FTMC Jarvis 16.2.31

[x6adidasx6]

Running FTMC version 30 on an S912, Android 7.1.2, 3 Gb Ram, 32 Gb storage. FTMC runs really great and a Big thanks to Superceleron for putting together this awesome program. Only one small issue that I can't find an answer to in this forum. When I connect bluetooth headphones I can hear sound in all of the apps except when playing a video in FTMC. I know that this was also an issue in Kodi. Is there a setting within FTMC that I need to change in order for the sound to be broadcast within FTMC?

[superceleron]

Well FTMC have some problems with BT speakers, some play ok other dont give any sound.. is a old kodi jarvis bug that was only fixed recently on 17, the problem is i cant port that fix to this one.. is a big change!

[x6adidasx6]

It's a weird issue. I'm running the same FTMC version on another box with Android 5.1 and with the same Bluetooth headphones I get sound. But just not on the 7.1.2 box. Think it could be a firmware thing, or something within FTMC? PS - Thanks for the help. You are awesome!

[superceleron]

It's a weird issue. I'm running the same FTMC version on another box with Android 5.1 and with the same Bluetooth headphones I get sound. But just not on the 7.1.2 box. Think it could be a firmware thing, or something within FTMC? PS - Thanks for the help. You are awesome!

well it can be a FW thing, like missing bt speaker configuration on the system!

[x6adidasx6]

I'm wondering if it's something in Android 7.1.2. I know they had a lot of issues with Bluetooth when it first came out. I'll look into it a little deeper. Thanks for the help.

[MDashK]

Try Kodi 18 nightly.

Won't that be worse, since KODI does not have hardware acceleration for Rockchip nor Amlogic on the get-go in the first place?

[Kodimailbox2017]

Yes, the RKCodec was enabled on boxes.
On the Amlogic one, it makes the box crash. XD
Well, I can try the specific MKV file on mhy externa USB 3.0 hard drive (altough it will only use 2.0, due to the port of the box) but I remember trying to play another file that I have from that disc, and it was even worse at the time, so... XD

Guess I'll have to be able to live with the usual "buffering" then. Xp

Try the built in media player, rkmc or mx player to play your local files. I have the same box but i haven't tried local files on it yet

[MDashK]

Try the built in media player, rkmc or mx player to play your local files. I have the same box but i haven't tried local files on it yet

The amlogic X96mini box came with "KD Player".
The buit-in media player does not have hardware acceleration, and it stutters the playback like hell...
MX Player, I admit, have not tried...

I had RKMC in the TX2 box, but it gave me a lot of issues, so I gave up on it.
At the time, I uninstalled RKMC and installed KODI directly from the play store... It was even worse, since KODI in "vanilla" form does not have support for hardware acceleration in these chipsets, so every file played like I was trying to run a Full HD film on an Atom Intel CPU... XD
That was when I found out about FTMC, and never had any more stuttering issues on TX2, until I found these buffering bitrate issues on these specific MKV files...

Specifically, I don't think this is an issue related to the files being local or not...
I believe is due to high bitrate, leading to the buffering issues, since it happens at specific parts of the MKV file.

[Kodimailbox2017]

At least for online streaming, FTMC has been a savior for my TX2 R2 box. It just sucked that I couldn't use my Krypton build on it and had to build a Jarvis build from scratch just for that box. Every other fork of Kodi has been unusable for at least one reason or another. I foolishly uninstalled the generic pre-installed video player application without really testing it but other media players that seem to work good are the default Android one and MX player with HW+ decoding enabled. Btw, did you go into FTMC settings and disable mediacodec hardware acceleration? Only RKcodec acceleration should be enabled on that RK box. In case you didn't know, You should also have the generic/aml version of FTMC on the X96 and the RK specific version of FTMC on TX2. The RK version of FTMC is pretty much the only worthwhile Kodi option for RK boxes but you should have more options for that x96 like stock Kodi, SPMC and the SPMC Krypton beta.

[MDashK]

At least for online streaming, FTMC has been a savior for my TX2 R2 box. It just sucked that I couldn't use my Krypton build on it and had to build a Jarvis build from scratch just for that box. Every other fork of Kodi has been unusable for at least one reason or another. I foolishly uninstalled the generic pre-installed video player application without really testing it but other media players that seem to work good are the default Android one and MX player with HW+ decoding enabled. Btw, did you go into FTMC settings and disable mediacodec hardware acceleration? Only RKcodec acceleration should be enabled on that RK box. In case you didn't know, You should also have the generic/aml version of FTMC on the X96 and the RK specific version of FTMC on TX2. The RK version of FTMC is pretty much the only worthwhile Kodi option for RK boxes but you should have more options for that x96 like stock Kodi, SPMC and the SPMC Krypton beta.

Yes, luckily, online streaming, since it uses lower bitrate, I have not had any issues. =)
I'll try MX Player with HW+. Thanks for the tip.
Actually, no, FTMC, as far as I remember, it has both the RKCodec and mediacodec enabled... I'll disable it and see the results.

