Low video performance on mk808 (judder/sutter/lag on HD videos)

[hyp3r]

Hi all,

I recently purchased mk808 and quickly upgraded to finless 1.7c.

I'm experiencing low video performance on the device. When there are fast movements or some significant moving on the screen there are some micro stutters. It is like some frames are skipping or lagging. I don't know how to explain but video is not smooth at all.

I tried finless 2.0, lewy20041 hybrid fw and also many video players including mx player but the problems still remains same.

Are there anybody experiencing same? Is there workaround for it?

Thanks in advance

[xes]

Yup mate I have mk808 and experiencing same issue like you. Atm using finless 1.7c with mx player and xbmc with hw access from 19 february. I think this is due to lack of proper decoders for our little machine. As i read at other board work is in progress to made proper HW decoders for 720p and 1080p.

[hyp3r]

hi mate.
I previously owned mk802 and in terms of video performance it was flying.
It is a little disappointing :/

[xes]

I totally agree with you I am also very disappointing about it.

[hyp3r]

xes can you please tell me in which forum you saw the development of hw decoders?

[stal2k]

you guys will have to provide a bit more info, I've been working with XBMC in particular and this stick for past two months. You CAN get it to play smooth (except some 1080p) MX player will play anyting perfectly fine. I'll give some general info so maybe it will help, otherwise let me know what version of XBMC, MXPlayer, and what codec/resolution your videos are'nt working.

1. XBMC is having a hell of a time with hardware decoding for android devices because there are so many of them. The way something like MX accomplishes this and the DVDPlayer (xbmc stock player) are different because XBMC has to have a "generic" solution.

2. for good quick fix using almost any rom download a XAF custom XBMC build and/or a playercorefactory.xml file that uses MXPlayer. there are a few floating around but they have like 20 different players, you really only need DVDPlayer and MX. Those micro jutters appear when using h.264 codec and running out of memory to keep up. if you press "O" during playback it will bring up debug info, check your framerates. also make ******SURE****** that cpua and cpub on bottom are being used, otherwise your not getting hardware accelleration.

3. just downloading HW accel build does'nt do any good if your using MX player.. if you ARE using MX make sure to go into settings and select HW+ mode locally or HW (either should work, HW+ is obviously better)

4. on fresh rom install and fresh xbmc you may get ok playback and jutters appear later. that is normal. try using bobs 4.2.2 version of android as it has 500mb+ free ram as opposed to 250 in 4.1

5. XBMC version rundowns..
gotham: does not have HW accel accept specifically named otherwise, in test build section
they also do not work very well with add ons and hav some random crashes, I'd advise steering cleer
for now because aside from the improved codename, nothing new for you really.

-frodo, you can find 3-4 different HW acc builds, personally I've had my best luck on the feb 2nd compile. other devices seem to like the 2-19, on my 808b the feb 2nd was only one without jitters.

if you do not have an advancedsettings.xml file in your userdata folder... make one and add these settings for sure.

/mnt/sdcard/android/data/org.xbmc,pl/files/.xbmc/userdata (from memory so org.xbmc may be wrong)
the path after files/ is hidden, make sure you enable see hidden files/folders.

<advancedsettings>
<network>
<cachemembuffer>0</cachemembuffer>
</network>
<skiploopfilter>48</skiploopfilter>
</advancedsettings>

check that for typo/syntax again that was from memory. what that does is set it to cache to disk instead of ram, and for the h.264 codec that gives us problem it allows it to skip frames you won't really miss.now if your NOT on 4.2.2 rom some 1080 videos can show distortion at top of screen with that setting, you can lower it in multiples of 8 only until you find a setting that works ie
-16 0 8 16 24 32 40 48
those are the valid settings, I've had best luck with 48 or 0. using the "O" debug info you can see how many frames are dropping (thats also whats causing your jitters btw)

now if I just typed all that and your trying to run this off SMB shares.. well thats another animal just say so and I'll explain in detail.. nutshell download cifmanager and use it, don'ttry to use SMB with xbmc native, or use UPnP that works just fine.... focker out!

