[Guide] Kodi on Raspberry Pi OS / Raspbian Buster

[Seketh]

I've finally got my rpi4 with everything I wanted working correctly, and it seems my last two issues are down to Kodi:

1) Is there currently any way to properly convert HDR to SDR? Although 4K H.265 decode is working well, colors are washed out...

2) Any way to launch SteamLink from Kodi? Old methods I've found on github don't seem to work with Buster.

[piplip]

OK, now that I can get output via pal I have another issue with kodi: the overscan settings don't stick, i.e. every time I start kodi I have to set the overscan again.
Fun fact: it took me a while to find that the overscan settings in config.txt are only for the console and kodi has its own calibration procedure

[mlab]

Most likely you didn't alocate enough memory to the GPU. For 4K you need 320MB, that is the recommended for the RPi 4 as explained on the first post.

I've solved the problem with running rpi-update. Thanks all for help!

[DougieLawson]

I've solved the problem with running rpi-update. Thanks all for help!

Did you pay attention to the public health warnings for rpi-update? It's not meant for general use as it can (and in my case has) leave your system unbootable. Usually, you should ONLY run rpi-update when told to by an expert.

[piplip]

I will, btw, the problem is the same as here:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?ti ... pid2786842

though at the time I was testing with vdr, now I'm using tvheadend.
I think it worked fine the last time I tested on the pi (with hdmi since pal didn't work ) but now I'm not really sure...

Shoot me, I remembered it half right: the problem didn't appear when using the libreelec test image, only with the kodi package for raspbian. I'll see if the latest libreelec image also fixes the pal issue.

[mlab]

I've solved the problem with running rpi-update. Thanks all for help!

Did you pay attention to the public health warnings for rpi-update? It's not meant for general use as it can (and in my case has) leave your system unbootable. Usually, you should ONLY run rpi-update when told to by an expert.

I did. What your comment is intended for? It looks like latest kernel from Buster is incompatible with some of RPi4 features unless you run that update. I would rather expect Buster to sort the issue for me automatically when detected RPi4 hardware than having comments like yours

[DougieLawson]

The general rules is everyone should run the stable kernel unless they have a very explicit reason not to. The comment is left as a warning for others who might render their systems unbootable by following your example.

[piplip]

The general rules is everyone should run the stable kernel unless they have a very explicit reason not to. The comment is left as a warning for others who might render their systems unbootable by following your example.

The fact that the stable kernel doesn't work with pal output it's quite a good reason. Anyway, the worst that could happen is that the pi won't boot, so what? You rewrite the sd card and that's it.

[Rascas]

I've finally got my rpi4 with everything I wanted working correctly, and it seems my last two issues are down to Kodi:

1) Is there currently any way to properly convert HDR to SDR? Although 4K H.265 decode is working well, colors are washed out...

2) Any way to launch SteamLink from Kodi? Old methods I've found on github don't seem to work with Buster.

1- Currently not. That is a problem already identified that, most likely, will only be fixed in Kodi 19.

2- Never tried SteamLink but I am pretty sure there should be a way to do that.

[hugepotato]

Hey

I had the same problem as xuhcc. When I played 4k x265 videos with Kodi, it crashed GPU with this error:

Code: Select all

[   66.991652] [vc_sm_ioctl_alloc]: failed to allocate memory on videocore (status: 0, trans_id: 53)
[   66.991660] [vc_sm_ioctl_alloc]: failed to allocate "CGPUMEM" data (-12) - type 1, base 17121280 (17121280), num 1, alignment 4096

Doing rpi-update, while risky, fixed the issue so I'm guessing there in currently "stable" packages there... I will stay at new kernel or whatever for a while. Will I normally get newer packages when they come out in the stable channel or will I have to somehow turn back the rpi-update?

Cheers

[Rascas]

Hey

I had the same problem as xuhcc. When I played 4k x265 videos with Kodi, it crashed GPU with this error:

Code: Select all

[   66.991652] [vc_sm_ioctl_alloc]: failed to allocate memory on videocore (status: 0, trans_id: 53)
[   66.991660] [vc_sm_ioctl_alloc]: failed to allocate "CGPUMEM" data (-12) - type 1, base 17121280 (17121280), num 1, alignment 4096

Doing rpi-update, while risky, fixed the issue so I'm guessing there in currently "stable" packages there... I will stay at new kernel or whatever for a while. Will I normally get newer packages when they come out in the stable channel or will I have to somehow turn back the rpi-update?

