XBMC on Raspberry Pi - Wonder if this will work out? (Historical Discussion Thread)

(2012-05-10 12:36)simonk83 Wrote:  

(2012-05-10 10:04)s7mx1 Wrote:  

(2012-05-10 09:42)gimli Wrote:  1.) CPU usage is not the main factor. Turn off the debug messages. Keep in mind which device you have in front and tell how the GUI feels then.

2.) For network shares prefer nfs over samba. Prefer passthrough over software decoding. Convert DTS -> AC3. DTS.

None of the current "dirty region" modes work on the PI.

CPU may play a big role in addon execution time. Currently I am happy with the HD playback performance, which is better than ATV 1 with crystalhd card. I am not too concerned about smooth gui. But currently video addon takes 20 seconds to simply load which is unusable for most people.

Thanks for the tips. Nfs not working in openelec at the moment. I am using FTP at moment. A lot people only got tv so audio software decoding is a the only way for us.

Dirty region mode 3 apparently works with latest openelec.

NFS works fine, I've been using it from the start

The newer versions with the newer Confluence skin is actually pretty smooth I find. Sure it can take a while to do certain thing occasionally, but moving around the menu's is pretty good I reckon, certainly chalk and cheese compared to the earlier versions.

Plugins do struggle though, but very early days yet (I don't think the openelec guys even have a pi so they've done amazing work in my opinion). I'm using it as my main media server at the moment, and all my media is 720p (a lot of it DTS). No problems so far.

Openelec is my only option so far. When I first received my pi I spent 2 days trying to get xbmc compiled either natively on pi or on qemu but build all failed at code level. Compiling Openelec on the other hand is breeze and never failed. Their git repository is synced pretty closely with xbmc and raspberry pi source.

Hopefully they will get their pi soon if they have not already got one and we can see some major improvements in addon performance in the near future. I agree 720p H264 media playback is excellent.

Have you tried fast forward/backward? It doesn't work for me.

I haven't even tried to compile XBMC directly, I've been using OpenELEC from the start

FF seems to work, but I haven't tried rewind yet. I'll give it a crack soon.

I've just now enabled Dirty Regions 3, and it seems to be working OK as far as I can tell, so that's nice

(2012-05-10 13:07)simonk83 Wrote:  I haven't even tried to compile XBMC directly, I've been using OpenELEC from the start

FF seems to work, but I haven't tried rewind yet. I'll give it a crack soon.

I've just now enabled Dirty Regions 3, and it seems to be working OK as far as I can tell, so that's nice

By fast forward I meant fast forward playback, i.e. forward playback at 2x, 4x etc of normal speed. No mater what speed I choose it only play at normal speed. Need it for reviewing security camera footage.

I managed to fast forward (during playback) a 720p TV show from the start until about 30 mins in, at 32x the other day. While it was definitely faster than normal playback, it wasn't 32x .

Based on the raspberry forum , you can overclock to 1000 but will void warranty. Interesting to see the performance increase.

Python being slow ? Has anyone looked and see that the python script compiled files are being created ? It will get created when it is python script is loaded once and hence should be alot faster running it the second time ..

Some quick updates with xbmc git version 24f322c on raspberry pi:

NFS needs specific options in the exports file to work.

VIDEO PLAYBACK

what's works:
* H264 video file up to 1080p over NFS play very smoothly. CPU usage was around 80% when playing 1080p HD video.

what's need to improve:
* Refresh Rate switching is bit flaky and can cause tv screen to shrink or expand
* Black screen for certain video files and all video sources on TVCatch
UP addon. Eventhough iPlayer works perfectly.
* Fast Forward/Backward never works for me though some user reported working.

I'm not too knowledgeable with video types but I keep hearing that H264 works on the Raspberry Pi, most of my videos are .avi or .mp4 using XviD with some .mkv files. Would these work on the Raspberry Pi...?

(If that question is even reasonable, as I said not too knowledgeable on files types vs encodings, etc)

(2012-05-12 19:36)dark_james Wrote:  I'm not too knowledgeable with video types but I keep hearing that H264 works on the Raspberry Pi, most of my videos are .avi or .mp4 using XviD with some .mkv files. Would these work on the Raspberry Pi...?

(If that question is even reasonable, as I said not too knowledgeable on files types vs encodings, etc)

Those are just containers. As long as the file name does not end with MPG or MPEG you will likely to play it with raspberry pi especially those HD video files.

Awesome, thanks for the response!

I may end up buying one just to tinker with in any event.

f%@# Yesssssssss it arrived time to get to work!!!