Kikat - Wasser Firmware for Beelink R89

[man]

Hi all,

wasser-FW 2.0.7 is released. Please take a look at the first post to get more infos.

Enjoy the new FW!

Wasser

Wasser, you made it again. Audio works FINE! No random mutes, audio passthrough works too. I can actually have audio from spidf and hdmi at the same time (it is cool because I do not need to go to settings to change whenever I want to use my audio receiver or my TV speakers).

Many thanks man! I didn't test the FHD Youtube but I would like to know if it is possible to have 4K. I do not understand why We can actually play 4K videos but not 4k videos on youtube (and until now, FullHD).

I am using 100mb Cache on Ram on SPMC and it is actually play fine (not at 60fps on the streams)

Regards

[bluesmanuk]

1080p Youtube confirmed as working

[wasser]

NEW - Wasser Firmware V2.0.7

Hi all,

wasser-FW 2.0.7 is released. Please take a look at the first post to get more infos.

Enjoy the new FW!

Wasser

[bluesmanuk]

The constant reading and writing to external drives is unresolved at the moment.

[sawbones999]

For those who are experiencing bad stutter, have you tried changing your cache settings in advancedsettings.xml to the one that mo123 posted a couple of pages back? That really helped out my system. Basically it makes SPMC/KODI use a nice big fat cache buffer in RAM instead of using a smaller buffer in eMMC. RAM is much faster than eMMC. Made a HUGE difference for me.

If you don't know how to create an advancedsettings.xml file there is a program add-on available called easy advanced settings which allows you to enable/disable settings and just enter values without having to edit or create the actual config file.

I even changed my ADT-1 to that advancedsettings.xml and it made a big difference there, too.

Also try disabling mediacodec altogether, and then maybe try alternating whether you are using rklibstagefright or libstagefright. In some instances one may work better than the other.

If none of that helps and you're streaming from a USB drive, try a different port, maybe even OTG port. Also, the filesystem type and the block size may contribute to some degree. I haven't noticed it in this particular platform but I have an mstar based DVR, and one guy was having a lot of problems with recordings and playback. It ended up being because he had his disk formatted as NTFS and when he formatted it he set the block size to 16mb thinking that larger chunks would give better performance, but actually it caused a lot of problems. After he reformatted with default block size there were no issues.

That may be a platform specific issue, but it might be beneficial to switch to a non journaling filesystem such as fat32 or ext2 to reduce overhead (I realize that this may not be practical if you are using very large files which may exceed the maximum file size).

If you are streaming across your LAN and having issues still after changing advancedsettings.xml, you might want to look into tweaking your tcp buffer settings.

Was the constant reading and writing to external drives which was discovered a couple months ago ever sorted out and properly fixed? I may have missed it when that got resolved.

Cheers!
-SB

[Gormar]

As bluesmanuk said, Spikes cause stutter. Remove any reason for the cpu to spike and you get no stutters.

I really doubt that video stutter in RK3288 case can be associated with CPU usage spikes. I didn't saw any difference with video playback when setting CPU to 408MHz frequency and as high as 1800 MHz with unlocked kernel (patched SAFETY_FREQUENCY).

What I observe is that FRC (frame rate correction) is realy a mess when RockChip do things (similar like in RK3188 case).
I've got butter smooth playback in MX Player HW mode right now but with every passing minute there is wider and wider audio desync lag. It is clear indication than video playback FPS is different than it should be. It can be corrected by switching MX Player into HW+ mode but afther that there will be visible stuttering if multiple of video frame rate is much different than screen refresh rate (i.e. screen refresh 60Hz and video 47.952 = 2 x 23.976 fps). Application try realy hard to sync audio and wideo but with clearly visible stutters from massive frame jumps. But in that case setting HDMI to 50Hz mode will help tremendously.

Anyways, I think this should be another topic discussion and not on Wasser's thread.

I agree completly. From my experience it isn't only Wasser's firmware issue. I tried Open Hour Cameleon v.1.11 and mo123's 1.3 firmwares with simillar result. In fact only one firmware gave me smooth playback but only in MXPlayer HW mode and it was Wasser's version 2.0.3 .

