[ratoaq2]

I really would like to know what's the current status in more details for kodi.
Given that the hardware supports DV, what are the missing pieces for kodi to be capable of supporting it?
I'm a developer and I have been involved in many other open source projects for almost 2 decades, but never got a chance to look at kodi sources.
Since I'm very interested in such feature, I've been reading a lot about it, but I only have assumptions that might very much be wrong or not accurate.
My current understanding is:
Given the new Matroska spec that supports DV (single track dual layer), kodi needs to understand this track type and allow it to be passed to the underlying implementation (HW decoder).
Kodi demux uses ffmpeg (my assumption), so ffmpeg is the one that needs to understand the new spec enhancement before anything can be done on the kodi side.
Do I have a correct understanding?
I do not want to underestimate the amount of work and complexity, but is it a lot to be done? Is something that someone not yet familiar with kodi source could handle or is it something that you need to be familiar with kodi architecture and more internal details?

And thanks again for you guys that invest so much time in a great software

[Bladerunner1962]

Hello,

does this also work without NAS?
Cause, I have my external hard drives (with the movies) direct connected with the Shield via the USB 3.0 slots.
If yes: how should I use it with Kodi on Shield?

Another question: will each movie start/open the Exoplayer? Or only 4K movies would open the Exoplayer?

[hoppel118]

I really would like to know what's the current status in more details for kodi.

I'm interested in that too.

And thanks again for you guys that invest so much time in a great software

I also want to thank you kodi devs.

does this also work without NAS?
Cause, I have my external hard drives (with the movies) direct connected with the Shield via the USB 3.0 slots.
If yes: how should I use it with Kodi on Shield?

Yes, this should also work via usb. You have to copy the modified exoplayer.apk and the playercorefactory.xml to your usb device and install them from there. Did you try what I described above without the nas connection? If so, what didn’t work for you?

Another question: will each movie start/open the Exoplayer? Or only 4K movies would open the Exoplayer?

Both is possible. Above I described the method that only works for movies with DV in their file name.

Regards Hoppel

[Bladerunner1962]

@hoppel118 

Thx for the quick answer and the solution.

The Exoplayer is now installed on the Shield and I can open it with the build in test files.

I renamed one of my 4k mkv files to Homevideo (2020 DV).mkv
I copied your playerfactory xml script to the following folder on the shield: \\SHIELD\internal\Android\data\org.xbmc.kodi\files\.kodi\userdata\profiles
I restarted Kodi.
Then I start the above named file in Kodi from the video file manager, the movies starts. But it seems, that the own Kodi build in player plays the movie.
Also I don't see the DV logo.
Is the DV logo send for e.g. some seconds as overlay to the monitor/beamer? Or should the monitor/beamer self generate the DV logo?
If I press "pause" it seems also, that I play the movie with the build in Kodi player. Or is there no real difference from apperance. I thought there would be a delay switching from Kodi into the Exoplayer and I'm in the menu structure from the Exoplayer? Or is that not the case?

[jjd-uk]

My current understanding is:
Given the new Matroska spec that supports DV (single track dual layer), kodi needs to understand this track type and allow it to be passed to the underlying implementation (HW decoder).
Kodi demux uses ffmpeg (my assumption), so ffmpeg is the one that needs to understand the new spec enhancement before anything can be done on the kodi side.
Do I have a correct understanding?
I do not want to underestimate the amount of work and complexity, but is it a lot to be done? Is something that someone not yet familiar with kodi source could handle or is it something that you need to be familiar with kodi architecture and more internal details?

Yes I believe your understanding to be correct. However I'm not one of the player devs so perhaps @fritsch can comment or perhaps even @FernetMenta

Perhaps you should start off by looking at what needs to be done in ffmpeg as nothing can be done without the necessary changes in ffmpeg. Maybe check on the ffmpeg IRC channel (see https://ffmpeg.org/contact.html) if anyone is already working on it. As lots of media applications rely on ffmpeg then getting the changes done there would be of a huge benefit.

As mentioned before I'm not a player dev but going by the additions required for the Android Exoplayer (https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer/pull/7667/files) then it doesn't seem to require big changes, however both ffmpeg and Kodi are much more complex beasts.

[hoppel118]

Thx for the quick answer and the solution.

The Exoplayer is now installed on the Shield and I can open it with the build in test files.

I renamed one of my 4k mkv files to Homevideo (2020 DV).mkv
I copied your playerfactory xml script to the following folder on the shield: \\SHIELD\internal\Android\data\org.xbmc.kodi\files\.kodi\userdata\profiles
I restarted Kodi.

„userdata“ is the profile directory. Try to copy the playercorefactory.xml to the following path:

Code:

...Android/data/org.xbmc.kodi/files/.kodi/userdata/

This should work.

