Android Hardware Acceleration Fail (Audio only, or nothing)
#1
This came up because of this thread originally, so I did some testing.

Note: This might be a tvheadend problem - malformed files? - but the issue only shows on these tablets - not on others, or my 'phone, or on LibreELEC, or Ubuntu. There was also no mention in the original thread about tvheadend as a source, so there's clearly some Kodi/platform dependency on varying file sources.

The original poster reported audio but no video on .ts files on his Lenovo tablet, Kodi 16.1 - I tested on one of my Lenovo Yoga tablets and had similar issues.

Moving up to Krypton B6 to do some better testing, and I now get no audio either. The screen simply stays there; any navigation attempt, and you just get garbage all over the screen as everything fails to render (on Estouchy, you can see the progress bar at the top flickering in place as the files fail to do anything). Disabling all hardware acceleration and files will play, albeit with buffering (obviously).

Debug log and sample files link - apologies for Dropbox, but it's a 6MB log file, which is way too big for paste sites (and you can't pastebin videos, anyway Smile ). Logfile is uncompressed text so you can check it's safe.

While the OP thought it was a .ts problem, it's not - re-wrapping into .mkv doesn't solve anything, nor does processing through avidemux and trimming before remuxing to really push things. So it's something in the elementary streams; this could, of course, be a source problem, as I said above.

The debug log shows testing with multiple samples - component logging on video and ffmpeg is enabled, so it's all very verbose:

1. OTA DVB-S2 H264/AC3 HD recording via tvheadend 4.1-2346~gc09f704
2. OTA DVB-T2 H264/AAC HD recording via tvheadend 4.1-2346~gc09f704
3. Another OTA recording from one of the same sources (DVB-S2, I think)...
4. ... and then the same file, remuxed into mkv by mkvtoolnix gui 9.6.0
5. A partial get_iplayer download, H264/AAC SD
6. Playing one of the files with various combinations of hardware acceleration
7. ... and then playing it with none

(1) to (4) fail; (5) works; (6) fail in all forms, (7) plays but buffers.

BR rips that have been through Handbrake are okay; a quick test of HD get_iplayer is okay; I've also tested some older OTA recordings, and *some* of them are also okay, but not all. So it's file- (and device-) dependent. I don't know the OP's source, but he stated that he couldn't play IPTV as a result.

Playing the files over SMB (as in the logs) or NFS makes no difference. Playing locally also makes no difference.
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#2
Interesting...

I thought I'd try the same files in VLC, which is equally ffmpeg-based. The result?

"Hardware acceleration failure; reverting to software decoding".

So that suggests that ffmpeg-on-Lenovo-mediacodec is borked in some way... and Kodi would probably need some kludge to work around it, which is less than ideal (then again, so is having dodgy hardware acceleration on a device that's sold as a media tablet).

Thoughts/confirmation welcome.
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#3
Here are some vnsi / vdr recordings:

http://solidrun.maltegrosse.de/~fritsch/ (first three) plus the two before the last one.

Same issue?
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#4
Thanks, fritsch.

First three:
  • 1080i50_h264-2.ts - no, doesn't play
  • 1080i50_h264.ts - no
  • 1080i50_h264_mbaff.mp4 - no
.... and the two before the last one:
  • 576i50_mpeg2_samples.ts - yes, plays
  • 720p50_h264.mp4 - yes

New debug log uploaded to Dropbox (kodi fritsch samples.log), same component-level logging enabled.

So it's seemingly not tvheadend. One option down, at least...
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#5
Same with kodi nightly? Krypton branch is fine - but beta6 had a known issue parsing .ts files. Here: http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/xbmc/n...bi-v7a.apk
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#6
Same results with that version as well.
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#7
Can you try a different Android device, same issue? If yes -> we have a bug If not -> your FW has a bug, not good for you.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#8
I feared that would be the conclusion...

LG G4, Android 6, no problem with any file. I also tried a CM12-based HiSense tablet with Jarvis, and that also seems to work. It was worth exploring in case there was something in Kodi - but it looks like it's Lenovo, ffmpeg, or both.

The kids will just have to stick to YouTube...

Thanks for looking, I guess there's nothing to do other than shout pointlessly at Lenovo.
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#9
If it was ffmpeg the others would also fail. Ping koying on the slack channel, perhaps he has an idea.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
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#10
Yeah, definitily looks like something the Lenovo/qcom omx components do not like.

Unfortunately, we do not (yet) have a clean fallback from failing h/w codecs to s/w ffmpeg, VLC style...
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#11
Sad
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#12
I have 3 KODI systems [NVIDIA SHIELD Android {latest update installed}, Raspberry PI 3/LibreELEC {latest update installed}, Windows 7 laptop] and since the upgrade, last week, from KODI V16->V17 Krypton [which I love in all other respects KUDOs], I can no longer view any TVHeadend/Backend generated ".ts or .MKV" files from an OTA HDHR Extend tuner.

I get audio but no video or it will not play at all. If I select a .ts/mkv file and it is playing audio and if I hit the "Enter" button a 2nd time, I get a CD icon indicating to me that KODI thinks this is just a music CD instead of a OTA recording.

Live TV while using TVHeadend/Backend is now very hit or miss while it is rock solid if I switch back to WMC/ServerWMC

All these file which will not play, do play in WMC or VLC.

I updated the firmware on my SD HDHR Extend tuner with no improvement.

I have temporarily gone back to WMC/ServerWMC but as this runs on my laptop I need to get back to a functioning TVHeadend/Backend media server as I don't want to leave the laptop on 24/7
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#13
Hello.
I want to buy a new tablet.
Lenovo TAB 4 8 Plus LTE 64 GB
Does anyone have?
Can not you guess if the same problem is?
Can not anyone try to see if the code plays a TS stream?
Thank you
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