2020-11-21, 14:17
I recently purchased a Shield 2019 (tube) to play my local video files which are located on my NAS. I use Kodi 18.9 as a player. Mostly, playback is working fine. But with some files (most of them large 4K HDR files with TrueHD or DTS-HD audio), everything on Kodi, and the Shield itself as well, just becomes unresponsive and slow. I'm not talking about playback of the videofile itself or anything to do with resolutions or refresh rates.
What I mean is: if I select the 4K HDR file to start playing, often the first 10-15 seconds everything is just very choppy and unresponsive. Video and audio or both are very choppy and often the video speeds up to catch up to the audio. Then after it catches up, sometimes it just works and keeps on playing. But if I then try to pause it, or skip ahead or whatever, it again becomes very slow and unresponsive. And then sometimes Kodi just completely freezes and returns me to the homescreen of the Shield while my remote no longer works. Or the screen stays paused or becomes completely black and the Shield freezes and the remote doesn't do anything anymore, not even the shutdown or the settings button on the remote. I have to wait for it to reboot or do it manually myself with the button on the Shield itself. Other times, the playback does continue smoothly but then sometimes it just randomly starts getting choppy at some point in the video and the same problems occur; slow and unresponsive if I try to pause it or skip ahead/back and freezing Kodi and/or Shield.
I tried multiple types of files and it mostly seems to happen with 4K HDR files:
Since I found some 'ActiveAE - large audio sync error' lines in the log, I searched for it and found this other thread, where someone had a similar issue and solved it by increasing the video cache size.
I did that as well and added this code to my advancedsettings.xml to increase the video cache to 125MB.
At first, this seemed to have solved the problem where most 4K HDR files started playing smoothly. But quickly, I still encountered the problem, although in general the problems with choppy playback, audio catching up to video and slow/unresponsive UI did seem to be less bad. Last night, a 4K HDR videofile I played suddenly started having these problems midway through the file, while the beginning was smooth. It completely froze my Kodi/Shield and I had to reboot the Shield since the remote didn't do anything anymore. So this morning I tried the same videofile again, and it played smoothly so far. But this shows it doesn't always have to start happening in the beginning, but can also randomly happen during a video.
So while it does seem to have improved by increasing the videocache size, it is still occurring. How is this happening? When I was still using my TV's internal video player (before I got the Shield), every 4K HDR file was working perfectly, so I just can't imagine it has something to do with my local network or hdmi cables. Can someone help me try to fix this? Thanks!
What I mean is: if I select the 4K HDR file to start playing, often the first 10-15 seconds everything is just very choppy and unresponsive. Video and audio or both are very choppy and often the video speeds up to catch up to the audio. Then after it catches up, sometimes it just works and keeps on playing. But if I then try to pause it, or skip ahead or whatever, it again becomes very slow and unresponsive. And then sometimes Kodi just completely freezes and returns me to the homescreen of the Shield while my remote no longer works. Or the screen stays paused or becomes completely black and the Shield freezes and the remote doesn't do anything anymore, not even the shutdown or the settings button on the remote. I have to wait for it to reboot or do it manually myself with the button on the Shield itself. Other times, the playback does continue smoothly but then sometimes it just randomly starts getting choppy at some point in the video and the same problems occur; slow and unresponsive if I try to pause it or skip ahead/back and freezing Kodi and/or Shield.
I tried multiple types of files and it mostly seems to happen with 4K HDR files:
- 4K HDR with DD+ lower bitrate audio often has these problems
- 4K HDR with TrueHD higher bitrate audio often has these problems
- 1080p files with high bitrate TrueHD audio doesn't have these problems and work very smoothly
- Shield 2019 (tube version)
- Shield is connected to my home network with a cat6 ethernet cable
- Synology NAS has all my videofiles and is also connected with a cat6 cable
- I tested my local network speeds with iperf3 and all connections are around 900-950 Mb/s, so I don't think my local network is the problem
- Shield is connected with a hdmi 2.0 cable to my soundset, which is in turn connected to my LG C7 tv with a hdmi 2.0 cable to passthrough video. (the soundset can passthrough 4k, hdr and dolby vision)
- Kodi 18.9 is installed with the skin Embuary
Since I found some 'ActiveAE - large audio sync error' lines in the log, I searched for it and found this other thread, where someone had a similar issue and solved it by increasing the video cache size.
I did that as well and added this code to my advancedsettings.xml to increase the video cache to 125MB.
Quote:<cache>
<memorysize>131072000</memorysize>
</cache>
At first, this seemed to have solved the problem where most 4K HDR files started playing smoothly. But quickly, I still encountered the problem, although in general the problems with choppy playback, audio catching up to video and slow/unresponsive UI did seem to be less bad. Last night, a 4K HDR videofile I played suddenly started having these problems midway through the file, while the beginning was smooth. It completely froze my Kodi/Shield and I had to reboot the Shield since the remote didn't do anything anymore. So this morning I tried the same videofile again, and it played smoothly so far. But this shows it doesn't always have to start happening in the beginning, but can also randomly happen during a video.
So while it does seem to have improved by increasing the videocache size, it is still occurring. How is this happening? When I was still using my TV's internal video player (before I got the Shield), every 4K HDR file was working perfectly, so I just can't imagine it has something to do with my local network or hdmi cables. Can someone help me try to fix this? Thanks!