Then I start the above named file in Kodi from the video file manager, the movies starts. But it seems, that the own Kodi build in player plays the movie.
Also I don't see the DV logo.
Is the DV logo send for e.g. some seconds as overlay to the monitor/beamer? Or should the monitor/beamer self generate the DV logo?
If I press "pause" it seems also, that I play the movie with the build in Kodi player. Or is there no real difference from apperance. I thought there would be a delay switching from Kodi into the Exoplayer and I'm in the menu structure from the Exoplayer? Or is that not the case?

Yes, the DV logo is an overlay shown by your display. If you press „pause“ you should see the exoplayer osd instead of the kodi osd. And yes there is a little delay while kodi switches to exoplayer.

Regards Hoppel

[Bladerunner1962]

@hoppel118 

Now it works :-)
Thank you very much.

Later on I will test the picture results of the new player solution with my 4K MKV files.

[Bladerunner1962]

Does the player also support pass-through audio?
Current the output is only as autochannel instead of eg. Dolby Atmos or DTS-X.

Has the player any audio settings?

[hoppel118]

What do you mean by autochannel? PCM?

I have a Sonos Arc Soundbar and an LG OLED65C9. Dolby Atmos TrueHD works fine. The Sonos Arc doesn‘t support DTS, but it should work with an other soundbar/avr.

What did you configure in the enhanced sound settings at the android os level of your nvidia shield tv?

I had to use the option „automatically“ under „choose formats“. It didn’t work, when I choosed the supported formats manually. (Sorry, I don’t know the exact englisch menu names. My android user interface is in german.)

Regards Hoppel

[Bladerunner1962]

Hello @hoppel118 

Sorry, autochannel was the wrong word = multichannel.
Multichannel is not e.g. Dolby Atmos.

The Shield audio settings are in my case indeed "automatic", cause some other apps have difficulties with manual audio settings.
But I'll try for a test, if the Exoplayer behavior would change to passthrough if I use manual audio settings.

[depechefan]

With Dolby Vision (single layer) now being an option in MKV files I'd love to see Kodi being able to play back Dolby Vision without having to modify anything. Just like HDR10. This of course depends on hardware which supports Dolby Vision. Like Nvidia Shield for example.

Fingers crossed that this will be part of the next major release!

/M

[siriusbox]

That's Android only since they use Exoplayer as the player, so not really any different to what you've done in Post#71.

Not exactly. Plex doesn't use ExoPlayer for decoding, they rely on FFmpeg for that, so probably they already did some custom build of FFmpeg.

What I don't understand is Kodi already have the code (or at least part of, a starting point) for Dolby Vision on addons, for make that work they also need to made the pass-through of the Dolby Vision data, so what remains to be done is identify Dolby Vision on MKV and do the same that they already do with addons.

Really hope to see it working on R19.

Thanks.

[jjd-uk]

That's Android only since they use Exoplayer as the player, so not really any different to what you've done in Post#71.

Not exactly. Plex doesn't use ExoPlayer for decoding, they rely on FFmpeg for that, so probably they already did some custom build of FFmpeg.

If they have done that then they are breaking open source licensing because if they patch an open source library such as ffmpeg they are obliged to make that source code freely available to anyone that requests it. So request the source code and we maybe able to do something.

What I don't understand is Kodi already have the code (or at least part of, a starting point) for Dolby Vision on addons, for make that work they also need to made the pass-through of the Dolby Vision data, so what remains to be done is identify Dolby Vision on MKV and do the same that they already do with addons.

I don't understand the full technicalities, but The Inputstream addons such as Netflix & Disney+ handoff everything to do with the video to the hardware, however the playback of video files must go through ffmpeg to benefit from the full features of the Kodi videoplayer. In theory you could allow video file playback to be completely handed off to hardware as well, however in practice that would likely mean a major re-write for which we simple don't have the resource at the current time.

[siriusbox]

Hi jjd-uk,

Thanks for your fast response.

That was I understood on the feature request for Dolby Vision for MKV that I put myself, we discussed about ExoPlayer, we all though they just rely on ExoPlayer for everything, like Emby does, but they doesn't, someone from the dev team answer me saying that decoding part don't rely on ExoPlayer but FFmepg, that's all I know, I'm not a developer.

Edit for add a link to the Plex Forum where they said that https://forums.plex.tv/t/feature-request.../576028/41

Yeah, I know, never is as easy as it seems, and Kodi team have limited resources, we will patiently wait because you always make a top-notch job in everything you support. Maybe when the team has the time they could look to know complicated can be, something like we could expect from R20 instead of R19, but I hope it will come with R19

Regards!

[jjd-uk]

Actually it seems Dolby Vision is now working for mp4 files https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2987651 so perhaps I missed a change in the last bump of the ffmpeg version Kodi uses so it's just mkv being waited on.