[hyp3r]

Low video performance on mk808 (judder/sutter/lag on HD videos)

Hey thanks for info. However i did not installed xmbc yet. My problem is on default video player and mx player as well.
It is confusing that not everybody have this issue. I was thinking that it might be some setting or kernel bug but now i see there may be hardware fault

[mrblack1134]

Hey thanks for info. However i did not installed xmbc yet. My problem is on default video player and mx player as well.
It is confusing that not everybody have this issue. I was thinking that it might be some setting or kernel bug but now i see there may be hardware fault

hyp3r,

I also replied to you on armtvtech

Check my threads / posts from a while ago. I am most certainly sure that everyone has this problem on the Imito/MK808/etc. but they just don't notice it (or don't care). I had previously posted about this here:

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?3464-video-display-stuttering-discussion&highlight=

ie. using any opengl / game rendered smooth scene the problem is obvious to anyone.

Hope this gets picked up by somebody else...

[stal2k]

hyp3r,

I also replied to you on armtvtech

Check my threads / posts from a while ago. I am most certainly sure that everyone has this problem on the Imito/MK808/etc. but they just don't notice it (or don't care). I had previously posted about this here:

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?3464-video-display-stuttering-discussion&highlight=

ie. using any opengl / game rendered smooth scene the problem is obvious to anyone.

Hope this gets picked up by somebody else...

Ok maybe there is some sort of issue with your hardware then.. again what type of video are you trying to play, is it sd 720 or 1080? what codec is used DivX XVID etc? is it local or over interenet... is it all videos or just one in particular? also what firmware are you using? sorry if you said already. there is a bug in the libstagefright.so file (responsible for HW accel video) that rockchips has since corrected, so if your using an old one it can do some wonky things. If your interested in a more detailed explanation

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=152005&page=37 Thats a converstation between rockchips engineer and xbmc developer trying to make it work, the rockchips guy actually recompiled the file for him which was cool cause you don't see that everyday lol.

However in MX player, you are making sure at top right of screen it says HW or HW+ not SW right? if your not turning on the hardware accel it will suck for sure. I don't know if you monkeyed with settings at all but in android settings/developer make sure you don't have disable hw overlays ticked.

as a last resort some people have had success disabling the 2nd CPU, may want to give it a whirl to see. using android tuner you can turn it off from there (and back on) Also if you are using the very latest MX player free, try an older version, there were some codec compatibility issues. I downgraded it after 5 minutes.

can use attached mx to test if you'd like.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5Wb23So6dYgbmZTbDB3MTVSWVU/edit?usp=sharing

[hyp3r]

hyp3r,

I also replied to you on armtvtech

Check my threads / posts from a while ago. I am most certainly sure that everyone has this problem on the Imito/MK808/etc. but they just don't notice it (or don't care). I had previously posted about this here:

http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php?3464-video-display-stuttering-discussion&highlight=

ie. using any opengl / game rendered smooth scene the problem is obvious to anyone.

Hope this gets picked up by somebody else...

Hi mrblack

I read all links you gave. If it is some kind of hdmi driver issue then it looks promising. I hope you or someone could fix it.

By the way, do you use stock kernel? I mean is it exists on let's say 2dark4u kernel?

I was planning to try it out yesterday but unfortunately allminipc.com site was down. I see today it is up again and I'll try it today.


Thanks

[ididmytime]

you guys will have to provide a bit more info, I've been working with XBMC in particular and this stick for past two months. You CAN get it to play smooth (except some 1080p) MX player will play anyting perfectly fine. I'll give some general info so maybe it will help, otherwise let me know what version of XBMC, MXPlayer, and what codec/resolution your videos are'nt working.

1. XBMC is having a hell of a time with hardware decoding for android devices because there are so many of them. The way something like MX accomplishes this and the DVDPlayer (xbmc stock player) are different because XBMC has to have a "generic" solution.

