[nvxd8c]

Hello,

I have Sony XH90/X90H TV with Android TV. It supports Dolby Vision profile 5 out of the box, so no issues playing DV in Netflix, AppleTV apps.

I installed latest nightly version of Kodi for arm v7a. In this build FFMPEG version is 4.4-N-Alpha1
Unfortunately this build can't play profile DV profile 8 in Dolby Vision, although 5th profile works without any issues.

For my tests I use mp4 container from Dolby Vision Streams Demo

I don't understand why? According to version history FFMPEG 4.4.1 has a "VDPAU accelerated HEVC 10/12bit decoding" doesn't this mean that nightly version of Kodi can decode DV video?
Quietvoed says that ffmpeg 5.0 is needed for mkv container, does this mean that I need to update ffmpeg to version 5.0 in order to play DV profile 8?

The necessary patches for Dolby Vision in MKV were merged into FFmpeg and should be in the 5.0 release.
So normally custom FFmpeg builds won't be necessary once Kodi Nexus updates FFmpeg from 4.4 to 5.0.

There may be additional changes needed in Kodi, though.

Also I can't install maven Nexus build because it's for arm v8a and TV is running arm v7a.
I know a lot of you use Nvidia shield, but I don't want to spend 200$ only for Dolby Vision support, built in OS works flawlessly

Thank you

[Slickric21]

Install the Nexus arm v7a version then ?

[jjd-uk]

I don't understand why? According to version history FFMPEG 4.4.1 has a "VDPAU accelerated HEVC 10/12bit decoding" doesn't this mean that nightly version of Kodi can decode DV video?

VDPAU is the Linux hardware video decode API for Nvidia GPU's, so has nothing to do with Dolby Vision.

[HomerJau]

@selfcontained MP4 containers cannot contain HD audio formats like DTS-HD MA or Dolby True HD. So for ripping blu-rays including HD audio, MKV is the only option.

I’ve been playing Dolby TrueHD Atmos and DTS-HDMA in .MP4 and .m4a in Kodi since Matrix was released (Kodi 19.0)

[Zuikkis]

I installed the latest Maven Nexus build. This is the first time I'm trying Nexus.

To my surprise, it didn't respect the xbmc_env.properties file where I have set a custom data folder. It has worked on all Matrix versions I have tried.

Is this a Nexus thing or specific to Maven's build? Anyone have xbmc_env.properties in use, does it work?

Edit: weird thing, I restarted it and now it reads the new location. I guess the initial setup is done to default location and xbmc_env not checked..

[Zuikkis]

Hmmh. While Maven's Nexus build now starts and finds my old config and library, I can't actually play anything. It crashes every time when i try to start a video.

It did play videos when it was a clean install, apparently copying files from Matrix was not a good idea....

[tiago1994]

Good evening, since the version is already out, FFmpeg 5.0 with Dolby Vision support, where is this version going to be embedded? In Kodi version 20 or will it still be released for 19.4?

[Fuzzard]

It will not go into a 19 release. Theres apparently quite a number of changes in our code that needs to be done to support ffmpeg 5.0, so theres absolutely no ETA

[Zuikkis]

I got Nexus version working really well, everything works and it seems to be stable.

But there is a weird issue.. After a few days, all Kodi settings reseted to default. Language to English, audio to 2.0 channels, video mode white list gone. However the library and all addons are fine. Still probably some 15min to wander all menus through and check that everything is in order.

Then after a few days, it happened again...

At that point I switched back to Matrix.

Anyone else have similar problems?

[quietvoid]

I've been using Nexus for a bit more than a year and never encountered an issue like that.
My last update was in December.

[nvxd8c]

I've installed v7a version and it works! Thank you

[Campnowhere]

Nice, looks like Maven pulled in the ffmpeg fix that corrected Dolby Digital transcoding for the Nexus (master) builds.  Before it caused audio tracks to output in only stereo because it wasn't setting channel count numbers regardless if the transcoding setting was enabled. Also included the Nexus enhancement that shows the HDR type (like HDR10, Dolby Vision) next to the rest of the info (such as resolution, A/V codecs) for each title. It even shows the Dolby Vision logo for P7 titles, I was somewhat expecting it to only show for the P5 titles, and not any MKVs with the dual HDR in P7 (like you see from UHD titles with HDR10 + DV).

I haven't experience any of the quirks/issues people have experienced with the official 19.x app and the Shield 9.0.0 update.  Probably because I'm running the Nexus master build line.  This is definitely the superior build vs anything other Kodi build I've tried official or unofficial, IMO...

One other observation:  I've long had difficulty with certain remuxed MKVs from my UHD physical disc collection, mostly those with particularly high average bitrates (such as with especially FEL DV P7 tracks) streaming over my network via SMB from my file server.  That file server is a full blown Intel gen9 Xeon based server running Windows Server 2019 with dual 10GbE NICs so it's definitely not the bottleneck, and neither are the switches in-between.  There were a few titles that choked even the Shield Pro 2019, and a lot more that impacted a Sony A8H Android TV.  Despite setting a generous cache in Kodi it would eventually stall out and the movie would lag/stutter.  I've enabled NFS on the file server, reworked the Kodi video library and it appears this is helping considerably and seems like both the Shield and Sony ATV are able to transfer noticeably faster via NFS vs SMB.  Tbh I'm not entirely surprised since IME NFS has always worked a bit better than SMB on anything Linux related.  It also seems to work better with resuming movies partway through, whereas over SMB I think I experienced more quirks where it failed to resume.  Sort of kicking myself for not switching sooner.
So TL;DR if you're having stuttering/lagging, and you're using SMB, try NFS instead...

How can I accomplish using NFS instead of SMB if my plex server is hosted on my Synology nas and not on my Shield?  I have a large Plex library and was rapidly running out of space on the Shield for my meta data so I decided to just host the server on my Synology nas. 

I currently use SMB and do experience lagging & stuttering when playing high bitrate DV files but I do not know how to set up the NFS with Plex when it's hosted on the nas.  I have NFS enabled on my Synology but in my Plex web interface where I add my media it just shows my typical volume 1/btrfs/config as available folders to choose to add media from.  Is the NFS something that needs to be set up on the Shield not in Plex?

[sengboy]

Where can I download Maven Nexus build? With the current update from Shield'19, all of my DV movies on Gdrive couldn't be played on Kodi

[hdmkv]

Here (one on the right).

[lanzorg]

Can anyone tell me if Kodinerds Maven Nexus works with DV Profile 8 files without problems with Nvidia Shield Pro 2019?

The last time I tried it there were red artifacts.