[wasser]

Some users reported that wasser's new kernel fix hdmi passthrough
Also if you get no sound, try disabling OK Google voice command through the blue Google app's settings if you are using that.

strange, i haven't seen any feedbacks here. Where have you seen the feedbacks?

Wasser

[theeze]

I don't agree with you about this! because i already have Minix x7 with the same network and all my videos were playing smoothly! Another thing I have other devices like Roku3 and my laptop, they playing all videos (HD and SD) very smoothly!! I know what i said and i always make some test on my network and my internet connection before telling who make this issue!

Guys you have to accept that there is an issue about playing videos with the r28!

You are right its not a network problem (unless you have a crappy network connection that is) it seems not all r28 units are the same what works for one doesn't necessarily work for others, not sure why, could be inconsistent manufacturing process maybe. I do find that doing the stutter fix adb shell commands still helps which tells me its software related.

Each machine will have a different setup of apps etc, so the only way to have a good chance to really compare like for like is to have different machines setup exactly the same.

Everybody will have different external network setups though but as long as there is a consistent speed that would fall within the limits required for streaming, then it could still be done.

There are also 2 revisions of board in the R28 though and apart from the fact that the blue light does not light up when in sleep ,odeon the original board, I've not read anything that gives a list of the specific differences between the board.

I seem to remember seeing tests between different RK3288 machines that indicated that the Nand used in the R28 was inferior to that of the R89 and others, which affected general performance.

I have a different revision of the R28 Meta...as it came with the new remote out of the box. Which most likely also explains why others don't have these issues on this box while others have them.

Stutters might also happen if you have things like gps and location services on. The reason for that is even though these boxes don't actually have any real form of gps, the OS on android doesn't know that and constantly pings your location.

You have to treat it as if it were a phone running on battery. Things that drain the battery faster than usual is due to background services doing more than they should. The reason why battery drains is due to cpu usage spikes requiring the app to go through your system's permissions.

As bluesmanuk said, Spikes cause stutter. Remove any reason for the cpu to spike and you get no stutters.

As for the minix x7, it's running the armlogic SoC which has been around for a long time, the RK3288 is still considered new and has bugs that may or may never get fixed.


Anyways, I think this should be another topic discussion and not on Wasser's thread.

In case People missed it...

Hi all,

i built new test kernel and uploaded here. Could please all of you (only have problem with hdmi audio output on some receiver) test this kernel if the nosound issue with HDMI audio output on some receivers is fixed?

If you want this issue will be fixed in the future please test and post your feedbacks, it's very important for me!!!

Thanks

Wasser

[bluesmanuk]

Each machine will have a different setup of apps etc, so the only way to have a good chance to really compare like for like is to have different machines setup exactly the same.

Everybody will have different external network setups though but as long as there is a consistent speed that would fall within the limits required for streaming, then it could still be done.

There are also 2 revisions of board in the R28 though and apart from the fact that the blue light does not light up when in sleep ,odeon the original board, I've not read anything that gives a list of the specific differences between the board.

I seem to remember seeing tests between different RK3288 machines that indicated that the Nand used in the R28 was inferior to that of the R89 and others, which affected general performance.

[gffmac]

I don't agree with you about this! because i already have Minix x7 with the same network and all my videos were playing smoothly! Another thing I have other devices like Roku3 and my laptop, they playing all videos (HD and SD) very smoothly!! I know what i said and i always make some test on my network and my internet connection before telling who make this issue!

Guys you have to accept that there is an issue about playing videos with the r28!

You are right its not a network problem (unless you have a crappy network connection that is) it seems not all r28 units are the same what works for one doesn't necessarily work for others, not sure why, could be inconsistent manufacturing process maybe. I do find that doing the stutter fix adb shell commands still helps which tells me its software related.

[cell_c18]

This is a network issue.

I have no stutters at all. When your signal is weak it means transfer rate is slow and will stutter as the video is buffering every split second which causes stutter. I have AC wireless and I don't stutter and with ethernet it's perfect.

People need to know the difference between a stutter due to hardware faults and stutters due to internet conections. The vast majority who report stutters seem to have slow internet or bad wifi reception or both.

For local videos that produce stutters, make sure you're not running tasks in the background and those videos are usually stutter free on other sources of media. In fact, trying rebooting your box and as soon as you can load up mx player and a local video. Does it still stutter? USB HDD reads and writes from external and never touches the Emmc for cache. So this might even be your USBHDD...but again, make sure it's stutter free elsewhere.