2. for good quick fix using almost any rom download a XAF custom XBMC build and/or a playercorefactory.xml file that uses MXPlayer. there are a few floating around but they have like 20 different players, you really only need DVDPlayer and MX. Those micro jutters appear when using h.264 codec and running out of memory to keep up. if you press "O" during playback it will bring up debug info, check your framerates. also make ******SURE****** that cpua and cpub on bottom are being used, otherwise your not getting hardware accelleration.

3. just downloading HW accel build does'nt do any good if your using MX player.. if you ARE using MX make sure to go into settings and select HW+ mode locally or HW (either should work, HW+ is obviously better)

4. on fresh rom install and fresh xbmc you may get ok playback and jutters appear later. that is normal. try using bobs 4.2.2 version of android as it has 500mb+ free ram as opposed to 250 in 4.1

5. XBMC version rundowns..
gotham: does not have HW accel accept specifically named otherwise, in test build section
they also do not work very well with add ons and hav some random crashes, I'd advise steering cleer
for now because aside from the improved codename, nothing new for you really.

-frodo, you can find 3-4 different HW acc builds, personally I've had my best luck on the feb 2nd compile. other devices seem to like the 2-19, on my 808b the feb 2nd was only one without jitters.

if you do not have an advancedsettings.xml file in your userdata folder... make one and add these settings for sure.

/mnt/sdcard/android/data/org.xbmc,pl/files/.xbmc/userdata (from memory so org.xbmc may be wrong)
the path after files/ is hidden, make sure you enable see hidden files/folders.

<advancedsettings>
<network>
<cachemembuffer>0</cachemembuffer>
</network>
<skiploopfilter>48</skiploopfilter>
</advancedsettings>

check that for typo/syntax again that was from memory. what that does is set it to cache to disk instead of ram, and for the h.264 codec that gives us problem it allows it to skip frames you won't really miss.now if your NOT on 4.2.2 rom some 1080 videos can show distortion at top of screen with that setting, you can lower it in multiples of 8 only until you find a setting that works ie
-16 0 8 16 24 32 40 48
those are the valid settings, I've had best luck with 48 or 0. using the "O" debug info you can see how many frames are dropping (thats also whats causing your jitters btw)

now if I just typed all that and your trying to run this off SMB shares.. well thats another animal just say so and I'll explain in detail.. nutshell download cifmanager and use it, don'ttry to use SMB with xbmc native, or use UPnP that works just fine.... focker out!

Thank you, that has probably saved me some hassle, I have already gone through numours builds of XMBC.

Edit: You may know of this since you have been digging deep in this, but do you know how to stream 1080p content via upnp? seems to be a limitation somewhere.

[xes]

@stal2k thank you very much for your posts. I have fineless 1.7c + xbmc with hw from 2february and watching 720p is much better can you advice of mx player version which is the best ? or maybe you are using different software to watch movies ? like archos ? Yesterday Ive tried archos movie player (looks really nice) but it give me message that ac3 is not supported.

[ididmytime]

Having tested the 2nd of Feb build I am moving back to the 19th, as the 2nd completely breaks a majority of web streaming (you wont be able to fast forward or pause).

I also found the 19th did preform better at certain movies, while the 2nd at others, so depending on your movies and resolution everyone will get different results. Probably best to use the 19th, and then use the app which comes with the device for streaming personal media, as that plays HD media the best by far.

I'm sure with a bit of overclocking when it comes out for the device, and some work on the HW accelation, it will be good in a few months.

[xes]

Yesterday Ive watched few tv eps in sd from stream addons using xbmc 2ndfebruary and it was ok I will try again 19thfeb with skiploopfilter settings.

[mrblack1134]

I tried neomode's firmware for the MK802 III on my Imito MX2 -- video is still as choppy as before. Stutters every 2-3 seconds in slow-panning netflix scenes and visible stutter in opengl / rendered content.

My Logitech C310 webcam works with this rom however (it didn't in Finless's 1.7 Imito rom), so I'll keep it for now.

Still annoying that the video isn't silky smooth (ie. as on my wdtv or apple tv). Such a nice device otherwise...