Android Fire TV (2nd Gen) MediaCodec Fails when playing .ts file
#1
Hello all,
I was using a RPI Gen 1 and everything played out well. Recently I bought an Amazon Fire Stick (2nd Gen) to access my Netflix and Amazon accounts. Since the RPI1 was slow I decided to switch my KODI installation to the Amazon Fire Stick. Most of the recordings of different formats and sometimes in different containers play well. But some of the HD format TS Files start playing and freeze after a few seconds. When pressing stop sometimes i get back to kodi home screen, sometimes the app crashes.


Facts:
  • Kodi 17.5, but occured with the nightly of 18.x as well
  • All files are connected via NFS in a LAN
  • I played around with a lot of features (directly in KODI and via advanced settings xml). MediaCodec surface, epl off
  • Without Hardware accelleration the files play but have a lot of frame drops
  • Using TSmuxer to re-mux the files did not work out
  • Using MKVmerge to put the streams into another container did not work out
  • I guess an encode of the recordings files would get rid of the problem...

Instead of discribing more I provide the kodi log and the mediainfo log. If needed I can also provide a log of the TS doctor. I was able to recognize differences inside the logs between files that play well and files that do not play. Most of them were referring to different stream types.
E.g. Files that work have those IDs
Code:
Identifying stream types

$0060: 0%   = PMT
$00FF: 85%  = H264 Video (PES_StreamID E0 = Video_Stream_0) [PCR,PTS,DTS]
$0104: 7%   = AC3 Audio (PES_StreamID BD = Private_Stream_1) [PTS][PESLength]
$0103: 7%   = AC3 Audio (PES_StreamID BD = Private_Stream_1) [PTS][PESLength]
$0000: 0%   = PAT
Files that do not work have those:
Code:
Identifying stream types

$0100: 0%   = PMT
$1011: 88%  = H264 Video (PES_StreamID E0 = Video_Stream_0) [PTS,DTS]
$1100: 6%   = AC3 Audio (PES_StreamID FD = Reserved_Data_Stream) [PTS][PESLength]
$1101: 6%   = AC3 Audio (PES_StreamID FD = Reserved_Data_Stream) [PTS][PESLength]
$1001: 0%   = PCR [PCR]
$0000: 0%   = PAT

Since I am not deeply into all of this I failed to analyse the reason for this behavior.

KODI crash log 1/2
KODI crash log 2/2
MediaInfo

I hope that somebody can help me out.

Best regards,
Kris
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#2
Thx. for the Logs especially Mediainfo.

Just by looking at the Mediainfo, your problem is trying to play high bitrate Interlaced H264/AVC video content when the FTV's are known for very poor deinterlacing.

When Hardware deinterlacing fails Kodi defaults to ffmpeg CPU software deinterlacing and the CPU demands are too great for the FTV stick, or even the FireTV2 for 1080i video content.

You could try SPMC v16.x as that has more video acceleration options.

The only real cost effective, fast, solution for nice High Quality Hardware deinterlacing of all Interlaced video content is LibreELEC Kodi Krypton running on AMLogic S9xx hardware. That combo really plays anything you throw at it.

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#3
Hello!
Thank you for the quick reply. Apologize my 2nd guessing, I understand and believe what you say about the fire stick, but your answer does not explain, why the following file (and a lot others, that have comparable speccs) play well.
I forgot to mention: I already tried SPMC in current stable version and got the same result.

Working_file

Best regards,
Kris
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Fire TV (2nd Gen) MediaCodec Fails when playing .ts file0