[mythtv-users] MythTV Raspberry Pi2 frontend testers

[Lawrence Rust]

On Tue, 2016-01-05 at 07:30 +1100, Kingsley Turner wrote:
> On 05/01/16 01:26, Peter Bennett (cats22) wrote:
> > On 01/03/2016 09:45 PM, Kingsley Turner wrote:
> >> I found that when I jumped forward/back during playback of a recorded
> >> stream (MPEG2 video); even during video editing/clipping - sometimes I
> >> got a black screen for a second or so.
> >>
> >>
> >> >From my memory, the license arrived very quickly after ordering.
> >>
> >> I have always used the license and jumping back and forward is very
> >> quick, so maybe you should try again with the license.
> >>
> 
> I received my "MPEG2" licence overnight.
> Does this do anything for H.264 playback by the way?  Some things I've read 
> are conflicting.
> 
> So I installed the licence, set the decoder to "OpenMAX" and added a rule IF 
> (<rez> > 0x0) -> HW Scaling.
> 
> In terms of playback of MPEG2 recordings (AFAIK all terrestrial TV in 
> Australia), it's flawless.  Same as watching it on the BE+FE box.

That's good to hear.

> The blank screen on jumping forwards & backwards (sometimes during editing 
> too)... this still happens.
> 
> The screen is definitely going out of sync.  I know this because (a) it's 
> screen-off black, and (b) the monitor's [HDMI Input] banner came up one of 
> the times.  I am using an old monitor (24" NEC) which was a quality monitor 
> when it was new.  Furthermore this monitor exhibited no problems like this 
> before.  But it Could Just Be Me.

I presume that you are using the RPi in EGLFS mode?  I haven't seen
these fleeting black screens when running in XCB mode with an X server.
Maybe it's a Qt/EGL interaction?

> Some other stuff I noticed just now:
> 
> If I playback "Big Buck Bunny" 4K 60fps version, I get an error "(X) Unable 
> to read first 2048 bytes".  (The playback of this on my BE+FE is jerky, and 
> unwatchable, but it does play.

Not surprising that the RPi dies here - 4K playback is beyond its h/w
capabilities.  However, the "...Unable to read first 2048 bytes" error
is indicative of something more problematic in Myth's design.  I've seen
this on other low powered FE's so there's a common problem.  I have some
patches for 0.27 and master that I use on my own FE's that appear to
resolve this problem so maybe I should think about getting them some
wider testing.

>   FWIW: can anyone playback 4k content on any 
> hardware?)
> 
> When I play a letterboxed (top & bottom) video, the theme background does 
> not get cleared away.

I think this is a Qt/EGLFS problem.  If you run it in XCB mode do you
still see the theme background?

-- Lawrence Rust