The thing is, I tried using the generic/aml version of FTMC on the X96mini, but the player always crashes when I try to play anything with hardware acceleration on.
SPMC does the same. I think it's due to Android 7, because support from amcodec was dropped by amlogic on that version of android.
I have received the information that, to activate back the amcodec function, one has to:

1. We put SPMC with amcodec support (for example, SPMC-16.7.1-spmc-4baafdf-armeabi-v7a.apk, download from off site)
2. Turn on amcodec in the acceleration settings
3. Need a root. Go to / system / etc / find public.libraries.txt, add to the end libamcodec.so
4. Reboot and enjoy!

Thing is... This X96mini has no root! I haven't tried KingRoot nor KingoRoot yet, but from what I've read online, it doesn't seem I will be lucky... But I will try it anyways...
Other option would be to downgrade it back to Android 6, but I can't find any firmware image of this box on the web...
Not even a MBox firmware image from the oficial amlogic website is available...

[Kodimailbox2017]

Yes, luckily, online streaming, since it uses lower bitrate, I have not had any issues. =)
I'll try MX Player with HW+. Thanks for the tip.
Actually, no, FTMC, as far as I remember, it has both the RKCodec and mediacodec enabled... I'll disable it and see the results.

The thing is, I tried using the generic/aml version of FTMC on the X96mini, but the player always crashes when I try to play anything with hardware acceleration on.
SPMC does the same. I think it's due to Android 7, because support from amcodec was dropped by amlogic on that version of android.
I have received the information that, to activate back the amcodec function, one has to:

1. We put SPMC with amcodec support (for example, SPMC-16.7.1-spmc-4baafdf-armeabi-v7a.apk, download from off site)
2. Turn on amcodec in the acceleration settings
3. Need a root. Go to / system / etc / find public.libraries.txt, add to the end libamcodec.so
4. Reboot and enjoy!

Thing is... This X96mini has no root! I haven't tried KingRoot nor KingoRoot yet, but from what I've read online, it doesn't seem I will be lucky... But I will try it anyways...
Other option would be to downgrade it back to Android 6, but I can't find any firmware image of this box on the web...
Not even a MBox firmware image from the oficial amlogic website is available...

Yea the s905w is a very newly released chipset and Android 7 is too secure for its own good so lots of cool things don't work yet lol. You can be a bit risky and try firmware from other s905w boxes but I think all of the 4 or so s905w boxes in existence use android 7+. I knew from day one to dodge the s905w as its purpose as a budget, gimped down version of a s905x is completely unnecessary with s905x boxes being inexpensive nowadays. The TX2 R2 box was a great but terrible learning experience for me lol. Never going with anything Rockchip or anything worse than a S905x again lol

[MDashK]

Yea the s905w is a very newly released chipset and Android 7 is too secure for its own good so lots of cool things don't work yet lol. You can be a bit risky and try firmware from other s905w boxes but I think all of the 4 or so s905w boxes in existence use android 7+. I knew from day one to dodge the s905w as its purpose as a budget, gimped down version of a s905x is completely unnecessary with s905x boxes being inexpensive nowadays. The TX2 R2 box was a great but terrible learning experience for me lol. Never going with anything Rockchip or anything worse than a S905x again lol

Yeah, I was unaware of the s905w situation back then, and I bought the box on pre-purchase to get the 20% discount and use some points I had stored at banggood... If I knew back then, I would have avoid it. XD
I dunno, since I have the TX2-R2, I don't think I will risk another firmware on it.
Might as well use it as a IPTV player using the apps from the TV operators and put it in the kids room or something...
Why do you say that the "TX2 R2 box was a great but terrible learning experience"? Have you had any other issues?
Aside from the buffering issues I've been getting, I don't really have any other complaint about it. XD So far...

[Kodimailbox2017]

Yeah, I was unaware of the s905w situation back then, and I bought the box on pre-purchase to get the 20% discount and use some points I had stored at banggood... If I knew back then, I would have avoid it. XD
I dunno, since I have the TX2-R2, I don't think I will risk another firmware on it.
Might as well use it as a IPTV player using the apps from the TV operators and put it in the kids room or something...
Why do you say that the "TX2 R2 box was a great but terrible learning experience"? Have you had any other issues?
Aside from the buffering issues I've been getting, I don't really have any other complaint about it. XD So far...