Cheers

I am glad that you fixed your problem. This would probably be fixed sooner if you and the other user posted the full debug log because it provides all the info about the user system, like kernel and firmware version, which are relevant in this case. We (I and the devs) cannot test everything in every software and firmware versions that are released and we don't know which kernel/firmware version causes the problem and the one that fixes it exactly. That is why that everybody with a problem should post the full log and not only a snippet. Tomorrow I will test it with the latest kernel/firmware available in the repos.

[hugepotato]

I am glad that you fixed your problem. This would probably be fixed sooner if you and the other user posted the full debug log because it provides all the info about the user system, like kernel and firmware version, which are relevant in this case. We (I and the devs) cannot test everything in every software and firmware versions that are released and we don't know which kernel/firmware version causes the problem and the one that fixes it exactly. That is why that everybody with a problem should post the full log and not only a snippet. Tomorrow I will test it with the latest kernel/firmware available in the repos.

Well I don't really have the whole log now so can't really do that unfortunately. I still had some problems actually with 4k hevc video disappearing some times but I am not sure if that was not related to caching as I first played the video that wasn't fully downloaded, had missing pieces. Then when I did download it to full, it had problems in the same places so I just ended up watching on my PC because I didn't have more time to tinker.
Anyway I will probably look into it again.

[hugepotato]

Tried another 4k video and it played alright except for a small hiccup in the beginning (without any entries in the logs unless they are somewhere else instead of dmesg). But I did go to menu and every movement caused a blackout from which the device recovered. Other than that it played fine but there still seems to be some problems.

[Rascas]

Tried another 4k video and it played alright except for a small hiccup in the beginning (without any entries in the logs unless they are somewhere else instead of dmesg). But I did go to menu and every movement caused a blackout from which the device recovered. Other than that it played fine but there still seems to be some problems.

I just tried playing 4K videos to see if I could reproduce your problem. Raspbian Buster fully updated as today, Kodi 18.4, you can see in the log that the kernel and firmware versions are the latest ones available in the repos. No rpi-update. And everything works fine, no problems at all.
http://paste.debian.net/1116934/

However I could reproduce a problem, that seems like yours. Without hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 in /boot/config.txt, if I play a 4K video and go back to the menu while playing, HDMI loses connection and the only way to get image again is to run tvservice -p or to reboot the device. I don't know if this happened with previous kernel/firmware versions because I always have 4kp60 on.
So, try with hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 in config.txt, there is also an option on raspi-config that does the same.

[flyingsubs]

Hi! Any ETA on when this will be updated to 18.5? I got everything set up for 18.4, thank you! On 18.4 there is a bug where the EPG files isn't being picked up for commercial skip and I don't believe there is an 18.3 version.

Thank you for getting this up to version 18!

-Flyingsubs

[maxipower]

Tried another 4k video and it played alright except for a small hiccup in the beginning (without any entries in the logs unless they are somewhere else instead of dmesg). But I did go to menu and every movement caused a blackout from which the device recovered. Other than that it played fine but there still seems to be some problems.

I just tried playing 4K videos to see if I could reproduce your problem. Raspbian Buster fully updated as today, Kodi 18.4, you can see in the log that the kernel and firmware versions are the latest ones available in the repos. No rpi-update. And everything works fine, no problems at all.
http://paste.debian.net/1116934/

However I could reproduce a problem, that seems like yours. Without hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 in /boot/config.txt, if I play a 4K video and go back to the menu while playing, HDMI loses connection and the only way to get image again is to run tvservice -p or to reboot the device. I don't know if this happened with previous kernel/firmware versions because I always have 4kp60 on.
So, try with hdmi_enable_4kp60=1 in config.txt, there is also an option on raspi-config that does the same.

Hi,
Tried to play 4k videos in youtube addon, if setting the resolution above 1080p has issues.
By the way, does Kodi work better this way or through Libreelec?
Thanks...

[Rascas]

Hi,
Tried to play 4k videos in youtube addon, if setting the resolution above 1080p has issues.
By the way, does Kodi work better this way or through Libreelec?
Thanks...

I don't think Youtube 4K video will work fine on the Raspberry Pi 4. Youtube currently only offers 4k streams in VP9/WebM codec and the Raspberry Pi 4 (or below) does not support VP9/WebM hardware video decoding.

Feature wise, Kodi on Raspbian and LibreELEC should be currently similar. Don't know about LibreELEC but Kodi on Raspbian does not have game emulators available. Performance wise should be close too but that depends on what you have running in the background on Raspbian.

