[pasqualz]

Hi All,
I'm running:
- XBMC Live v9.04.1
- booting off an 8GB USB flash drive on a Zotac Ionitx-A-U motherboard
- 4GB RAM.
Everything is working great! I can play 1080p video with minimal artifacts. My only issue right now is that when I play MTS video files (copied from my Canon Vixia HF200 HD video camera) they video starts without audio, then after a few seconds, the audio kicks in and the video slows down to allow the audio to catch up, then after a few more seconds when everything is in synch, the video and audio play perfectly. At this point I can rewind to the beginning to watch the whole clip in synch. This seems to be a buffering issue which I'd love to fix. Is there any way to adjust XBMC live to take a little extra time to buffer and synch up the audio and video before it starts playing the clip? Any help is appreciated!
Thanks
Pasqual

[pasqualz]

Bump -
Could it be that I'm the only one getting this issue? Perhaps this is just a general XBMC issue, not just in XBMC Live?? It seems to be buffer related, can anyone point me in a direction to do some troubleshooting? Thanks!

[dc2447]

<me too>

I have the same symptoms when playing pretty much *all* video but is particularly noticeable with the HD clips from my Flip Ultra HD camera. The clip starts pretty quickly but there is no sound, then sounds kicks in, the video slows down, then everything syncs up and playback is fine, in fact better than fine, perfect.

I am not using live, I am using 9.04.3+svn23164-karmic2, on a mac mini running Karmic

[pasqualz]

Well misery loves company, so I guess its nice to know that other people share my pain. Does thsi mean that thsi is an XBMC on Linux issue or is it a universal issue with XBMC? Anyone else care to chime in

[dc2447]

Well this is Linux forum, I doubt we will get any input from other platforms

[spiff]

all, i repeat, ALL, of these posts are completely useless as long as you don't provide any information we can base an answer on. that means debug logs! and possibly samples.

[dc2447]

At the risk of hijacking:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1134165/xbmc.log.gz

System info:

* Mac mini, 2Gb of ram
* Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
* playback via vga => lcd tv
* xbmc 9.04.3+svn23164-karmic2


File info:

Mp4 Quicktime

mplayer --identify /drivestation/DVD/Flip/Portuagal_Holiday_Aug_2009_001.MP4
Unknown option on the command line: --identify
Error parsing option on the command line: --identify
MPlayer SVN-r29237-4.4.1 © 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
root@mac-mini:~# mplayer -identify -frames 0 -vc null -vo null -ao null /drivestation/DVD/Flip/Portuagal_Holiday_Aug_2009_001.MP4
MPlayer SVN-r29237-4.4.1 © 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not open config files /home/davidcam/.lircrc and /etc/lircrc
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to read LIRC config file ~/.lircrc.

Playing /drivestation/DVD/Flip/Portuagal_Holiday_Aug_2009_001.MP4.
libavformat file format detected.
ID_VIDEO_ID=0
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
ID_AUDIO_ID=1
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO: [avc1] 1280x720 24bpp 30.000 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
ID_FILENAME=/drivestation/DVD/Flip/Portuagal_Holiday_Aug_2009_001.MP4
ID_DEMUXER=lavfpref
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=avc1
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1280
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=720
ID_VIDEO_FPS=30.000
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=0.0000
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=255
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
ID_AUDIO_RATE=44100
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_LENGTH=56.10
ID_SEEKABLE=1
ID_CHAPTERS=0
==========================================================================
Forced video codec: null
Opening video decoder: [null] Null video decoder
VDec: vo config request - 1280 x 720 (preferred colorspace: BGR 24-bit)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [null] 1280x720 => 1280x720 Planar YV12
Selected video codec: [null] vfm: null (NULL codec (no decoding!))
==========================================================================
ID_VIDEO_CODEC=null
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
FAAD: compressed input bitrate missing, assuming 128kbit/s!
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/9.07% (ratio: 16000->176400)
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=128000
ID_AUDIO_RATE=44100
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio))
==========================================================================
AO: [null] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=faad
Starting playback...


Exiting... (End of file)
ID_EXIT=EOF

[pasqualz]

dc2447, you're not hijacking. As long as you're having the same issue as me, and it seems you are, I just want it fixed for all of us! I know how to turn on debug mode, but where in the Linux directory structure does the debug log get saved to Once I know this, I can submit my log also. I wish Phi was here, he was working on a complete rebuild of theaudio module for XBMC and he helped me back in May-June to get SPDIF output working with my windows XBMC install. He poured through dozens of logs and seems to know them like the back of his hand. . . Phi, where are you?!?!?!?!?

[pasqualz]

OK, I did my research and figured out where the xbmc.log file is stored and here it is...
http://pastebin.com/m11177125

I played several videos during the capture of this debug log and found that the problem is NOT JUST with HD video. It happens with any video file I play.

I played a few standard definition stereo WMV files and a few High definition surround sound MTS files. I get approximately the same (4-7 second) delay between when the video starts and when the audio starts, then there is about the same amount of time where the audio is running at normal speed and the video slows down to let the audio catch up, then everything runs in perfect synch for the rest of the video.

I just realized that I never mentioned that I play all my video from a SMB share on a NAS appliance on my Gigabit network. Playing these files on my laptop on the same network does NOT reproduce the issue.

For convenience, here's my computer config:
- XBMC Live v9.04.1
- booting off an 8GB USB flash drive on a Zotac Ionitx-A-U motherboard
- 4GB RAM.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.
Pasqual

[pasqualz]

OK, so I looked through the debug log and something caught my eye. Let me preface my observation by atating that I know just enough to be dangerous! ;-)

In the log, everytime I play a video file, there are the following entries:

3411.22:54:28 T:2771377040 M:3288858624 DEBUG: PulseAudio: Context failed
3412.22:54:28 T:2771377040 M:3288858624 ERROR: PulseAudio: Waited for the Context but it failed
3413.22:54:28 T:2771377040 M:3288698880 DEBUG: CALSADirectSound::CALSADirectSound - Channels: 2 - SampleRate: 48000 - SampleBit: 16 - Resample false - Codec AC3 - IsMusic false - IsPassthrough false - audioDevice: default
3414.22:54:28 T:2771377040 M:3288698880 DEBUG: Initialize - using alsa device default
3415.22:54:29 T:2771377040 M:3288588288 DEBUG: CALSADirectSound::Initialize - packet size:4096, packet count:8, buffer size:8192

What made this stand out for me is that the PulseAudio error occurs exactly 5 seconds after the video begins playing. This is roughly the amount of time that I see video with no audio on the screen!

Could this be contributing to the audio delay and subsequent slowed video resynchronization

[pasqualz]

So I researched how to remove pulseaudio last night and couldn't find anything that was helpful. Does anyone know of a guide, or the command steps to remove pulseaudio?
Thanks!