Related
Ran into what I think may be a bug with Android 3.0 hardware video decoding.
I posted a bug to the Android issue tracker here.
Can anyone else confirm that they're seeing the same issue?
Hi. I recently upgraded to v. 1.7.33. Unfortunately, video playback is no longer smooth using hw+. In fact, now I cannot tell the difference between sw, hw and hw+ playback.
I have hardware acceleration on. I have installed the custom codec and the mx player codec from the android store.
My phone is a Nexus 5 running Lollipop.
In previous versions the hw+ playback was extremely smooth, and there was a real difference between it and sw. Now they are the same. The playback occasionally stutters and some sort of interlacing lines often appear.
axilmar said:
Hi. I recently upgraded to v. 1.7.33. Unfortunately, video playback is no longer smooth using hw+. In fact, now I cannot tell the difference between sw, hw and hw+ playback.
I have hardware acceleration on. I have installed the custom codec and the mx player codec from the android store.
My phone is a Nexus 5 running Lollipop.
In previous versions the hw+ playback was extremely smooth, and there was a real difference between it and sw. Now they are the same. The playback occasionally stutters and some sort of interlacing lines often appear.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are lot of video lagging issues reported around the world. It's not limited to MX Player. Many others also facing.
Many people has reported that even it can't play videos smoothly with H/W decoder. There are some occasional stuttering. H/W decoder uses android native mediaplayer interface to play the video. If any problem on H/W decoder, mostly it will be from the rom. So, my conclusion is tgat it looks android 5.0 itself has issues.
There was a similar report earlier. But, developer can't reproduce it in his nexus 5. If he can reproduce the issue, then there is a chance to find a workaround.
Can you share the link of any video that has issue?
I was watching 'Only Fools and Horses', season 6, episode 5, 'sickness and wealth'. I downloaded it from here:
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:E3F064738DCBED60763C1E639332059092B14CCD&dn=Only%20Fools%20And%20Horses%20-%20The%20Complete%20Collection&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3a80&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.publicbt.com%3a80&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.istole.it%3a80%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fopen.demonii.com%3a1337
(perhaps me viewing this old series in this way is not perfectly legal, but its one of my favorite series and I don't have the means to access it in any other way - my apologies if I should not have posted the link).
Hi, I've recently started using MX Player on my Android TV as its HW+ decoder plays very high bitrate 4K HDR H265 very smoothly whereas VLC player stutters. Really liking it so far.
However, I started to notice an issue with the HW+ decoder on H264: a lot of times, somewhere at the start of the video, the image freezes. Meanwhile, audio and subtitle tracks continue. This is easily resolved by just skipping a few seconds forwards or backwards, but it happens so often that it is a bit annoying. So I'm wondering if this is a known issue and if it has a known solution, despite that I can't seem to find anything about it after searching the forums.
I haven't bothered with providing custom codecs as I figure that isn't needed unless MX Player asks you to, but I did notice that MX Player uses the Neon codecs on my Android TV.
Things I've tried so far:
- Use the alternate HW+ decoder. Unfortunately this seems to perform not as good on high bitrate videos, and wide color gamut support seems absent on HDR videos, so I figured this one has more downsides than the original one.
- Disable H264 support on the HW+ decoder, so that it uses the HW decoder by default for H264. This works quite well, but for some reason, HW decoder seems to fail on many of my videos, causing MX player to fall back to SW, which gives noticeably worse performance and picture quality on my Android TV.
If I can't solve the freezing image on the HW+ decoder, I'd be interested to know how to best debug failures of the HW decoder so I can more reliably fall back to HW for H264.
shvklatch said:
- Disable H264 support on the HW+ decoder, so that it uses the HW decoder by default for H264. This works quite well, but for some reason, HW decoder seems to fail on many of my videos, causing MX player to fall back to SW, which gives noticeably worse performance and picture quality on my Android TV.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Probably the issue is either with your videos or system decoders.
H264 is supported on most of the devices. HW decoder is basically a wrapper for Android mediaplayer implemented on your device.
So, Most of the issues on HW decoder is from the device firmware itself.
HW+ decoder also uses the decoders available on the system. From the symptoms, it looks like your system decoder freezes or fails to decode the video frames.
Can you connect your device to a system in debugging mode & collect the logs while reproducing the issue?
It will give better insight into the issue.
Hi! Thank you for your reply. I figured you might be right about any HW decoder issues being caused by the system or the videos themselves, so I tried some stuff out. For instance, forcing VLC player to use hardware acc., the same videos play without issue, over and over again. Puzzled with this, I removed MX player completely from the Android TV device, and then installed it again. To my surprise, this fixed the HW decoder issues. The same H264 videos could now be played effortlessly with the HW decoder. In fact, I don't have any issue with H264 videos on the HW decoder at all anymore. This is great, but unfortunately also means I can no longer produce logs of the HW decoder issue I experienced. Not sure what happened there.
