Kikat - Wasser Firmware for Beelink R89

[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.

[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

[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

[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 .

[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

[bluesmanuk]

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

[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]

1080p Youtube confirmed as working

[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

[man]

BTW, do you plan to do a Dual boot ROM? There are already roms with the new GPU driver for linux and Kernel. Would that be possible to add this to your ROM? It would be just the cherry on the cake!

[sawbones999]

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

That alone could be causing stutter for some.
Cheers,
-SB

[bluesmanuk]

That alone could be causing stutter for some.
Cheers,
-SB

Yes that is a good point.

[orionas21]

Tronsmart remote control

Hi Wasser!!

2.0.7 is perfect firmware!!
HDMI pass-through fixed and with advancedsettings.xml, lan cable cat6 (to Giga switch TPlink) no stutters at all from local (USB HDD or Network HDD or Internet streaming) with SPMC 14.1 beta 1!!

<advancedsettings>  
  <network>
    <buffermode>1</buffermode>
    <readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
    <cachemembuffersize>157286400</cachemembuffersize>
  </network>
</advancedsettings>

If only i could make the tronsmart remote to play with it i would realy appreciate it!!
Any ideas on how to?

[sweup]

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

I'm not able to find easy advanced settings, can you plz link to Play store?

[sparomba]

Nexus 10 ?

I recently successfully replaced original firmware with Wasser Firmware 2.06 using the AndroidTool 2.3.

Now I wanted to update to the latest 2.07 Wasser firmware. However AndroidTool 2.3 doesn't detect the device anymore ("No device found") and the Winows PC detects the device as Nexus 10.

On the Android device under settings->usb "Connect to PC" is enabled. The required windows drivers are installed properly.

How can I upgrade from wasser firmware 2.06 to 2.07?