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I am having trouble with 720p H.265 playback using Kodi 14.2. The video will lag behind the audio during playback. All other types of video files work fine. I am playing the videos through my LAN. Motherboard is a Asus E35M1-1 with 8gb RAM and an SSD. Playback to TV goes through HDMI. I noticed the videos will also blur gray during playback in VLC (latest version). Is this a hardware issue (this computer has no dedicated video card).
Thank you for your assistance.
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how is playback using just your hardware? (not using KODI)
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I find this lag issue sometimes in Kodi on the RPi2 as well, especially if I skip around when video is playing
Partial Solution....
Adjust display refresh rate to match video - off
Kodi > Settings > Video > Playback > Sync Playback to Diplay > Enable
-A/V Sync method - Video clock (Resample Audio)
Pull up the codec info as well with the "O" key and see if your running out of CPU grunt, which suspect it actually is. And is causing the issue.
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Thank you for your responses. I am thinking that this is a hardware issue, as VLC had trouble playing the H.265 files as well. All other media I have plays fine. I would prefer to not have to replace the motherboard, but would adding a video card help? (currently, the hdmi port that was on the motherboard is being used).
If anyone has any video card recommendations, I would appreciate it. The system is used for 95% media playback (streaming, blu-ray, divx, H.264, live tv, and hopefully in the future H.265) and 5% retro gaming.
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This is why I never liked those E-350 boards and other light weight boxes. They'd have minimal upgrade options once a new, more demanding codec came out.
A new graphics card could do the job, but on an E-350, even I'm not sure. Nvidia has some half-and-half hybrid method but it still has some heavy dependance on the CPU and AMD's solution isn't due out till this summer. Till then... Watch h.264 versions instead?
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Thank you for your responses. I think I will buy a reasonable graphics card see what happens, I figure it couldn't hurt at this point. If I get to the point of upgrading or building a new HTPC, I will definitely do more to consider 'future proofing' it.
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To follow up, a new graphics card didn't help this problem (but it did make video that it could play better, so it was an improvement overall). The previous posters suggesting my cpu was just not up to the task were right. The CPU would spike to 100% when playing H.265 - pressing 'O' to view stats is a great idea) So, I may look into upgrading that part of my htpc in the future.
Also, I noticed when playing xvid and h.264 video that it would occasionally 'blip' drop audio for a second. When it would do this, the CPU would be at 100%, but then drop down to a much more reasonable level, like 10-15%. I think the requirements of v14.2 are a little too much for my weak system. I did not have this problem with v12, and I can play these files through VLC no problem. I guess I need to upgrade my HTPC. Any suggestions on new hardware that will do that job and be as power friendly as possible?
Thank you all for your tips/advice.
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It's not 14.2 that required more cpu. It's your file H265 has no HW accelerated on your system. So it required all cpu to decoded and E350 has very little CPU power. The thing with low-powered HTPC is you depend on HW accerelated to handle most of all decode task. And codec evolved with time so new codec can't be all HW accelerated on older HW. Having more power CPU would solve the problem though. And you can just go all Software route with no HW accerelated at all.
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Fwiw, I doubt any amount of cpu/software decoding is sufficient for high quality playback imo.
For low bitrate h.265, just about anything will work depending how much quality you want to give up in order to play it back when you encode.
I encoded the 1st few minutes of Maleficent 3D at high bitrate h.265 3840 x 2160. Any longer would have taken better than 24hrs, but it was only for testing.
The panning scenes skipped frames, otherwise the quality was excellent. No adjusting would get rid of the frame drops that are not present in h.264 3840 x 2160 rip.
I tested using a 920 i7 and a Xeon X-5690 clocked to 4.2GB using all 12 cores. I'm not familiar enough with h.265 to understand how far to cut back on the bitrate without losing quality until I install hardware decoding so I can actually test it. Need more ammo from others once we start converting our h.264 collections to h.265 in order to regain storage space.
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2015-03-23, 01:44
(This post was last modified: 2015-03-23, 01:46 by brazen1.)
What bitrate are you encoding your 3D? All my h.264's are at 50 with resolution at 3840 x 2160/1600 and render perfectly. All mkv's. Same encode settings using h.265 produce skipped/dropped frames during panning scenes, with hardware acceleration off and software on. Doesn't matter the player. Same results. I've since ditched that test file but can make another if my technique is improper. It's been quite a few months since I tried it but if memory serves me right, I don't remember either of the cpu's maxing or anything. Just the dropped frames during pans. Never could get rid of that. Can you shed any light? I use DVD Fab to rip.
