How to get hardware acceleration with default XBMC player in Android

[wololo]

Honestly XBMC Hardware acceleration support is still not there yet for a few devices, including the popular Rockchip and AllWinner ones. (RK1388, etc...)
I did work on a patch, which I think is now included in the nightly builds: it fixes external player support (MX Player, etc...) while still having the libstagefreight support. This basically lets users choose if they want to play their video directly in XBMC with hardware acceleration, or play through MX Player.

http://makesmarttv.net/external-players-support-mx-player-etc-fix-for-xbmc-on-android-perfect-hd-with-no-compromise/

Other versions such as the XAF build let users do this, but are old and filled with bloated plugins, in my experience

[john3voltas]

Honestly XBMC Hardware acceleration support is still not there yet for a few devices, including the popular Rockchip and AllWinner ones. (RK1388, etc...)

wololo, my box is a AMLogic M6 currently running with native HW decoding support thanks to Gotham nightlies. But I am having stuttering/buffering issues with it even though is is connected to the wired lan.
So I would like to test a build with support for external player such as your's.
Just wondering if your's being from Oct/2013 already has native support for AMLogic. Does it?
Thanks in advance.

[wololo]

Did you try the nightly builds? They should be including my patch by now
Edit: you *did* try the nightly gotham builds. AFAIK these should already integrate my patch. Just follow the steps in my article, but skip the step where you download my build, just use your gotham nightly

[john3voltas]

Really? Alright!
Gonna try the external player tonight.
Thanks mate

[Johnoo]

wololo

Like your build, works very well, even on an A20 (MK808C) device.
Took quite a while to find, surprised not more people are using it.

Any idea to define a rule in playcorefactory ,

If rtmp = 720 or 1080 then use MX player.

at the moment i`m using

<rule player="DVDPLAYER" protocols="rtmp"/>

This is great for uktv, filmon etc.. ,
but would like to open Yify HD 720/1080 rtmp in MX.

If I set all rtmp to open in MX, just doesn't work except yify HD.

Any info greatly appreciated ,

Cheers

[stb2xxx]

use xbmc 14 alpha support hardware acceleration :

http://mirrors.xbmc.org/nightlies/android/arm/

[MikelThief]

I thought it has been provided in xbmc 13..

[dennis3001]

Hi guys,
Do you know if HW acceleration supposed to work with MK 802 android stick and Gotham 13.2 Beta?

I edited the playerfactory.xml to use DVDPlayer as the default and enabled the Libstagefright in settings but all videos are getting stuck.
Same videos play just fine when I switch back to MXPlayer.

[buhohitr]

Re: How to get hardware acceleration with default XBMC player in Android

Hi guys,
Do you know if HW acceleration supposed to work with MK 802 android stick and Gotham 13.2 Beta?

I edited the playerfactory.xml to use DVDPlayer as the default and enabled the Libstagefright in settings but all videos are getting stuck.
Same videos play just fine when I switch back to MXPlayer.

You shouldn't have to edit XML file, in xbmc setting, unchecked the medialib and leave stage fright checked. You may have to enable expert mode to do so.

[dennis3001]

You shouldn't have to edit XML file, in xbmc setting, unchecked the medialib and leave stage fright checked. You may have to enable expert mode to do so.

Thanks for your response. This was already the case. But the playerfactory.xml was still referring to MXPlayerFree until I manually changed it to DVDPlayer.

But I think this is not the problem, the problem is that the internal player still isn't using HW acceleration.

[dennis3001]

Any thoughts anyone?

[KingSombra]

I'm just a lowly user, not a developer, but I'll see what I can do to help.

One of the things Rikomagic supposedly does is they use a custom HW acceleration interface.
(why why why? I dont know )

Try using SPMC instead of XBMC.

Supposedly SPMC is just another direct build of XBMC with the proprietary Rikomagic API compiled in.

At least that is my reading of this page. http://spmc.semperpax.com/
(You can download it there as well)

I just recently switched over from Gothem to SPMC on my mk802iiis(B) and my mk902 and both are playing movies from my media server, super smoothly.

[dennis3001]

I'm just a lowly user, not a developer, but I'll see what I can do to help.

One of the things Rikomagic supposedly does is they use a custom HW acceleration interface.
(why why why? I dont know )

Try using SPMC instead of XBMC.

Supposedly SPMC is just another direct build of XBMC with the proprietary Rikomagic API compiled in.

At least that is my reading of this page. http://spmc.semperpax.com/
(You can download it there as well)

I just recently switched over from Gothem to SPMC on my mk802iiis(B) and my mk902 and both are playing movies from my media server, super smoothly.

Thanks for the suggestion!
I have tried the SPMC and I do see an improvement. Some of my videos started to play smooth.
But unfortunately most of the movies still get stuck in SPMC (while they play super-smoothly in MXPlayer)

I am using MK802 with Android 4.0.4.

Thanks for your help!

[KingSombra]

There are actually a bunch of tweaks you can try.

If you are using WIFI, first try turning off WIFI Optimization in Android settings. Thats an android phone thing to save power. But an Android TV box doesnt need to save power. Settings->WIFI->(three dots in upper right)->Advanced->Unclick WIFI Optimization.

Next there are a couple of tweaks to the SPMC video out that might make it smoother. First make sure you have "Expert" mode turned on in SPMC settings. Settings->Video->Settings Level (at bottom in menu to left)

Now go to "Playback". Within the "Playback" section change "Adjust display refresh rate to match video" to read "On start/stop". Then make sure "Sync playback to display" is clicked ON.

This might help clean up stutter.

Its possible that SPMC is devoting too much CPU to downloading through whatever network you are using. By default SPMC, and XBMC for that matter, use as much as they can. You can tell it to not do so. Go up a level in the Settings menu then go to System->Internet Access

Now change "Internet bandwidth limitation" from Off, one notch down to 102400kbps.

It is possible this could help the freezing problem.

If the freezing problem is still there, then try setting up an advancedsetting.xml file and play around with some of the settings as per this http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title...he_video_cache

Other than any of those suggestions, I wouldnt know anything more to suggest.

Good luck.