[PatK]

Just grab any external player like VLC (the code inside this stand-alone player is pretty much what Kodi has borrowed) https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html Kodi can be set-up to use this or any other player as an alternative. External players (wiki) and of course the more debug logs posted, the easier the discovery.

some of them I can't seem to make crash

Are you familiar with MediaInfo (wiki) it should show if there is a corruption of the media.

[ktide1]

Just grab any external player like VLC (the code inside this stand-alone player is pretty much what Kodi has borrowed) https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html Kodi can be set-up to use this or any other player as an alternative. External players (wiki) and of course the more debug logs posted, the easier the discovery.

some of them I can't seem to make crash

Are you familiar with MediaInfo (wiki) it should show if there is a corruption of the media.

Yes, familiar with mediainfo, don't see anything in it except expected codec info, etc. I'm working on some tests, will post back later.

[ktide1]

OK, so I have to retract much of what I stated at the outset of the thread. I uninstalled Krypton, deleted userdata folder, and even cleaned the registry. Did a clean install of Jarvis and guess what - it crashes too! Could have sworn this never happened before on Jarvis or other previous versions, but definitely happening now on both Jarvis (16.1) and Krypton (17.3).

So next I did a clean install of 17.3 in the same way - uninstalled Jarvis 16.1, deleted userdata, cleaned registry before installing Krypton 17.3. I then set up a few files in a local source folder and added to the video library. After several tests, here's what I can see so far:

1. It appears that bit-for-bit BD rips to MKV (using MakeMKV) do NOT crash Kodi no matter what I do. I can play with settings, skip forward/back, pause/play, whatever and it just keeps working. I even tried this over smb using file manager and it still plays without issue if the video source is a full BD rip.

2. Anything else is sketchy. Besides BD rips, I primarily have re-encoded/compressed MKVs (using Handbrake/MCEBuddy) and WTVs (recordings direct from WMC) as my source video in the library. I can reproduce the crash with either type of file if I play them long enough or fiddle around a while with settings, skip forward/back, pause/play, or some combination thereof. Sometimes crashes right away, other times after a few seconds to a few minutes, and sometimes not at all.

Here are the debug logs (made using local sources played through video node):

Successful playing of BD rip is here: https://pastebin.com/3TRhMfjQ

Crashed playing of compressed MKV is here: https://pastebin.com/hNr5wFKZ

Crashed playing of WTV is here: https://pastebin.com/7xAsaMZq

I really appreciate everyone's efforts to help. I can't see what the heck is going on but it sure is frustrating. If anyone has any insight or suggestions, I'll gladly give it a try.

[ktide1]

Just bumping this to see if anyone has had a chance to look at the latest logs I posted or if anyone has any other clues. Thanks again!

[PatK]

In retrospect, if you don't use gymnastics on the control panel and a mkv plays, then the issue looks more of swamping the hardware. I'd recommend using some desktop tools, to monitor CPU/GPU usage; as most of these shared graphic solutions are the root of issues.

[ktide1]

In retrospect, if you don't use gymnastics on the control panel and a mkv plays, then the issue looks more of swamping the hardware. I'd recommend using some desktop tools, to monitor CPU/GPU usage; as most of these shared graphic solutions are the root of issues.

I hear you but the puzzling thing is that sometimes the crash will occur almost immediately after opening the video. It's happened on both MKVs and WTV files, just wasn't able to reproduce consistently enough to generate a debug log for you. I don't know, I might try an even older Intel graphics driver and see if that helps. I'm just grasping at this point.

[PatK]

Investing in a recent capable graphic card, would probably settle this system.

[ktide1]

Investing in a recent capable graphic card, would probably settle this system.

Probably would, and I'm not trying to argue, but this is only 1080p video we're talking here. Intel HD4600 should be more than enough to handle it, shouldn't it? I can run these exact same videos on an old Windows 7 laptop with an i5-3317u and built-in HD 4000 graphics and they play just fine on Kodi on that machine - and that's accessing them remotely no less - with no crashes at all, just occasional buffering pauses due to slow connection speed.

I dunno, something's just off. Still seems like driver stability to me, but I might be wrong.

[Powerhouse]

Intel's graphics aren't the best, and their drivers suck more often then not.

For best experience, it's either Nvidia or ATI. But don't get me wrong, they have their driver issues as well. But at least they update their drivers far more often than Intel does.

[ktide1]

Intel's graphics aren't the best, and their drivers suck more often then not.

For best experience, it's either Nvidia or ATI. But don't get me wrong, they have their driver issues as well. But at least they update their drivers far more often than Intel does.

Tell me about it. I've got other Kodi/WMC boxes running AMD A8 series APUs with no issues.

[nickr]

It could be a hardware fault of course, which only shows up when you stretch the system by playing video. Such faults are hard to isolate.

Try just for an experiment using libreelec on a USB stick and see if it works. It won't touch your windows install if you just use the stick "live".

[ktide1]

It could be a hardware fault of course, which only shows up when you stretch the system by playing video. Such faults are hard to isolate.

Try just for an experiment using libreelec on a USB stick and see if it works. It won't touch your windows install if you just use the stick "live".

Great suggestion here. I gave it a try and every file I tried played FLAWLESSLY on libreelec. Not exactly sure what that tells us, but would seem to indicate hardware is probably OK? I'm thinking to try a different (i.e. older) Intel graphics driver. Thoughts?

EDIT: Well, tried an even older driver (15.49.22.4424 from April 2016) and still no luck, still crashes Kodi. Man, I really don't know where to go from here (outside of a new discrete gpu). Any other suggestions at all?

EDIT #2: Hmmmm, well I tried something else. I enabled DXVA decoding (still using software rendering) and (so far) nothing is crashing. I've always run software decoding before, but this seems to be working for now. I don't really like it as I don't care for DXVA deinterlace options, but I'll live with it for now. Does this tell you experts anything about my situation?

[nickr]

Suggestion? Use libreelec.

[ktide1]

Suggestion? Use libreelec.

Lol, not an option for me. I'm in the US and on cablecard, which means I have to have WMC for DRM-protected content, so must use a Windows-based solution.