I was a long time HTPC and android user but I was pretty new to android box shopping. For my first box i wanted to get the cheapest deal possible on a box with Android 5+ for krypton, a current gen quad core or better SOC, Bluetooth, 1080p+ in youtube and at least 2GB/16GB of ram and storage respectively. I then saw the TX2 R2 meeting all of this criteria for $30 (Youtube is 720p max by default but I found a easy 1080p tweak for it before purchasing) so I took the plunge. I knew that the RK3229 was worst possible SOC that met my criteria and wasn't expecting too much but jeez, very few apps (video apps in particular) actually take decent advantage of this already low end SOC lol. This is due to Rockchip going rouge with its APIs instead of supporting cookie cutter android ones so most apps including Kodi don't properly support it. Kodi, SPMC and all other krypton forks don't even detect the resolution and refresh rate properly and probably uses like 2 out of the 4 cores. I have the box set to 1080p @60hz but it was detecting as 720p @240hz in every Kodi fork except RKMC and FTMC. RKMC has been abandoned for a while now so it doesn't have HTTPS and subtitle security updates so FTMC was literally my only choice.


While FTMC is definitely the best option by far, I couldn't transfer the krypton build I had spent months making/maintaining on my HTPC because FTMC is still just a 2017 updated Jarvis at the end of the day. When you install a krypton build on top of Jarvis you get a GUI breaking skin incompatibility error for obvious reasons, I just needed help with going into the FTMC install/config file location and manually setting the skin back to default from there, after that the GUI would have been useable again and I would have been able to uninstall the 1 or 2 addons that absolutely require krypton, set up my new FTMC compatible skin and been good to go. After reaching out for help here a few times and not even getting a reply and wasting lots of time doing research i ended up just making a Jarvis build from scratch for it. BTW, shame on you FreakTab, I know that would have been a very easy assist for some of you :P. Rockchip devices also have the annoyance of relying on a PC and a male to male USB to do firmware updates as if updating from local storage is really such a advanced concept... I've also had other annoyances specific to this box like no notification bar, bootloop for no reason, default launcher that wouldn't go away without uninstalling it (No recent apps button now), broken bluetooth/miracast and the Ok button on the stock remote being mapped as enter instead of the left mouse button so you can't click certain things with it on most web browsers. My previous box criteria still stands except that it now excludes all Rockchip devices under any circumstance. I do aggressively look out for widevine Lv1 drm too now but its not mandatory.

[MDashK]

I was a long time HTPC and android user but I was pretty new to android box shopping. For my first box i wanted to get the cheapest deal possible on a box with Android 5+ for krypton, a current gen quad core or better SOC, Bluetooth, 1080p+ in youtube and at least 2GB/16GB of ram and storage respectively. I then saw the TX2 R2 meeting all of this criteria for $30 (Youtube is 720p max by default but I found a easy 1080p tweak for it before purchasing) so I took the plunge. I knew that the RK3229 was worst possible SOC that met my criteria and wasn't expecting too much but jeez, very few apps (video apps in particular) actually take decent advantage of this already low end SOC lol. This is due to Rockchip going rouge with its APIs instead of supporting cookie cutter android ones so most apps including Kodi don't properly support it. Kodi, SPMC and all other krypton forks don't even detect the resolution and refresh rate properly and probably uses like 2 out of the 4 cores. I have the box set to 1080p @60hz but it was detecting as 720p @240hz in every Kodi fork except RKMC and FTMC. RKMC has been abandoned for a while now so it doesn't have HTTPS and subtitle security updates so FTMC was literally my only choice.


While FTMC is definitely the best option by far, I couldn't transfer the krypton build I had spent months making/maintaining on my HTPC because FTMC is still just a 2017 updated Jarvis at the end of the day. When you install a krypton build on top of Jarvis you get a GUI breaking skin incompatibility error for obvious reasons, I just needed help with going into the FTMC install/config file location and manually setting the skin back to default from there, after that the GUI would have been useable again and I would have been able to uninstall the 1 or 2 addons that absolutely require krypton, set up my new FTMC compatible skin and been good to go. After reaching out for help here a few times and not even getting a reply and wasting lots of time doing research i ended up just making a Jarvis build from scratch for it. BTW, shame on you FreakTab, I know that would have been a very easy assist for some of you :P. Rockchip devices also have the annoyance of relying on a PC and a male to male USB to do firmware updates as if updating from local storage is really such a advanced concept... I've also had other annoyances specific to this box like no notification bar, bootloop for no reason, default launcher that wouldn't go away without uninstalling it (No recent apps button now), broken bluetooth/miracast and the Ok button on the stock remote being mapped as enter instead of the left mouse button so you can't click certain things with it on most web browsers. My previous box criteria still stands except that it now excludes all Rockchip devices under any circumstance. I do aggressively look out for widevine Lv1 drm too now but its not mandatory.

Damn... I see you had it rough...
I also passed through the RKMC » KODI "vanilla" thing, and already had some stuff installed on RKMC... I also lost everything config'd at the time, just to find out all those issues with Rockchip, so I do understand what you went through. X.X But I was lucky enough to have very few things installed at the time, and it was easy to put everything back up at the end.
It is has you said: right now, for Rockchip, it's FTMC or nothing.

[haduvelko]

superceleron
I never used FTMC so i don’t know anything about it.
Kodi don’t have Bluray menu support, is with FTMC same or is different?

thanks in advance.