which stands for Automatic Private IP Addressing.

You will receive these addresses when you DHCP client cannot get an ip address from a DHCP server.
Your "loopback" address is generally 127.0.0.1

In Virtualbox, check your virtual machine's network settings... if you want it to recieve a 192.168.1.x address, you may need to set the network adapter to a "bridged network".

[Wanderlei]

when overclocking the arm_freq is the most important thing, the other options don't have a high impact in performance. the GPU seems to handle everything fine (as long it has enough ram available for it...) . on the other hand you will notice that setting a higher CPU, will yield a better response feedback from the system due to the cpu being faster processing data when entering libraries menus, on online addons fetching and parsing data is way quicker as well.

for the 512 MB having some extra ram for caching also helps improving networking performance and allowing more background services

Thanks mate, I think I over estimated the 512MB overclock capabilities so its a 265MB that overclocks nice or 512MB running at stock, which would people pick?

just a quick query - if I prepare my USB movie drive with metadata (backgrounds, fan art and movie nfo scrape data) in directory with the same name as the MKV, should OpenElec see and use it straight away without doing it's own scape? The backgrounds would auto display, but none of the movie scrap data was used and I needed to perform a manual scrape. Is this correct behaviour? Thank you.

Also wonder same thing, For movies I use "Media Center Master" on my PC, it creates xbmc compatible nfo, how do I get xbmc to read from these and display information?

I was wondering what the default, cache memory buffer size is for the R-Pi?

<advancedsettings>
<network>
<cachemembuffersize>10000000</cachemembuffersize>
</network>
</advancedsettings>

Is this the correct syntax to change it?

[tuxen]

Yes it is correct. But there is no need to change it from default it won't help buffer underuns. It will only help if you pause the stream then it will fill the buffer instead of timing the connection out. So if you have long interrupts during a streaming movie it will help pausing for longer/shorter times (: otherwise my advise would be to leave it alone and let XBMC choose.

You can always check with the button 'o' how the cache is being used and I don't think you will find any trouble if you have a somewhat stable connection to the host you are streaming from or put it on pause for a long time.

If you experiment with it anyway then remember it takes 3 times the amount of ram than the number you put in advancedsettings (wiki) so 10000000 bytes becomes 30000000 bytes in ram.

If it ain't broken don't fix it.

Best regards tuxen

[Milhouse]

Anything 169.254.x.x is an APIPA address ... which stands for Automatic Private IP Addressing.

Link-local address is the correct term, APIPA is a Microsoft-ism.

---

Thanks mate, I think I over estimated the 512MB overclock capabilities so its a 265MB that overclocks nice or 512MB running at stock, which would people pick?

Does your 512MB really not overclock at all, not even with moderate over_voltage (it won't void your warranty unless you enable force_turbo or current_limit_override)?

[Wanderlei]

Does your 512MB really not overclock at all, not even with moderate over_voltage (it won't void your warranty unless you enable force_turbo or current_limit_override)?

Nah my 512MB really sucks unfortunately but my 256MB is a total beast. It gets file corruption with any overclock, even overclocking the gpu by 1, it would corrupt first reboot consistently. I thought it was only gpu, but even with ram at stock and arm at 800, it will still happen occasionally, but often enough to be too annoying for a xbmc setup.

To add to previous question about getting xbmc to read nfo/metadata etc Is that functionality locked off R-Pi xbmc because I notice early builds movie/tv tabs were greyed in the settings. I thought maybe it is tied to them tabs then building libraries. Sorry I am a new convert from WMC so my knowledge of xbmc is limited but I do really like it.

I thought another reason is the 'info' button on LG TV is still tied to the tv rather than xbmc, I tried with a mouse to see If I can find a way to display, synopsis, movie info etc but cant with it either. I was thinking of trying to get the info button to triggered by one of the coloured buttons which currently do nothing. I read wiki but was not be able to figure out what to do with the remote.xml to get it to happen.

@tuxen Thank you for your informative post. I had play around and I increasing the buffer size via advanced settings but it didnt seem to hava an effect. I was watching memory usage while playing video, I bumped the cacher buffer up a stupid amount but it pretty kept using the same amount of RAM. I think your end advice to stick with defailt is probably best. I only very occasionally have problems and I am pretty sure it is the USB bus on the R-Pi or Wifi dongle having an occasional schizt'ing out.

I try pretty much every build but have moved my everyday use xbmc from r12015 to r12352, all wifi, CEC working as good as it ever has and from my observations, I see a ~20% less cpu usage when playing videos.

[Milhouse]

Nah my 512MB really sucks unfortunately but my 256MB is a total beast. It gets file corruption with any overclock, even overclocking the gpu by 1, it would corrupt first reboot consistently. I thought it was only gpu, but even with ram at stock and arm at 800, it will still happen occasionally, but often enough to be too annoying for a xbmc setup.

