Choppy video is going to happen whenever XBMC is trying to use software video decoding on an ARM device that doesn't have a lot of CPU power. It can even happen on non-android boxes, like on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, etc. There are tons of reasons why this could happen, but the root of the problem isn't the choppy video. The root of the problem is this: why is hardware video decoding not working. That is the key to both problems, but they are almost certainly two different problems, since you guys are using two very different ARM chip boxes that each use a different method of hardware video decoding.
As for why Frodo once worked and now doesn't, the most likely answer is that vanilla v12 from xbmc.org has no hardware video decoding enabled at all. A lot of sellers put a modified version of XBMC on the boxes to give it hardware video decoding before v13 was ready. Normally I would say, hey, if you're happy with v12 then just go back to v12, but I honestly don't know where to look for the special modified versions, at least not for an AMLogic-based box. (Kitcloudkicker can likely use SPMC, which is XBMC v12 with hardware video decoding, on the x7 which is a Rockchips-based box).
There have been a number of people who have specifically reported issues with AMLogic boxes only playing sound and no video with v13. From what I've read there are three main reasons this happens, which I've recently outlined (just a day or two ago, actually) on the
Android FAQ (wiki):
Quote:The three most common causes of only having sound, but no video, when playing a video file are:- The hardware in the box is AMLogic-based and another video/media app is running in the background. Quit the other media apps or restart the device and XBMC should display video again.
- The hardware in the box is AMLogic-based and the firmware (Android installation) didn't set certain permissions correctly and isn't rooted. The easiest way to fix this would be to either root the device, so that XBMC can set the file permissions, or update to a better firmware that sets the correct permissions.
- XBMC thinks the video can be decoded using video hardware/acceleration, but the encoding just isn't right. Using software decoding might be a work-around: Settings -> Videos -> Acceleration
We've already ruled out that the 3rd one won't work because the box doesn't have enough CPU/software power to playback the video without a hardware encoder. That leaves the other two, or some 4th situation that I don't know about yet.