The HW+ decoder issue remains however. I'm still seeing the video track getting stuck on a single frame close at the start of H264 videos, until I skip forward or backward. Audio and subtitle tracks continue as normal. This behavior is completely inconsistent, seemingly random and not always occurring, even on the same video. This happened not even once during all my tests with the HW decoder, nor on any H265 video with the HW+ decoder. I will attempt to collect logs while reproducing and report back here once I succeed. (this could take a while)
shvklatch said:
Hi! Thank you for your reply. I figured you might be right about any HW decoder issues being caused by the system or the videos themselves, so I tried some stuff out. For instance, forcing VLC player to use hardware acc., the same videos play without issue, over and over again. Puzzled with this, I removed MX player completely from the Android TV device, and then installed it again. To my surprise, this fixed the HW decoder issues. The same H264 videos could now be played effortlessly with the HW decoder. In fact, I don't have any issue with H264 videos on the HW decoder at all anymore. This is great, but unfortunately also means I can no longer produce logs of the HW decoder issue I experienced. Not sure what happened there.
The HW+ decoder issue remains however. I'm still seeing the video track getting stuck on a single frame close at the start of H264 videos, until I skip forward or backward. Audio and subtitle tracks continue as normal. This behavior is completely inconsistent, seemingly random and not always occurring, even on the same video. This happened not even once during all my tests with the HW decoder, nor on any H265 video with the HW+ decoder. I will attempt to collect logs while reproducing and report back here once I succeed. (this could take a while)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks in advance. If you can provide the device logs, we will definitely look into the issue.
Thirumalai.K said:
Thanks in advance. If you can provide the device logs, we will definitely look into the issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't have any logs yet, but I came in to report what I believe to be relevant in case anyone else has the same issues: I think you were right about something being off with the system's decoders.
My Android TV device, a Philips 65PUS8102/12 TV, had performance issues with 4k videos and some very high bitrate Full HD videos. I grew fond of MX Player because its HW+ decoder was still capable of running 4k videos smoothly, where nothing else could. It was still a lot to process and skipping forward/backwards was pretty much impossible on these 4k videos because of it. Then there were the h264 issues I reported here, like the frozen frames. Oddly enough, while performance and skipping worked perfectly on both the HW+ and HW decoder for h264 videos, every player using HW acceleration including MX did stutter on some of the very high bitrate ones full hd videos (that still came nowhere near the 4k video bitrates).
A few days ago, Philips issued a massive software update that included both an Android update from 6.0.1 to 7.1.1, and bugfixes resolving 4k performance and some decoding issues. Right now, MX Player's HW+ decoder is no longer the only way for me to play 4k videos smoothly. What's more, skipping works perfectly on them now, and any reproducible issue I had on h264 (both performance-related and freezing frames) I haven't been able to reproduce since.
So if anyone faces the same issues as mine with my particular TV or another from Philips sharing the same software-base, make sure you're fully updated to the Android 7 release to presumably resolve at least several of these issues.
shvklatch said:
I don't have any logs yet, but I came in to report what I believe to be relevant in case anyone else has the same issues: I think you were right about something being off with the system's decoders.
My Android TV device, a Philips 65PUS8102/12 TV, had performance issues with 4k videos and some very high bitrate Full HD videos. I grew fond of MX Player because its HW+ decoder was still capable of running 4k videos smoothly, where nothing else could. It was still a lot to process and skipping forward/backwards was pretty much impossible on these 4k videos because of it. Then there were the h264 issues I reported here, like the frozen frames. Oddly enough, while performance and skipping worked perfectly on both the HW+ and HW decoder for h264 videos, every player using HW acceleration including MX did stutter on some of the very high bitrate ones full hd videos (that still came nowhere near the 4k video bitrates).
A few days ago, Philips issued a massive software update that included both an Android update from 6.0.1 to 7.1.1, and bugfixes resolving 4k performance and some decoding issues. Right now, MX Player's HW+ decoder is no longer the only way for me to play 4k videos smoothly. What's more, skipping works perfectly on them now, and any reproducible issue I had on h264 (both performance-related and freezing frames) I haven't been able to reproduce since.
So if anyone faces the same issues as mine with my particular TV or another from Philips sharing the same software-base, make sure you're fully updated to the Android 7 release to presumably resolve at least several of these issues.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We are pleased to know that your issue is resolved.
As I have mentioned earlier, many of the issue with hardware accelerations are usually from the firmware itself. It can affect each app in a different manner based on their implementation. And finding a workaround without an actual device is also very difficult.
Thanks for providing the information about the firmware update. It will help us to guide our users if they are unaware of it.
hi,
I have an Minix U9-H box (android 6.0) and when I play full HD streaming files from my ip tv provider using HW+ decoder, the video quality is poor. It's working fine with HW or SW decoder (The codec used by mx player is ARM V7 NEON).
I checked also in perfect player and when using HW+, it seems the player downgrade the video resolution to SD format.
Any clue ?
Chris
rusukof36 said:
hi,
I have an Minix U9-H box (android 6.0) and when I play full HD streaming files from my ip tv provider using HW+ decoder, the video quality is poor. It's working fine with HW or SW decoder (The codec used by mx player is ARM V7 NEON).