Advanced task killer is a nice little app to have. It even comes with a widget so it's a one click setup.

I don't agree with you about this! because i already have Minix x7 with the same network and all my videos were playing smoothly! Another thing I have other devices like Roku3 and my laptop, they playing all videos (HD and SD) very smoothly!! I know what i said and i always make some test on my network and my internet connection before telling who make this issue!

Guys you have to accept that there is an issue about playing videos with the r28!

[bluesmanuk]

This is a network issue.

I have no stutters at all. When your signal is weak it means transfer rate is slow and will stutter as the video is buffering every split second which causes stutter. I have AC wireless and I don't stutter and with ethernet it's perfect.

People need to know the difference between a stutter due to hardware faults and stutters due to internet conections. The vast majority who report stutters seem to have slow internet or bad wifi reception or both.

For local videos that produce stutters, make sure you're not running tasks in the background and those videos are usually stutter free on other sources of media. In fact, trying rebooting your box and as soon as you can load up mx player and a local video. Does it still stutter? USB HDD reads and writes from external and never touches the Emmc for cache. So this might even be your USBHDD...but again, make sure it's stutter free elsewhere.

Advanced task killer is a nice little app to have. It even comes with a widget so it's a one click setup.

I use wireless AC as well and the transfer rate is good, although the rate required for most video only really needs to be modest.

Task killers can be useful because there can be processes in the background that can suddenly spike and cause a stutter.

A startup manager is also of use to prevent things from loading at startup that are just not required, although it doesn't help when running some apps start others unnecessarily.

Clearing junk is another thing that can help at times.

The reality is that most people likely want Kodi to be able to play everything but this is just not a reality at the moment and for the most consistent playback, nothing beats MX player.

There is no such thing as a box/software combination that will play everything without stutter.

Trying to determine what files, with their varied settings play best is one way to try to reduce the possibility of issues.

[wasser]

new test kernel fixes hdmi audio output

Hi all,

i built new test kernel and uploaded here. Could please all of you (only have problem with hdmi audio output on some receiver) test this kernel if the nosound issue with HDMI audio output on some receivers is fixed?

If you want this issue will be fixed in the future please test and post your feedbacks, it's very important for me!!!

Thanks

Wasser

[roolmapool]

My r28 device use Wasser 2.06 for a couple of days... near perfect

Video Stutters... none with ethernet and SPMC 14.1, or Mx player ... almost none with Kodi 15 alpha 1.
I don't understand people who are talking video stutters

Firmware is stable... less heat.
Just few issue about sound... I can hear sound after few seconds after launching videos....

Big thanks to wasser

[amclean123]

With Wasser 2.0.6 I finally have perfect video playback. Here's my setup.

I'm playing MKV files ripped with MakeMKV. I have Mpeg2 and H264 videos. I haven't compressed them with Handbrake. I'm using MX player. If you want 5.1 audio you'll need to download this zip file (http://forum.xda-developers.com/devd...ct/dl/?id=9759) and place the zip file in your Android Download folder. MX will find it and use it on first run of MX player. MX HW+ won't play 5.1 audio. You'll need to just us HW decoding (See MX decoder settings). On your Android box you'll need to make sure and set your Settings > Sound > Spidf Passthrough if you want 5.1 audio. For some reason Wasser 2.0.4 and greater only have HDMI audio output on Yamaha receivers. Sony, Denon, Anthem, Pioneer do not. SPIDF works just fine though. Run an HDMI line to your TV and SPIDF from your android box to your AV Receiver.

I am sharing my videos over wired CAT5e ethernet from a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 (running DD-WRT) using Seagate USB3 5TB drives and an Anker USB3 hub. I have 3, 5TB drives on the hub and it works well.

I have not tried this yet on the Wasser 2.0.6 image but on all past images the RK3288 USB ports ran slower than the ethernet port. When I would plug my USB3 drives directly into the android box they would run slower than wired ethernet. SSD drives would even play slower over the RK3288 USB ports. I'll have to test and see if this has changed.

FYI I tried for a very long time to make SPMC or Kodi to work on all videos in my collection. At this point I've given up since MX player is working very well.

Hope this helps.
-Aaron