OpenELEC meets Raspberry Pi - part 1 (XBMC)

[drdobsg]

It definitely takes longer to load than I expected.  How is everything working for you guys?  I am getting some glitches, it just starts randomly freezing in a weird flickering state.  I am using a build that I compiled, with a partition layout like tzzhc4.

Maybe I will try using one of the builds posted here next.

[cvtj97]

@tzzhc4

Its a thermal tape



@drdobsg

Try the build I posted back on page 3, just grab the target.zip I"m running it

[romland]

Right. Maybe someone will do the same mistake at me some point, so to rehash:

I for some reason had my "storage" partition as ext3 ("system" was ext4). Top that off with not having any space left on it after a little while and you have an issue with Samba not being able to start on boot (or being set up properly), so what happens is that XBMC will start and fail and then retry infinitely.

I should have seen the warning signals a bit earlier since I had no logs whatsoever to examine.

And yes, it takes a while before it starts up on first boot. Just wait for it, and SSHD will not be started during this either.

Cheers

[tzzhc4]

The menus are a little laggy but not unusable. 1080p video over network is jerky but local 1080p is smooth. Lower resolution is fine over network. Looking at the process table xbmc really rides the CPU.

[tzzhc4]

cvtj97 said:


@tzzhc4

Its a thermal tape




Cool, I know what I am picking up tomorrow!

[cvtj97]

tzzhc4 said:


The menus are a little laggy but not unusable. 1080p video over network is jerky but local 1080p is smooth. Lower resolution is fine over network. Looking at the process table xbmc really rides the CPU.



You using NFS or SMB?

[tzzhc4]

cvtj97 said:


tzzhc4 said:


The menus are a little laggy but not unusable. 1080p video over network is jerky but local 1080p is smooth. Lower resolution is fine over network. Looking at the process table xbmc really rides the CPU.


You using NFS or SMB?



NFS right now but I just threw a small server up with no tuning so could be that. The Pi is on ethernet and I am only seeing 2-3MB/s transfer rates which seems to be on the low side. Will do some more serious benchmarking, tuning and tweaking tomorrow.

[cvtj97]

Hmm, I've yet to get mine connected to my NFS server

[dom]

drdobsg said:


I am getting some glitches, it just starts randomly freezing in a weird flickering state.



Are you using the 128M memory split? That is required.

[mathewjenkinson]

Hi all,

Im awaiting my Pi delivery but reading the thread a few questions have come up:

Does the type of movie file effect playback?

MKV vs MOV or MP4?

Is the GPU being taken advantage of or is all the processing being done by the CPU?

Thanks,

Mathew

[drdobsg]

dom said:


drdobsg said:


I am getting some glitches, it just starts randomly freezing in a weird flickering state.


Are you using the 128M memory split? That is required.


I was using whatever the default was for the debian release.  I will try using 128.

[gavinlew]

Perhaps we should time how long it takes to boot for the first time (its been about 5minutes now since I saw the OpenELEC/PI Splash)

[gavinlew]

Or... work out how to get the kernel to print its debugging log to the screen while were testing it ?

[romland]

gavinlew said:


Or... work out how to get the kernel to print its debugging log to the screen while were testing it ?



You should probably be able to edit the boot script for the splash screen in /etc/init.d to either not show or show only briefly (just note that the partition is mounted RO by default under OpenELEC). Didn't look at it myself, just saw that it was there.

But it did not take five minutes for me to get XBMC started, took quite a bit less than that, so something is probably wrong. Can you SSH in? (see previous posts)

[gavinlew]

romland said:


gavinlew said:


Or... work out how to get the kernel to print its debugging log to the screen while were testing it ?


You should probably be able to edit the boot script for the splash screen in /etc/init.d to either not show or show only briefly (just note that the partition is mounted RO by default under OpenELEC). Didn't look at it myself, just saw that it was there.