[maxipower]

Hi,
Tried to play 4k videos in youtube addon, if setting the resolution above 1080p has issues.
By the way, does Kodi work better this way or through Libreelec?
Thanks...

I don't think Youtube 4K video will work fine on the Raspberry Pi 4. Youtube currently only offers 4k streams in VP9/WebM codec and the Raspberry Pi 4 (or below) does not support VP9/WebM hardware video decoding.

Feature wise, Kodi on Raspbian and LibreELEC should be currently similar. Don't know about LibreELEC but Kodi on Raspbian does not have game emulators available. Performance wise should be close too but that depends on what you have running in the background on Raspbian.

Didn't know that Rpi4 doesn't support VP9 4k streams, is it definitive or will it support it in the future? My main use is movies stream and YouTube...
Thanks

[Rascas]

Hi,
Tried to play 4k videos in youtube addon, if setting the resolution above 1080p has issues.
By the way, does Kodi work better this way or through Libreelec?
Thanks...

I don't think Youtube 4K video will work fine on the Raspberry Pi 4. Youtube currently only offers 4k streams in VP9/WebM codec and the Raspberry Pi 4 (or below) does not support VP9/WebM hardware video decoding.

Feature wise, Kodi on Raspbian and LibreELEC should be currently similar. Don't know about LibreELEC but Kodi on Raspbian does not have game emulators available. Performance wise should be close too but that depends on what you have running in the background on Raspbian.

Didn't know that Rpi4 doesn't support VP9 4k streams, is it definitive or will it support it in the future? My main use is movies stream and YouTube...
Thanks

RPi 4 does not have a VP9 hardware decoder block so I hardly believe it will ever play 4K VP9 fine. But only the Raspberry Pi Foundation guys can anwser that.

[hawkeye_a]

Hi folks. New member here.
Been using a RPi2 for some years now, and have been using the RPi4-4 for a few months. Been having an issue with Kodi on Buster, and was hoping someone could point me to a fix/solution.

I did a "fresh" install of Buster last week via Noobs, and installed a few apps in Buster (LibreOffice, Gimp, Kodi). I haven't changed any of the default settings of Kodi. Playback of H264 video works like a charm, but anytime I try to play a HEVC(SD; haven't tried HD) file, Kodi crashes and returns me to Buster's desktop. This has happened multiple times so far.

Any suggestions?

Cheers
(Apologies if this issue has been answered elsewhere)

[Rascas]

Hi folks. New member here.
Been a RPi2 for some years now, and have been using the RPi4-4 for a few months. Been having an issue with Kodi on Buster, and was hoping someone could point me to a fix/solution.

I did a "fresh" install of Buster last week via Noobs, and installed a few apps in Buster (LibreOffice, Gimp, Kodi). I haven't changed any of the default settings of Kodi. Playback of H264 video works like a charm, but anytime I try to play a HEVC(SD; haven't tried HD) file, Kodi crashes and returns me to Buster's desktop. This has happened multiple times so far.

Any suggestions?

Cheers
(Apologies if this issue has been answered elsewhere)

Post your Kodi debug log after reproducing the problem:
https://kodi.wiki/view/Log_file

[G160]

Hi first off thanks for this.

Only issue I have is watching 1080i content, from a TVHeadend server...it plays for 2-5 seconds then the picture just freezes and I have to press stop to return to the menu.
Has anyone experienced this or know of a fix?
Happy to provide logs if needed.
Cheers.

[Rascas]

Hi first off thanks for this.

Only issue I have is watching 1080i content, from a TVHeadend server...it plays for 2-5 seconds then the picture just freezes and I have to press stop to return to the menu.
Has anyone experienced this or know of a fix?
Happy to provide logs if needed.
Cheers.

Yes, please post your Kodi debug log: http://kodi.wiki/view/Log_file

[andrum99]

It seems this build of Kodi doesn't work with the 64-bit kernel. Is this a known "issue"? I put that in inverted commas, since the 64-bit kernel is just a beta.

[gkreidl]

Hi first off thanks for this.

Only issue I have is watching 1080i content, from a TVHeadend server...it plays for 2-5 seconds then the picture just freezes and I have to press stop to return to the menu.
Has anyone experienced this or know of a fix?
Happy to provide logs if needed.
Cheers.

I just tested 1080i TV streams, not from tvheadend but from mumudvb (but that shouldn't matter). They play fine and never break.
Check your GPU memory settings.