I had a 256MB that would regularly corrupt the SD card with any type of core overclock, but configuring it to use a root filesystem mounted from USB memory stick worked around that - maybe you could still overclock your 512MB just by mounting the root filesystem from a USB memory stick.

In OpenELEC, just modify your cmdline.txt to be:

Code:

boot=/dev/mmcblk0p1 disk=/dev/sda1 ssh quiet

and then insert a USB memory that contains a single ext4 partition.

To add to previous question about getting xbmc to read nfo/metadata etc Is that functionality locked off R-Pi xbmc because I notice early builds movie/tv tabs were greyed in the settings. I thought maybe it is tied to them tabs then building libraries. Sorry I am a new convert from WMC so my knowledge of xbmc is limited but I do really like it.

Those items become active once you have scraped the corresponding Movie/TV media. If you just browse your media folders in Videos -> Files then XBMC is not going to import your nfo/fanart/thumbnails automatically (though you may be able to request it manually imports a specific item) but it should display folder.jpg's if they are present.

[Wanderlei]

Those items become active once you have scraped the corresponding Movie/TV media.

Sorry this is probably daft, thats the part I am not sure how to do. How do I make xbmc 'scrape' the nfo, ect I have in the movie folders. (I really prefer it uses what is already there locally, than goes to the internet and re-scrapes things, creates new or alters what nfo, xml files I already have setup)

It does display the movie covers that are stored along side the movie in their respective folders.

I just see screen shots of peoples xbmc setups, and they look pretty swanky with movie synopsis, etc all displayed nicely.

Cheers for the tip about running off usb too.

[charlie0440]

Does your 512MB really not overclock at all, not even with moderate over_voltage (it won't void your warranty unless you enable force_turbo or current_limit_override)?

That would be 2 of us. I can only push my 512 to 750MHz any further and the card gets corrupted. Has anyone had success with overclocking the 512s? Wondering if they can't be pushed as far as the 256 or is it just us two?

[Trixster]

I guess you're just unlucky with your 512mb version, mine will oc to 950 easily enough with force_turbo at 1 and no voltage bump. Must be some dodgy ones out there.

[caravela]

Does your 512MB really not overclock at all, not even with moderate over_voltage (it won't void your warranty unless you enable force_turbo or current_limit_override)?

That would be 2 of us. I can only push my 512 to 750MHz any further and the card gets corrupted. Has anyone had success with overclocking the 512s? Wondering if they can't be pushed as far as the 256 or is it just us two?

Mine is working fine with the medium settings 900 MHZ, did you try other sd cards ?

[Milhouse]

Sorry this is probably daft, thats the part I am not sure how to do. How do I make xbmc 'scrape' the nfo, ect I have in the movie folders. (I really prefer it uses what is already there locally, than goes to the internet and re-scrapes things, creates new or alters what nfo, xml files I already have setup)

Go into Video -> Files, highlight your media source (add a new one if necessary), then open the context menu (C on keyboard) and click on "Set Content". Once you've set the content to Movies or TV Shows, you can perform a scan (aka scrape). You may need to install the IMDB scraper add-on which isn't included by default (a tad annoying - can this be included by default?), assuming you want this (it's the one I use, picks up all my nfo/fanart/thumbnails from local storage).

---

That would be 2 of us. I can only push my 512 to 750MHz any further and the card gets corrupted. Has anyone had success with overclocking the 512s? Wondering if they can't be pushed as far as the 256 or is it just us two?

No problems with 2x 512MB boards being pushed to 1000/500/600/+4/+2. No SD corruption either, unlike my 256MB with the same SD cards.

Unfortunately it's pot luck whether you get a good one, a mediocre one or in some cases (like my 256MB) a bit of a lemon which can't handle any non-standard core frequency without SD corruption (though switching root to USB storage is a workaround of sorts).

[Wanderlei]

Thanks for the help, improved my xbmc experience by about 50%, looking good now. Managed to change the remote.xml and changed skip previous for a info button and skip forward for context menu. (LG TV)

I wonder with boards that dont overclock whether with the ever evolving firmware that they might become overclockable in the future without any corruption issues or whether its just the way that batch of hardware is. With mine it seem to run fine, like it can handle it and it is only on reboot that usually kills it. I prolly give that one away to someone as a xbmc machine, still decent on stock and buy another ticket in the R-Pi lottery

[gizmomel]

silly question time - is there a changelog for the dailies on http://resources.pichimney.com/OpenELEC/ ? I've had a look at the github and cannot see the correlation between recent commits and for example r12369

[Wanderlei]

I only know the github comments too, https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/commits/master I suppose you get a rough idea via the dates on github and the dates of certain builds, not sure myself.

Dunno if its because I am now running with covers, movie and tv show data scrapped now, but with r12352 being have it freeze up now and again, needing a reboot.