But it did not take five minutes for me to get XBMC started, took quite a bit less than that, so something is probably wrong. Can you SSH in? (see previous posts)


Hi,

Yep I can SSH in across our LAN,

Mounts are # df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
none 60820 108 60712 0% /dev
/dev/mmcblk0p2 516040 106068 383760 22% /flash
/dev/mmcblk0p3 755920 23888 693632 3% /storage
/dev/loop0 81408 81408 0 100% /
none 62284 0 62284 0% /dev/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p1 96137 16080 80058 17% /var/media/RASPBERRY_P XBMC is running # ps aux | grep xbmc
931 root 4:52 /usr/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin --standalone -fs --lircdev /var/run/lirc/lircd XBMC has created some data in /storage (which I believe is for the media library) The last entry in /var/log/messages is Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]:
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: *****
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: [2012/04/25 13:12:03.214208, 0] nmbd/nmbd_browsesync.c:350(find_domain_master_name_query_fail)
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: find_domain_master_name_query_fail:
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: Unable to find the Domain Master Browser name WORKGROUP<1b> for the workgroup WORKGROUP.
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: Unable to sync browse lists in this workgroup.  

[tzzhc4]

DotMat said:


Hi all,

Does the type of movie file effect playback?

MKV vs MOV or MP4?

Is the GPU being taken advantage of or is all the processing being done by the CPU?



What format the video is encoded in makes the difference when it comes to performance. The only two licensed codecs for the GPU are MPEG4 and h.264:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/592

As long as the video is encoded with one of those two formats the GPU will do the decoding otherwise it will be the CPU that does the decoding. I have played both formats on my Pi in HD and assuming I meet IO requirements (see earlier post on network throughput) they are smooth as butter.

[romland]

gavinlew said:

Yep I can SSH in across our LAN,
Mounts are # df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
none 60820 108 60712 0% /dev
/dev/mmcblk0p2 516040 106068 383760 22% /flash
/dev/mmcblk0p3 755920 23888 693632 3% /storage
/dev/loop0 81408 81408 0 100% /
none 62284 0 62284 0% /dev/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p1 96137 16080 80058 17% /var/media/RASPBERRY_P XBMC is running # ps aux | grep xbmc
931 root 4:52 /usr/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin --standalone -fs --lircdev /var/run/lirc/lircd XBMC has created some data in /storage (which I believe is for the media library) The last entry in /var/log/messages is Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]:
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: *****
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: [2012/04/25 13:12:03.214208, 0] nmbd/nmbd_browsesync.c:350(find_domain_master_name_query_fail)
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: find_domain_master_name_query_fail:
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: Unable to find the Domain Master Browser name WORKGROUP<1b> for the workgroup WORKGROUP.
Apr 25 13:12:03 openelec daemon.err nmbd[940]: Unable to sync browse lists in this workgroup.  

My RasPi is currently down for, ahem, maintenance. But if I recall correctly XMBC logs to /storage/.xbmc/temp/xbmc.log -- maybe you can find some more information in there?

[tzzhc4]

nimdy said:


The Pi will still need the small FAT partiton to read the kernel and point it to another partition?



Yes, since that is how Pi boots:

1) Power on

2) The GPU starts executing some ROM code — nobody has control of this

3) The GPU reads a FAT partition from the SDcard

4) The GPU loads a graphics driver and a kernel image from the SDcard

5) The GPU then jumps to the kernel image

[drdobsg]

I brought my Pi into work today and rebuilt the SD card using the build posted in this thread.
I also used the 128 memory split. It works MUCH better than before. It boots much faster and is pretty snappy. I am using analog audio, dvi video, and no network connection.

I tried an Xvid .avi, a 720p mkv, and a 720p mp4 video file. All seemed to play pretty well. The audio sort of crackled when the clip first started, but stabilized after a few seconds.

[dom]

Yes, the analog audio starts and stops with a pop.

Something for my todo list. Possible solution is to start it at boot, and never stop it (just output silence). Need to find if there's a way of "fading out" when switching off and on.

HDMI audio will be much better.

[marshcroft]

Would someone who has a semi decent build mind putting an image of the SD card on here for others to grab down please.

[dom]

sraue said:

i am not really sure, but maybe it has todo with your $PATH which includes locations to other toolchains?

Good guess. Trimmed the PATH and it now builds okay. Thanks.

[drdobsg]

marshcroft said:


Would someone who has a semi decent build mind putting an image of the SD card on here for others to grab down please.


I took an image of mine before i booted it for the first time.  Would dropbox be ok?  It is about 515MB zipped.

[sraue]

http://openelec.tv/news/item/2.....-pi-part-2

[sraue]

dom said:


sraue said:


i am not really sure, but maybe it has todo with your $PATH which includes locations to other toolchains?


Good guess. Trimmed the PATH and it now builds okay. Thanks.


great