[voltaicsca]

Hi all,

I am having an issue with video playback with some video files. Sometimes I will get a video that plays just fine, except for the audio. If I then try to stop the video, and play any other video, even a known good file, it has no audio. Further, if I try to exit Kodi, I just get a black screen after hitting the exit button, and have to power cycle the device.

My environment is as follows:
Android 4.4
Kodi 16.1, installed from play store
running on a M8S android tv box
No addons installed

Here is the kodi log, beginning when I tried to play the file:

[edit] https://pastebin.com/ECyVdqcY

Any thoughts on what might be causing this, or how to fix it?

[fritsch]

Post a Debug Log don't cut what you think is unimportant. Disable passthrough and use 2.0 channel config

[PatK]

A normal log doesn't tell enough, turn on debug logging in settings>system>logging. The log will be quite large so use a public pastebin.com and supply the URL to that paste here in this thread as a link. Mods and the forum in general frown on logs clogging up the forum.

Go into Kodi settings>videos>playback>sync playback to display -toggle off- These boxes are generally tasked just doing the basics and monitoring user input, but throw up the proper debug log to a new post in the Android section of the forum and it's likely your issue will have an explanation.

[voltaicsca]

Ok, I have a full debug log, with no omissions, except for filename and server info redacted: https://pastebin.com/raw/9rKayNti

Thanks for the quick replies; sorry for the lag time. Day job and whatnot.

[Karellen]

Hi voltaicsca,

Do you know how to read these logs?

[voltaicsca]

Hi Karellen,

Certainly a valid question.
Looks like a buffer underrun to me, but I don't really see enough information, even with debug enabled to troubleshoot it, which is why I am reaching out.
There is a line in there that might look like there is actually no audio data, but when I play the file on another computer, it plays just fine -- Audio and all. The overwhelming majority of videos play just fine as well.

A forum post is my last line of troubleshooting. I consider myself to be very tech savvy, and prefer to dig in and solve myself, but I am kind of at a loss here, hence the post.

Thanks!

[nickr]

It is not a complete log from startup.

However I do see your log indicates that the file has eac3 sound, and that passthrough failed. I am guessing your playback device cannot passthrough eac3.

[voltaicsca]

Ok, so I have spent the last hour or two fiddling with settings to see if I could play the video under any circumstances.
Turns out, if I set output to 2.0 stereo, and keep my passthrough settings to everything enabled, the video plays back with audio. If I change the setting to anything besides 2.0, I get the same behavior as described in my original post. Full disclosure, I did not test every speaker configuration. I only tested 2.1 and 5.1.

I guess now my question is, if I set the output to 2.0, does passthrough only pipe 2 channels through, and discard the others?
Is the "number of channels" setting only relevant for streams that can't be passed directly to the receiver?

[fritsch]

AC3, DTS are sent with 2.0 channel Audio.

Your box seems not to be able to play multi channel pcm audio.

Therefore:
Enable DTS, AC3, Enable AC3 Transcoding
Set channels to 2.0

done.