OpenELEC Testbuilds

[daveg]

Do you have to do all the updates or just the latest one?
I assume that I would only have to do r11203 to bring it upto the latest release?

[mactalla]

can you please report at https://github.com/OpenELEC/OpenELEC.tv/issues ? the last xbmc-rpi changes contains a lot of new stuff to the whole xbmc codebase so its possible some functions are broken now which was working before.

Done.

Thanks for the work.

[drdobsg]

I updated to r11203 from 11034. As LastSilmaril already said, reboot from gui no longer works and all audio I tried is downmixed to stereo. CPU usage is around 80% idle in gui with rss on. The good thing is that it reads the mysql shared library works with the new MyVideos64 table format.

The dd command in your first post results in about 3.6MB/s on my SD card. I was so excited to try this new build that i didn't get a baseline with the old build, i may revert back and try it. Or maybe try another sd card since this one seems slow.

While the boot up time does seem a little fast, I am not getting any where near what you get.
[ 1.133063] Freeing init memory: 3740K
>[ 10.110964] udevd[717]: starting version 184
[ 12.652330] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x30

I think i will start with a spare class 10 sd card.

[drdobsg]

Ok, so i tried another SD card I had laying around. It is a transend16GB class 6 card. Installed a fresh build r11043 and took some baseline tests. This is before any advanced settings, and without adding any items to the library.
build r11043

Code: Select all

root ~ # sync; rm testing; sync; time ( dd if=/dev/zero of=testing bs=16k count=10000; sync)
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
163840000 bytes (156.3MB) copied, 37.287488 seconds, 4.2MB/s

real    0m39.453s
user    0m0.050s
sys     0m4.010s

Startup times from dmesg ...

Code: Select all

[    3.577961] Freeing init memory: 5140K
>[   12.773697] udevd[658]: starting version 182
[   16.824646] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x30

cpu usage is around 16% when idle at the home screen with the dimmed screensaver on. Jumps to 67% when i go to the system information screen to see cpu and mem usage in the gui.

build r11203
I deleted guisettings.xml and updated to r11203. I saw some decent improvements.

Code: Select all

root ~ # sync; rm testing; sync; time dd if=/dev/zero of=testing bs=16k count=10000; sync
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
163840000 bytes (156.3MB) copied, 21.930212 seconds, 7.1MB/s
real    0m 21.94s
user    0m 0.03s
sys     0m 3.38s

Startup time was cut by more than half!

Code: Select all

[    1.132117] Freeing init memory: 3740K
>[    3.814540] udevd[715]: starting version 184
[    7.500687] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x30

cpu usage is between 3.5 - 5% when idle at the home screen screen. Jumps up to 69% when in the system information screen.

It seems this SD card is faster with the new kernel, and bootup time is faster as well. Thanks for all your great work!

[onetootreefor]

Im not sure if everyone was experiencing this but on r11170 AirPlay wouldn't play sound properly for me, but now on r11203 its working great. YT plays in full screen with full audio. Also, I can confirm the 3.5-5% usage at idle. It seems much snappier on a fresh boot.

[rickd]

where are you getting the 3-5% cpu idle figure from?, top or debug in XBMC itself?. If its the latter how are you achieving this?. I've turned off RSS and updated to r11203 but it still idle's at 28-30%?

[VZoltan]

Hi i have problem with aspect ratio (coposit out, dont have hdmi tv)

I have crt tv, pal 4:3

By default (NTSC 4:3) GUI is streched vertically, also the video playback,

With default NTSC 4:3 i got the xbmc gui streched vertically, and also the videos are streched.

If i change the config txt to PAL 4:3 (crt tv btw)
The bootprocess is ok, also the "rainbow" rectangle is a perfect square, (first 1-2 sec of boot process)
But once the gui loads up, it is 576x288 on the upper half of the screen, but the videoplayback seems to be in correct aspect ratio.

Sample:

[drdobsg]

where are you getting the 3-5% cpu idle figure from?, top or debug in XBMC itself?. If its the latter how are you achieving this?. I've turned off RSS and updated to r11203 but it still idle's at 28-30%?

I am using top.

[arqcan]

I was messing around with the new testbuild [r11203] and it read all the details off my mysql database but i had an issue with the thumbnails. It managed to get 3-4 thumbnails and then didn't fetch anymore and it just sat at 99-100% cpu. I left it for a few hours to see if it need time to pull them down and cache them but no such luck. Anyone else have similar issues [problem with v64?] or is it just me?

[onetootreefor]

i used 'top' to get my cpu % information.

i have gone back to to r11170 because I noticed in r11203 I was having to buffer 1080p videos almost every 1.5 minutes. It wouldnt buffer for long but it would pause the video and force a buffer. I swapped in my r11170 sd card and boom smooth playback no buffer. I don't know what they changed but it really affected my playback.

[jasjeet]

I think its buffering because its forcing a recode on DTS and DD audio and not using "passthrough" like older builds, this is eating up CPU im guessing causing it to buffer.

