[Branksome]

Just found this thread which suddenly stopped a month ago without resolution. Before seeing this thread I had assumed that something had gone wrong with my VU UNO 4K SE

I run Kodi on a 6 year old Nvidia Shield and also a more modern Nvidia TV device (both Android). My devices are connected by wired Ethernet.

Playing back recorded TV now produces random problems. I have ascertained that the recordings are fine but the playback suffers these random issues where the picture will stall with a freeze frame. Sometimes the still picture will then pixelate. It will recover and continue. On rare occasions the problem will keep repeating every few seconds and I then need to press stop and then restart the playback. In this situation the playback may start in advance of the time I pressed Stop

It is now rare to be able to watch a programme without these problems arising at some point and often multiple times. So do I need to invest in a new server or could this be a Kodi issue?

[phunkyfish]

@Branksome I believe there have been numerous issues since a recent update of the Nvidia Shield itself. Have you tried watching TV from another device? Does that work?

[Branksome]

What I am intending to do next is to copy unwatched recorded programmes onto my NAS and use Kodi to view them.  That would eliminate any streaming issues on my VU+ box.

I am getting the impression (which might be just a coincidence) that the "buffering" issue gets worse the longer the programme and the more advert jumps one makes.  One documentary became unwatchable before the end and it seemed that the system got confused where it had got to in the video and kept replaying the same bit

[phunkyfish]

What I am intending to do next is to copy unwatched recorded programmes onto my NAS and use Kodi to view them.  That would eliminate any streaming issues on my VU+ box.

I am getting the impression (which might be just a coincidence) that the "buffering" issue gets worse the longer the programme and the more advert jumps one makes.  One documentary became unwatchable before the end and it seemed that the system got confused where it had got to in the video and kept replaying the same bit

That is an incorrect assessment. Playback via the addon is different to playback as a kodi video. Still an interesting test to perform.

But using a windows or Mac laptop running kodi to your VU+ box would test the scenario you propose.

[pcextreme]

Hi!

First of all thank You for all your work maintaining this great and essential addon for Kodi!

I have a strange buffering issues when playing a recorded TV channel from "Main menu->TV->Recordings" ... the video plays for 5-20 seconds ( sometimes a few minutes ) than it starts buffering for 5-10 secconds ... This happens on all my playforms : Windows 10 x64 / RPi3 XBian / i5 Libreelec.

I have a gigabit network, the recording is played back from my server ( i5-4590/8GB/1TB HDD ) - the buffering hapens even if Kodi is running on the same server.
I use Vu+ Zero with the latest OpenATV 6.4 as my PVR. ( I tried it using my AXAS HIS4K Combo with the latest OpenATV 7.0 as the PVR - with the same resoult )

I do not suspect my hardware and setup because the same recording ALWAYS palys back WITHOUT any buffering using "Videos->Media Sources->Files"

Here are the logs ( for Zero and for AXAS ) :
https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/zqd7kJYYvd/
https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/FSjhp3NKTb/

Could You have a look please ? Thanks!

I get the same behaviour on all my connected kodi devices : rpi3 ( xbian kodi 19.4 ), intel i5 x64 libreelec 19.4, intel i5 windows x64 19.4.

No mather what device I use as pvr ( zero-z or axas his 4k running openatv )

[Branksome]

The results of my testing yesterday evening are below.  They were time constrained so it is possible that further testing could reveal differing patterns

- My VU+ server is not the source of the problems as the  problems can occur playing recordings directly from my NAS

-  Some recent change to the software is likely to be responsible

-  I found that the problems appear be be triggered by using the remote to jump forward in a video playback 

- One of the set of 6 files (Meta file) that make up the playback video is changed during playback.  This might be normal but it might become corrupt

I played a recording back and initially jumped over unwanted material at the beginning of the recording.  The video then played normally until the next advert break.  I jumped 4 minutes and continued
watching.  After a few minutes there was a picture freeze/buffering and then shortly afterwards the next advert break was reached.  I jumped 4 minutes forward
and soon after this the whole thing became quite impossible with almost continuous freezing.   Trying to jump forward a bit caused the video to jump back and then started a loop playback

Having abandoned this, I then tried to playback the video using the simple in-built player in the TV.  But the TV refused to play

I tried the playback with the original virgin files and then the TV played the video normally indicating that some corruption had occurred in a file

Subsequent but time limited testing indicated that fast forwarding a recording did not trigger the same problems as jumping

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than myself can make sense of this

[phunkyfish]

@Branksome Can you try the final release of kodi 18 and see what happens?

Also, a full debug log from when you start playing back the video would be useful to get the full context.

And just to clarify. Playback will always work if you don’t skip, it’s the skipping that causes the freeze?

[Branksome]

Thank you Phunkeyfish.  The release of Kodi says 19.3 on the opening page.  Updates are automatic.

There is undoubtably an apparent randomness to the freezing/buffering problem but there seems to be a pattern that skipping forward exasperates the issue.  Of course it could be that the random events are conspiring to create a pattern just to confuse simple folk like me.   I will endeavour to generate logs over the next couple of days

[Dumyat]

Hi @Branksome 
Did you happen to have any other sessions of Kodi open elsewhere on your network at the same time?
The reason I ask, is I also experienced this exact same issue with recording playback on my 2017 Shield a few weeks ago. A few days later I experienced the same issue using my Win 11 pc.
One thing I did note in both instances was I happened to have Kodi open on both devices at the same time. The moment I closed Kodi on my Windows 11 pc, recording playback on the Shield was then perfect with no buffering or freezing and vice versa a few days later when playing a recording on my Windows 11 pc, ie once I closed Kodi on the Shield, the problem immediately went away.
Of course, this could just be a pure coincidence, but to solve exactly the same issue on two different devices using the same solution does strike me as being quite a coincidence....
Thought it was worth sharing my own experience of having the exact same issue and how I stumbled onto a solution quite by accident.
This may or may not help you with your own issue.