[frankvw]

I run Kodi 17.6 on a Raspbarry Pi 3. This works perfectly, except when playing H.265 video in full HD resolution, since the Pi's GPU doesn't support H.265 and therefore the Pi has to decode this in software, for which it lacks the CPU power. Which makes  sense for such a tiny embedded system.

However, I'm now seeing something similar with Theora video.

I have two different episodes of a TV series in OGG container format, one in SD resolution (640x352), the other in HD resolution (1028x720). Both use the Theora video and Vorbis audio codec. Other than the resolution, everything else appears identical. However, the SD version plays fine, the HD version stutters badly (one frame update every 3 seconds or so). This is worse than trying to play full HD H.265 on the Pi.

Is the Theora codec equally or more CPU intensive than H.265? Does it rely on GPU support not offered by the Raspberry Pi hardware?

In the past I've tried transcoding (e.g. from H.265 to H.264) but the results were disappointing (low quality, large file sizes) but if this is my only option here I may try it. Suggestions for transcoding software would be welcome, too!

// FvW

[fritsch]

Kodi supports Theora just fine. The PI not - no optimizations, no VPU decoding. For HEVC a lot of work was invested so that it accelerates quite well on the CPU.

In short: VC1, mpeg2, h264, mpeg4 - the rest is just trial and error.

[frankvw]

Got it.

So I tried to transcode and it appears that there are problems with the original file (ffmpeg complains about "keyframe not correctly marked" every couple of frames) so that's most likely the problem rather than any issues with Kodi's support for the codecs.

Tnx!