[onetootreefor]

I think its buffering because its forcing a recode on DTS and DD audio and not using "passthrough" like older builds, this is eating up CPU im guessing causing it to buffer.

ahh so even though i have the DTS/AC3 in audio settings checked because its hooked up through my yamaha receiver its still trying to decode on the pi...makes sense...hope this gets worked out.

[jasjeet]

I think its buffering because its forcing a recode on DTS and DD audio and not using "passthrough" like older builds, this is eating up CPU im guessing causing it to buffer.

ahh so even though i have the DTS/AC3 in audio settings checked because its hooked up through my yamaha receiver its still trying to decode on the pi...makes sense...hope this gets worked out.

Yeah i think it should be fixed, it was working on May 26th build with 5.1 Passthrough perfect, im also using a Yamaha AV Receiver

[sraue]

i dont see issue reports about a broken boot because of the new kernel or sdcard issues... does this means we dont have such issues?

Stephan

[onetootreefor]

no broken boot here!! of course that's good news!

[sraue]

Hi,

Another short update (r11212):

http://sources.openelec.tv/tmp/image/op ... 12.tar.bz2
to update a older build without reinstalling: http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title ... g_OpenELEC

• fixed a issue where the XBMC addon repo is empty after a fresh install or after removing /storage/.xbmc
• reworked samba and samba server so its much smaller, this saves us around 5MB (thats 7% !)
• compressed the kernel (in the hope it works for all, here it works great) which saves us another 5MB

please test this build, esp. the changes regarding the samba server and report back any problems.

thanks
Stephan

[VZoltan]

Hi sraue, and what about this aspect ratio issue on crt 4:3 pal tvs via composite? (posted above)

Thx

[xebyte]

Anyone had any luck with making Edimax EW-7811UN wifi dongle (RTL8188CUS) work in these testbuilds?

Thanks

[jasjeet]

where are you getting the 3-5% cpu idle figure from?, top or debug in XBMC itself?. If its the latter how are you achieving this?. I've turned off RSS and updated to r11203 but it still idle's at 28-30%?

Finally figured it out.
Basically this is how to get the CPU usage properly
Download Putty on your PC, open the exe, and enter the IP address of the Pi running OpenElec.
Connect to it, then the terminal opens
Type: Root, hit enter
Type: openelec, hit enter
Now type: top, hit enter
and a windows like task manager display comes up showing processes and respective CPU usage. and indeed it idles at 0-5% in the main menu of OpenElec. i get about 30% usage playing a 1080p film.

Also if your overclocking with config.txt, ive got mine at 900Mhz CPU Core, you can check that the overclock is applied by typing: cat /proc/cpuinfo
After hitting Enter, BogoMIPS entry shows the CPU Frequency.

Hi,

Another short update (r11212):

http://sources.openelec.tv/tmp/image/op ... 12.tar.bz2
to update a older build without reinstalling: http://wiki.openelec.tv/index.php?title ... g_OpenELEC

• fixed a issue where the XBMC addon repo is empty after a fresh install or after removing /storage/.xbmc
• reworked samba and samba server so its much smaller, this saves us around 5MB (thats 7% !)
• compressed the kernel (in the hope it works for all, here it works great) which saves us another 5MB

please test this build, esp. the changes regarding the samba server and report back any problems.

thanks
Stephan

Any news on a fix for the 5.1 Audio passthrough?? Still getting 2 channel PCM It was working on older builds.

[Helpme1986]

Anyone had issues with r11212 and the android app, my TV Shows dont seem to be listing (though movies do fine)

[s4v4g3]

Anyone had any luck with making Edimax EW-7811UN wifi dongle (RTL8188CUS) work in these testbuilds?

I built a version of the 8192cu.ko driver that is compatible with bootc's 3.2.18 kernel. I'm running it successfully on debian squeeze now, but plan to try out OpenELEC this afternoon.

Here is the kernel module:
http://db.tt/kuZUVmdO

General information on installation is in this thread:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... =28&t=4992

[onetootreefor]

i do believe the audio passthrough issues are still present in r11211 (i havent compiled 212 yet). Its a much bigger improvement over r11203, but theres still some buffer issues which makes me think its still trying to decode on the device instead of my receiver. r11170 was/is flawless.

[milhouse]

I have buffering with DTS videos, when I didn't with earlier builds. I'm playing back over Analog, so downmixing to stereo (not yet connected the Pi to my Amp which will eventually allow me to test passthru) but for now these DTS movies always buffer in the latest builds (including r11212), even though the CPU is *not* maxed out (usually at least 10% unused, quite often a lot more spare CPU but still get buffering). This is streaming over NFS (FreeNAS server).

[onetootreefor]

also as @jasjeet said a couple posts up r11211+ only doles out PCM 2 channel whereas r11170 pass out DTS/AC3 to the receiver fine...So passthrough issues are still there causing movies with AC3/DTS to buffer (albeit at less of rate than on r11203)

[milhouse]

Do these latest builds include the AudioEngine updates?