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+--- Thread: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC (/showthread.php?tid=191109)



RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - n3on - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 19:29)Koying Wrote: Those having divx/xvid/mp4 issues, could you try adding:
Code:
<advancedsettings>
[...]
  <video>
    <stagefright>
      <useMP4codec>0</useMP4codec>
    </stagefright>
  </video>
[...]
</advancedsettings>
to advancedsettings.xml.

This disable h/w decoding for mp4, but the chip should be able to decode it in software easily.

This does seem to make a difference. Odd, I tested pure software decoding before with multithreading enabled and I don't remember it looking much better. Can someone else confirm this I feel like my eyes are playing tricks on me. Also it only seems to be using 3 of 4 cores no matter how I configure it. Is there any way around that?

(2014-04-16, 19:51)Tinwarble Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 19:21)n3on Wrote: Because I have 10+ years of a media collection and not the resources/desire to re-encode them all. Also what container do you recommend? I find it incredibly hard to believe that playing old 480p video in Xvid/Divx should be a problem considering my xbox running xbmc4xbox streams it flawlessly. There's gotta be a simple solution if it was mastered 10+ years ago.

Again, those are just containers. Most likely they are MPEG 4 (codec), which is supported by the Fire TV, but that does not mean that divx/xvid/MPEG 4 is supported, Amazon doesn't make the distinction.

Yes, h.264 may be having the same or similar issues but that doesn't mean that they are caused by the same thing and it depends on what you mean by "jerky" since if you have a lot of jerkiness then it's not the same as h.264 which is small and irregular.

But as far as recommendation, either mkv/h.264 or mp4/h.264 which are more "universal".

Also, you don't necessarily need to re-encode. You could just run them through mkvtoolnix and do container swap, which should only take a couple of mins. per vid.

The jerkiness/stutter whatever you want to call it is mostly noticeable during panning scenes. I uploaded a sample a few pages back. Thanks for the tip on the container swap. I might give that a shot. Why would the hardware care what kind of container it's in? Wouldn't XBMC strip the container and feed the GPU straight MPEG4 making the container issue moot?


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - davilla - 2014-04-16

The hardware codec does care about pts and avi has the worst and inconsistent treatment of pts of all the containers. If your time codes are messed up, then the video will be messed up.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - n3on - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 20:37)davilla Wrote: The hardware codec does care about pts and avi has the worst and inconsistent treatment of pts of all the containers. If your time codes are messed up, then the video will be messed up.

Sure but if the video plays flawlessly on a PC and on xbmc4xbox then the timestamps shouldn't be the issue.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Tinwarble - 2014-04-16

Not necessarily. Playing on a PC, especially if your using VLC (which is designed to play badly encoded files) want reveal anything. I'm not sure about Xbox, but some devices will play badly encoded vids better than other and it depends on whether it's decoding in hardware or software.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - davilla - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 21:25)n3on Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 20:37)davilla Wrote: The hardware codec does care about pts and avi has the worst and inconsistent treatment of pts of all the containers. If your time codes are messed up, then the video will be messed up.

Sure but if the video plays flawlessly on a PC and on xbmc4xbox then the timestamps shouldn't be the issue.

I'm sure your PC has the identical hardware codec that are running on the Android device...


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - davilla - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:12)davilla Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 21:25)n3on Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 20:37)davilla Wrote: The hardware codec does care about pts and avi has the worst and inconsistent treatment of pts of all the containers. If your time codes are messed up, then the video will be messed up.

Sure but if the video plays flawlessly on a PC and on xbmc4xbox then the timestamps shouldn't be the issue.

I'm sure your PC has the identical hardware codec that are running on the Android device... Classic case of apples vs oranges.



RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - n3on - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:12)davilla Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 22:12)davilla Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 21:25)n3on Wrote: Sure but if the video plays flawlessly on a PC and on xbmc4xbox then the timestamps shouldn't be the issue.

I'm sure your PC has the identical hardware codec that are running on the Android device... Classic case of apples vs oranges.

