How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4?
#1
I'm trying to understand the video pipeline for the Raspberry Pi and how it differs from standard Kodi. I can see some good docs about earlier versions for RPi 2 & 3, but have a few questions about the RPi 4 version by @popcornmix. I can see from this FAQ that previous versions have used a mix of MMAL/OMXPlayer to accelerate video content, but what is the case for the RPi 4? OMXPlayer is not supported so I assume you have moved to using exclusively MMAL.
Is this the case, or are there some other methods being used? Also, where is this functionality patched into the source code?
Reply
#2
(2020-03-19, 15:07)ewanroycroft Wrote: I'm trying to understand the video pipeline for the Raspberry Pi and how it differs from standard Kodi. I can see some good docs about earlier versions for RPi 2 & 3, but have a few questions about the RPi 4 version by @popcornmix. I can see from this FAQ that previous versions have used a mix of MMAL/OMXPlayer to accelerate video content, but what is the case for the RPi 4? OMXPlayer is not supported so I assume you have moved to using exclusively MMAL.
Is this the case, or are there some other methods being used? Also, where is this functionality patched into the source code?
Please take a look here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt...p?t=268356
Reply
#3
Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
|Banned add-ons (wiki)|Forum rules (wiki)|VPN policy (wiki)|First time user (wiki)|FAQs (wiki) Troubleshooting (wiki)|Add-ons (wiki)|Free content (wiki)|Debug Log (wiki)|

Kodi Blog Posts
Reply
#4
(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
Reply
#5
(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
Reply
#6
(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6
Reply
#7
(2020-12-05, 20:50)eltriplet Wrote:
(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-11-30, 21:15)DarrenHill Wrote: Judging by the dates and names, I think you've just pointed him at his own thread on the Pi forums...
You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6
I'm afraid not. I'm looking at adding video acceleration to Chromium and was interested to see if I could port Kodi's methods over to Chromium. Seeing as I didn't get any response here, and wasn't very familiar with the Kodi source code, I didn't pursue it further.
Reply
#8
(2020-12-08, 11:45)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-12-05, 20:50)eltriplet Wrote:
(2020-12-01, 19:17)ewanroycroft Wrote: You're correct Smile
Thank you anyway, @eltriplet
haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6
I'm afraid not. I'm looking at adding video acceleration to Chromium and was interested to see if I could port Kodi's methods over to Chromium. Seeing as I didn't get any response here, and wasn't very familiar with the Kodi source code, I didn't pursue it further.

In case you haven't already checked that HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24730408
Reply
#9
(2020-12-08, 16:26)eltriplet Wrote:
(2020-12-08, 11:45)ewanroycroft Wrote:
(2020-12-05, 20:50)eltriplet Wrote: haha that must have been one of my lamest answers to a forum post :-D sorry! Have you obtained any new info on HW acceleration of RPi4 in Kodi? I am actually curious, since it doesn't work well for me in LE 9.2.6
I'm afraid not. I'm looking at adding video acceleration to Chromium and was interested to see if I could port Kodi's methods over to Chromium. Seeing as I didn't get any response here, and wasn't very familiar with the Kodi source code, I didn't pursue it further.

In case you haven't already checked that HN thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24730408
I haven't seen that thread, but am aware of most of the contents.

We are achieving video acceleration with the V4L2 M2M API, effectively a wrapper around MMAL. Further performance improvements by running Chromium outside of X.
https://github.com/bbc/chromium/commits/px-rpi

RPi engineers tell me they are looking at a similar V4L2 solution for their version that ships with Raspbian.
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
How does Kodi achieve HW acceleration on the Raspberry Pi 4?0