Kodi on Batocera - problem

Xanac_13

Hey all, hoping there’s someone here who might be able to help.

I’m having a problem with Kodi 19.0 on the latest Batocera v31 on my small PC (it’s a Lenovo M93P). Chiefly, it’s dropping frames and driving me crazy!

I have been through a bunch-load of different settings to try and fix it. I usually set adjust display to frame rate on all my devices with Kodi and this works a treat. You can see the TV adjust to, say, 24Hz when the video demands it and it’s usually good to go. However on this box it just doesn’t work. I’ve tried various refresh rates and screen resolutions in fact and nothing affects it. It will drop frames intermittently causing judder throughout playback of any of my files. I’ve even tried disabling VAAPI - no difference.

I feel like there’s either something I haven’t considered here to remedy this, or it’s Kodi 19.0 that’s simply got a bug somewhere. Can anyone help? Thank you. 🙂

Xanac_13

I should add for clarity that my media is on a USB 3.0 external HDD with no separate power supply, and that mostly it’s my own DVD rips from my collection for convenience. They aren’t especially big files or high bitrate etc. I’ve also tried a simple flash drive with a file or two on it in case it’s a power issue but it made no difference. Completely lost. Thanks.

RetroFuture

Xanac_13

I’m not sure about the problem with Kodi, but I do understand how frustrating it is to ask for help and no one answer.

You might try adding the flatpak for VLC or even Kodi to see if there is any difference. Batocera Nation has a great YouTube video for installing flatpaks.

Not the answer you’re looking for, but something to try in the meantime maybe.

Xanac_13

RetroFuture

Sorry for late reply, but thanks for helping. Actually I think it’s a pretty good idea to use Flatpak and I hadn’t thought of that, but in this instance before I go that route I’m going to try the last release of Batocera with it’s slightly older version of Kodi. I don’t need it to be bang up to date as my files aren’t that demanding. As long as I can scrape the data (and they play without stuttering!) that’s enough. I don’t use any add-ons or anything. If this fails then I’ll re-install my Batocera 31 image (yes I made a completed base image for just such an occasion!), and try the Flatpak idea.

Thanks!

Xanac_13

Well, going back to an older version did nothing! It performs exactly the same way. Same stuttering and skipped frames. I’ve re-installed my v31 image and think I may have mitigated the issue for now, if not really fixed it. It looks like this box performs better at 720p, so I set the resolution to 1280×720 at 60Hz rather than the preferred 1080p. But doing this meant I still could not set change display to refresh rate without the stutter. So I have left that option off, and on the advice of a thread I found on Kodi I’ve whitelisted a couple of resolutions and refresh rates, chiefly the 1920×1080 24Hz and 23.98hz ones, and the 1280×720 resolutions at higher refresh rates.

The reality is I don’t know enough about Kodi or refresh rates, but always thought I knew enough to get it running well. Changing the refresh rate of the TV to match the video always works so well on the Pi series I thought it would be the same or even better for the PC, but for this box sadly not. However my playback is fixed for the most part and I’m happy enough to continue using it. Thanks again for trying to help. :-)

Xanac_13

Not wanting to be “that guy” constantly bumping his own thread, but just wanted to post up my solution (such as it is) to this problem in case others come along with the same issues.

Basically I would wholeheartedly recommend running LibreELEC from a USB rather than using the built-in Kodi, certainly on this particular PC anyway. I tried so many different options to remove the judder on Batocera’s Kodi, but simply put I could not find anything that ultimately gave me a performance I could be happy with.

I didn’t realise that you could run LibreELEC off a USB with persistence in this way, but it turns out you can and it is the perfect solution. I set the boot options in the PC’s BIOS to search for a USB key before going for the SSD, so now when I want to use it for video I just bob the USB key in the front and boot up. If I want gaming, just make sure the key is not in when booting up. Simple and perfect. Plus it means Kodi can be updated as it’s own separate entity, rather than relying on Batocera to update it.

Playback is noticeably judder-free in comparison. I would have to recommend this if you have the same problems as me. Hope this helps someone!

RetroFuture

Xanac_13

I’m glad you found a solution that worked for you.

I’m curious now though. I’m wondering if you did install the flatpak version of Batocera if the performance would be different…

As a side note, my understanding is that currently flatpaks only have sound and controller support on the dev build of Batocera, not the stable build. Though I haven’t tried on the stable build I can confirm that sound is working on Firefox for the dev build, (i.e. YouTube).