VLC video freezes on RasPi 3B+

Should VLC 2.2.6 (Umbrella) be able to play an off-air SD (720x576x25) .ts recording? This is installed from a NOOBS V2.8.2 boot image, and with a normal installation of VLC (ie no performance tweaks).

I ask because the picture freezes after a couple of seconds and then maybe updates once every 30 seconds, although the sound continues to play perfectly.

It's not a great hardship: I wasn't expecting a RasPi to be used for playing video (and especially not HD 1920x1080x25 H264), but I was surprised that it was *so* bad even for SD which is less processor-intensive.

What are the normal tweaks to give best performance from VLC?

Reply to
NY
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On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Sep 2018 15:55:41 +0100) it happened "NY" wrote in :

Dunno, but hd plays OK on my old raspi but I bought a decoding key from them. That is it plays OK with OpenElec, no idea what the player was. Not all players support the hardware acceleration, was a thread about that here some time ago.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

What format is it in ? A Raspberry Pi only supports software decode for MPEG2 unless you have a license key:

formatting link

I think you'll find that with hardware decode it can keep up with HD or at least 720P, I'm not sure that vlc gets to the hardware support it's been a long time since I've used a pi for video.

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Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays 
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun 
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Reply to
Ahem A Rivet's Shot

My 3B (not plus) has no licence key, but with libreELEC it happily plays

1080p video, I expect VLC and KODI both use FFMPEG under the hood ...
Reply to
Andy Burns

Yeah the licence key enables *hardware* decode. Software runs with or without key.

Reply to
A. Dumas

In what format ? The license key is only needed for MPEG2 playback.

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Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays 
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun 
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Reply to
Ahem A Rivet's Shot

My point being that software performance is good enough for fullHD, and hardware is unlikely to give worse performance than software ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

This is MPEG2. Are you saying that a licence key isn't needed for decoding of H264, only for the older MPEG2?

Reply to
NY

Plus where is the video coming from?

Local SD card, Local USB device, Ethernet to server, Ethernet to internet?

---druck

Reply to
druck

UK spec terrestrial TV, so H.264 for 1920x1080 and MPEG2 for 720x576 material.

Reply to
Andy Burns

DVB-T2 capture card in a PC running TVheadend, streamed over wifi to Kodi on the Pi.

Reply to
Andy Burns

On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Sep 2018 21:37:04 +0100) it happened Andy Burns wrote in :

I get my movies from satellite, USB tuner on PC to harddisk. Then copy to the Pi SDcard later, or use that USB harddisk in the PI, with openelec. Been a while since I used the Pi for video, as my Samsung big TV can also play from the USB harddisk. Maybe your WiFi link is the bottle neck?

Try to copy a piece of 10 minute movie via WiFi and see how long it takes? If more than 10 minutes then it is the WiFi.

Reply to
Jan Panteltje

Yes. It's not an age thing - it's a license thing. When I was streaming MPEG2 over wifi ( long time ago) I had wifi issues. It just was not fast enough. (11B and some distance indoors)

Even if wifi is faset today - you may still be caught by speed degrading with distance/obstacles

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Reply to
Björn Lundin

In my case, I was playing from the local SD card (having initially copied it over wifi from another computer). I particularly chose what I presume is the fastest source, from a local "disc", to eliminate wifi delays. Normal UK SD TV so MPEG2.

Youtube and BBC News site videos play fine: maybe the codec used for those places less strain on the CPU. For playing MPEG2 in VLC, CPU was about

85-95% so I didn't do it for long because the CPU ran a bit hot.
Reply to
NY

They use DASH, so adapt to the bandwidth/screen-size/CPU-horsepower available, picking from several available qualities of stream every few seconds ...

Reply to
Andy Burns

I've just played a video that is available in 1920x1080 quality. Youtube on Firefox can play it perfectly well at up to 480p x 25, but stutters on 720p x 50. That's assuming a full buffer, as shown in the Stats for Nerds right-click option of Youtube; since I only have a 2 Mbps internet connection (ie the ADSL speed), it can't keep up 720p very long, and once the buffer is empty, the stuttering is a lot worse.

But for 480p (the closest equivalent to UK TV's 576i), the fact that it can play it for as long as the buffer is not running on empty, whereas

720x576x25 MPEG freezes on one frame suggests a big difference.

Does it matter that I'm running Raspian rather than libelec? Once I get round to moving my PVR from NextPVR on Windows to Myth or Kodi on RasPi, I'll change the card to a libelec installation. I'm not over-impressed with the rather clumsy, inconsistent and over-complicated UI for MythTV, but it does a perfectly good job once you learn to live with certain operations only being possible with a keyboard - eg you can't click on a programme in the EPG to select it for recording. With a decent UI for the front end, it could be a good PVR program.

Reply to
NY

They haven't worked on video support (ie. hardware acceleration) in Firefox, only on the pre-installed Chromium.

Reply to
A. Dumas

I'll try Youtube in Chromium and see how it compares. I hadn't thought of it being browser-specific, though I should have done. Of course, with my low internet connection I can only test it for the few seconds until the buffer empties, but that's enough to see what resolution the video decoding can handle without stuttering or freezing.

Reply to
NY

Exactly so - it's a legal thing.

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Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays 
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun 
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Reply to
Ahem A Rivet's Shot

So without an MPEG2 license you'll get better results from the

1920x1080 than the 720x576 as long as the player supports hardware decode at all.
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Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays 
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun 
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Reply to
Ahem A Rivet's Shot

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