[chrinfinity]

UPDATE 2:

Playback issue turned out to be massive file-system corruption issue across multiple disks...

Still trying to determine the cause of this and whether it was XBMC, or a general linux or hardware problem. (page 2 of thread)

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UPDATE:

I have upgraded to Kodi 14.0 (from Xbmc 13.0). Didn't fix.

I traced the problem to FFMPEG but don't know how to solve.

Please skip to page 2 of this thread.

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Hello,

I tried searching, but nobody seems to be having precisely the same issue I am. I am out of ideas to fix it, my girlfriend and I just want to watch TV tonight, so I'd appreciate any help you can offer.

Months ago, I did a fresh install of XBMCBuntu, version 13.0... It has consistently worked fine. This morning it worked fine. But tonight we get home (it's still on from earlier in the day), and now we find that almost every video in my collection (all which previously worked) will no longer play.

When I play videos, it will do one of the following undesired behaviours:

1. Plays the audio of the episode, but no video and it shows the 'blocks' graphic visualization as if it was playing music.
2. (less common) I click the video, the UI makes 'click' sound but nothing happens.

Bizarrely, I have found a small number of older video files that continue to work as expected. Obviously something is borked here, with some rendering thing or certain file formats or whatever. I want to get it back the way it was when everything worked.

Here are the steps I have already tried with no success:

0) rebooting several times and cursing (no dice)
a) Switching ON hardware acceleration (and restarting XBMC)
b) Switching OFF hardware acceleration (and restarting XBMC)
c) Force linux disk checks (fsck on boot) for all drives

I have no other ideas besides installing fresh again or beating this damn machine into pieces, and I prefer not to take these drastic steps. Thank you.

[wsnipex]

provide a Debug Log

[chrinfinity]

Thanks I have produced the log file.

It is available at the link below.

http://pastebin.com/28w9w8kN

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Log file contains two test cases...

1) One Star Trek episode, plays audio and shows music animation (but no video),
2) One South Park episode (nothing happens at all).

I did not run the third test case, an old Ninja Turtles cartoon, which plays correctly even now.

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The log (to my uneducated eyes) appears to be saying that my media files are no good, but I swear to you I have watched these specific files on previous occasions, and it's giving this behaviour for many files that I know I have already watched. Virtually my entire collection suddenly won't play.

[chrinfinity]

The only change I have made in the past several days to XBMC was that I removed a subtitles plugin called "podnapisi" because it never worked properly.

I believe we have played several videos since that time and had no problems, but I thought I would mention it here just in case.

I did not change any other settings until after this problem started.

[chrinfinity]

Are there any other tests I should try for the log?

I am continuing to google the error states from the log file but I'm really out of my element here.

[DaVu]

Paste your log on a pastebin site you like. Noone will download files just to have a look.

Pastebin.com is one for example

[chrinfinity]

okay here it is.

http://pastebin.com/28w9w8kN

[DaVu]

At first i would update your version....13.0 is really outdated. Last stable was 13.2 with some fixes. Latest stable is 14.0. So my firt guess would be to update your version.

Have you tried to play the southpark file on another pc with another player to check if the file is broken?

03:36:49 T:139780231493376 ERROR: Open - error probing input format, /media/christin/5TB_One/TV Shows/South Park/Season 18/South.Park.S18E10.#HappyHolograms.mkv
03:36:49 T:139780231493376 ERROR: OpenDemuxStream - Error creating demuxer

Could be a broken file...but I'm only guessing. So don't blame me if I'm completely wrong

[chrinfinity]

Hi David,

Thanks for your reply. I will look into updating to 13.2...

In the mean time, here is additional information to your questions:

Not only do the files play correctly on other machines, but they played correctly on this XBMC install until the problem started yesterday. Also if I reboot and try to play other episodes of other shows (all which also work fine everywhere else and worked fine here before), they give similar results. My conclusion is that the media files here are not broken.

Any other ideas? I will look into updating to 13.2 and report back.

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I am following wiki instructions, and have cast sudo apt-get install xbmc.

I forgot to run apt-get update first, but it seems to be downloading a new version anyway. I'll let this process complete and then reboot and then report my status.

Thanks

[chrinfinity]

After reboot, XBMC system settings reports I am on version 13.2.

Unwanted behaviour persists. I play a Star Trek episode that worked fine last week (we just watched this one 2 days ago) and it still plays only audio, with the OPENGL music visualization playing instead of the video stream of the file.

any more ideas?

Additional information:
Videos played through the YouTube extension work properly.

[DaVu]

I dont want to seem to be rediculous....but as far as I can see, there is no device detected via hdmi. I see, that you will have a surface, but normally somewhere between the lines 25-42 in your log, a device to what your htpc is plugged via hdmi should be listed. There is none listed. It should list either the TV or the AVR manufactor like Samsung or Denon...depends on what you are using. So something can be wrong with this as well.

And i see some mounting problems... but that might have nothing to do with the issue

[chrinfinity]

Attempting another version upgrade.

This time I cast sudo apt-get update and let it run first, then I cast sudo apt-get install xbmc and again it's installing more packages. Fingers crossed.

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The mounting problems are known issues on my system and are unrelated.

Your discovery correlates to something I noticed about which files won't play -- as far as I can tell it seems to be that HD files are much more likely not to cooperate.

I wonder if a setting on the TV has changed and it's no longer giving the right signals over HDMI to the PC? Or could this possibly be an issue with my video hardware or driver failure?

[DaVu]

Im out at this...my knowlege isnt good enough. But yes...might be a driver thing or something is broken at the handshake. But as far as I understand, if you will have handshake problems, you wont get any surface. Maybe it gets none/broken EDIDs, what can be caused by faulty drivers as well.

Have you thought about doing a clean installation of Kodibuntu with 14.0 stable version? Maybe something is completely broken. But wait for wsnipex or another dev coming up, who knows more about this.

[chrinfinity]

Update has installed Kodi 14.0.

The original problem still remains.

[chrinfinity]

I have new information.

.AVI files are playing correctly.
.MKV files play audio but no video
.MP4 files won't play at all.

So I think I have narrowed down the issue to mpeg? fuuuuuuuuuuckkk what is the matter with this thing