No it doesn't. On my PC it is decoded with software, on the FireTV it is decoded with software (disabled all hw acceleration), one works well the other doesn't. I'm going to try changing one of my test files over to mkv per Tinwarble's instructions and see if there is a difference. I should run xbmc on my PC without hw acceleration and compare that too. Not sure I'll have time tonight.

After watching an mp4 video and then going back to an avi I'm seeing that the problem wasn't solved by turning off hw acceleration.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Tinwarble - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:27)n3on Wrote: I should run xbmc on my PC without hw acceleration and compare that too. Not sure I'll have time tonight.

That wasn't a question, that was a statement of fact. Your PC and Fire TV are different and you can't compare playback on one to playback on the other, "apples vs oranges."


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - davilla - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:27)n3on Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 22:12)davilla Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 22:12)davilla Wrote: I'm sure your PC has the identical hardware codec that are running on the Android device... Classic case of apples vs oranges.

No it doesn't. On my PC it is decoded with software, on the FireTV it is decoded with software (disabled all hw acceleration), one works well the other doesn't. I'm going to try changing one of my test files over to mkv per Tinwarble's instructions and see if there is a difference. I should run xbmc on my PC without hw acceleration and compare that too. Not sure I'll have time tonight.

After watching an mp4 video and then going back to an avi I'm seeing that the problem wasn't solved by turning off hw acceleration.

And your PC has an infinite amount of resources compared to FTV. Again, apples to oranges. FFMpeg is x86 vs ARM. Some parts of that x86 sw demuxer or decoder might be using special CPU instructions, might not on ARM. You just can't say, it works on my PC, it should also work on my XYZ arm device. There are just too many critical differences.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Martijn - 2014-04-16

Me starts playing a video on his orange


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Japgeisha - 2014-04-16

is it possible to ssh to firetv i need to instal add-ons stand alone a s we do in apple tv . ?? god bless

still with gotham we can not fast forward any news about it ? thx


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - n3on - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:46)davilla Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 22:27)n3on Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 22:12)davilla Wrote:

No it doesn't. On my PC it is decoded with software, on the FireTV it is decoded with software (disabled all hw acceleration), one works well the other doesn't. I'm going to try changing one of my test files over to mkv per Tinwarble's instructions and see if there is a difference. I should run xbmc on my PC without hw acceleration and compare that too. Not sure I'll have time tonight.

After watching an mp4 video and then going back to an avi I'm seeing that the problem wasn't solved by turning off hw acceleration.

And your PC has an infinite amount of resources compared to FTV. Again, apples to oranges. FFMpeg is x86 vs ARM. Some parts of that x86 sw demuxer or decoder might be using special CPU instructions, might not on ARM. You just can't say, it works on my PC, it should also work on my XYZ arm device. There are just too many critical differences.

That's where my confusion was. The point about using x86 instructions over ARM is where it makes the most sense, custom assembly mixed into source etc.

Sometimes I forget xbmc is open source. Time to clone the repo.

I converted a video to an mkv container and it still stutters sadly.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - underworld123 - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:58)Japgeisha Wrote: still with gotham we can not fast forward any news about it ? thx

FF and Rewind work in Gotham. See http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=191109&pid=1681709


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Trollslayer - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:12)davilla Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 21:25)n3on Wrote:
(2014-04-16, 20:37)davilla Wrote: The hardware codec does care about pts and avi has the worst and inconsistent treatment of pts of all the containers. If your time codes are messed up, then the video will be messed up.

Sure but if the video plays flawlessly on a PC and on xbmc4xbox then the timestamps shouldn't be the issue.

I'm sure your PC has the identical hardware codec that are running on the Android device...

The PC can use much more memory compared with Android and PTS problems increase memory requirements.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - jocala - 2014-04-16

(2014-04-16, 22:58)Japgeisha Wrote: is it possible to ssh to firetv i need to instal add-ons stand alone a s we do in apple tv . ?? god bless

still with gotham we can not fast forward any news about it ? thx

You can ssh with SSHdroid, personally, I don't see much advantage over adb shell.