[agentborussia]

Kodi 20.1 Nexus
OS: Windows 10 64bit 22H2
CPU: AMD Ryzen 1800X
GPU: MSI GTX 1080 (Nvidia Game Ready drivers 531.79)
RAM: 32Go

Hi
Since a few days, I think after updating my nvidia drivers (from version 531.41), I've been experiencing Micro freezes of about a second or two in the video playback on almost every movies I watched
-It usually happens once, only the video freezes, then catches up with the audio and stays stable for the rest of the movie
-It happens with any container or encoder I tried so far (mp4, mkv, h264, h265)
-For audio I use passthrough wasapi with a marantz SR6014, the problem is the same wether the signal is mono, stereo, dts or dolby

At the time I was using Kodi 19.4 Matrix, here is what I tried to solve the problem so far:
-Updating to Kodi 20.1 Nexus
-Updating the Nvidia drivers again when another version was available (version 531.79)
-Updating to Kodi 21.0 Omega alpha 1
-Rolling back to both Kodi 19.4 Matrix and Game ready drivers 531.41
-Switching to Nvidia Studio drivers
-Trying various rendering/scaling settings in Kodi
-A clean re-install of Windows 10 with both Kodi 19.4 Matrix and Game ready drivers 531.41
-Updating to Kodi 20.1 Nexus with nvidia game ready drivers 539.79 after the clean windows re install

CPU-GPU usage never get over 20%, I didn't notice any spike

Unfortunately I was unable to replicate the problem while replaying 20 minutes of a movie for the kodi log file, but here it is, with the media info log of the movie
kodi log

video info

Any troubleshooting idea anyone ?

Thank You

[PatK]

NVIDIA from version 531.41 when I'm using 531.61 Studio drivers, humm.. log shows video driver version is NVIDIA 531.79
Nothing in the debug log indicates an issue, (switching from (3840 x 2160))
for the purposes of a test, set desktop to 1920x1080x60 ensure full coverage on selected display,  launch Kodi and play media, did this solve?

[agentborussia]

Thanks for the reply

I believe I already try that with no luck at some point before reinstalling windows, but will try again with the current configuration

In the meantime I was able to watch 2 movies without any issue yesterday, and the only thing I did was disabling NordVPN
I also realised I installed it recently, around the same time the problem appeared
I believe it has some sort of integrated firewall, could it be that the app monitors the computer activity and triggers those hiccups when it detects Kodi trying to read the file ?

I will do some more testing in that area and with your suggestion, and report back

Thanks again for the help

[Karellen]

@agentborussia

Also check your audio drivers as something seems to be wrong there.

Line 513-550 shows the reported audio drivers available to Kodi
Line 552 shows Kodi trying to open a device that does not exist
Line 571 Kodi has chosen a device that is not found.

Also, you should be using WASAPI, not DirectSound

[agentborussia]

Thanks for the advice, I updated audio drivers and disabled useless devices
Yes it's my bad, I usually use WASAPI as I have an atmos configuration, but it resets to DirectSound when updating nvidia drivers, I forgot to set it back when making the log

I would also like to report that NordVPN, or at least its activity monitoring features, definitely seems to be the problem, as I didn't have any issue since disabling it when using Kodi
I would recommend anyone with the same issue to look there

Thank You