I checked also in perfect player and when using HW+, it seems the player downgrade the video resolution to SD format.
Any clue ?
Chris
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It should be a bug in the system decoder. In HW+, MX Player passes the frames to the system decoders to directly decode. Probably, the resolution of the decoded frame might be low. We have encountered a similar issue in the past especially when the stream is interlaced. If it's the root cause, then it has to be fixed on the firmware. You will notice similar issues with all major video player apps which makes use of similar technology.
rusukof36 said:
hi,
I have an Minix U9-H box (android 6.0) and when I play full HD streaming files from my ip tv provider using HW+ decoder, the video quality is poor. It's working fine with HW or SW decoder (The codec used by mx player is ARM V7 NEON).
I checked also in perfect player and when using HW+, it seems the player downgrade the video resolution to SD format.
Any clue ?
Chris
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HW and HW+ uses GPU for H.264 decoding. They performance much better from SW which uses CPU for decoding. HW can perform better than HW+ in most of the Cases, but there is a chance it does not work smoothly on many devices.
Same
Same problem. SW is better than HW and HW+. (Android tv 8.1 - Mibox 3s)
lighthousehn said:
Same problem. SW is better than HW and HW+. (Android tv 8.1 - Mibox 3s)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It may happen when the Hardware Accelerated Decoders implemented on the device itself is buggy. Can you please contact us with screenshots of the playback on HW/HW+ and SW along with a bug reported collected from MX right after playing the file? It will help us to confirm the same.
There is no error, just low quality. HW and HW+ is same. SW is good.
The problem only occurs when viewing iptv (multicast - udp), watching the file on the hard disk is ok
lighthousehn said:
There is no error, just low quality. HW and HW+ is same. SW is good.
The problem only occurs when viewing iptv (multicast - udp), watching the file on the hard disk is ok
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is one of the known issues on Xiaomi's TV boxes with Oreo and Nougat firmware. Based on our past investigation, it has been found that the hardware accelerated decoder's output resolution of the video frames is much lower than the actual frame size. As both HW and HW+ relies on the decoders shipped with the device, you can notice the issues on both. Request you to contact the device manufacturer so that they can fix the same on their firmware.
If it is possible, kindly share a link with us on PM or at [email protected] so that we can also escalate the same from our end.
I also tried on my phone (Mi Mix 2s - Android 9, MIUI 10) and it gave same results.
multicast links on private network, so you can not access it: https://textuploader.com/dlohs/raw
lighthousehn said:
I also tried on my phone (Mi Mix 2s - Android 9, MIUI 10) and it gave same results.
multicast links on private network, so you can not access it: https://textuploader.com/dlohs/raw
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you please try any non-xiaomi device and check again? Can you also check whether it happens if you copy the stream to a file using FFmpeg? Without a sample clip or a link, we may not be able to seek the assistance of the Xiaomi team.
MXPlayer said:
Can you please try any non-xiaomi device and check again? Can you also check whether it happens if you copy the stream to a file using FFmpeg? Without a sample clip or a link, we may not be able to seek the assistance of the Xiaomi team.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't have a non-xiaomi device. These are sample files. I saved them with VLC
http://www.mediafire.com/file/71cnwgwzsgw674b/test.ts/file
https://www.mediafire.com/file/wjhcmec367uhwxr/test1.ts/file
Let me guess a bit: The format of the service provider is 1080i, this issue relates to the deinterlacing algorithm. With HW decoder, resolution halved.
maybe recode your video?
Hello,
This is my first post regarding MX Player but I think it could be useful for others if they find themselves in a similar situation.
I recently purchased a new Android box for streaming and have been using MX Player without issue for a couple years.
When installing the latest version of MX Player(1.52.1) and Latest version of codecs (1.49.0 ARMv7 neon) I have intermittent stutters and videos sometimes crash or fail to play.
I have a T95z Plus model. 2022 Upgrade Android 12
OSAndroid 12.0CPUH618 Quad-core cortex-A53GPUMali-G31 MP2RAM4GBROM32GB
The specs are similar or identical to my previous unit. I replaced due to frequent crashing and software annoyances.
My solution was to find a downgrade. I'm not sure if posting links is acceptable here but google is your friend.
In my case I was able to open MX Player on my old unit and browse the About section in the settings drop down.
There I was able to find the current version and codec version that I knew to be stable.
The version of MX Player that seems to be working without issue for me is 1.48.9 using Codec version 1.44.
Hopefully someone finds this post useful and google will find this thread. I was unable to find any solutions after a couple hours of searching google and the xda forums.
Hey
MX Player's HW decoder is nothing but a thin wrapper around Android MediaPlayer implementation on the device. If you are facing this with the HW decoder, it's likely due to a firmware bug or the video profile exceeding the device's capabilities.
Please try selecting HW+ by selecting the HW icon on the player window and check again. This may provide a better experience in case of firmware issues. If the problem persists, please collect a bug report and share it with us at [email protected] along with a video recording so that we can get this checked.
Lacks87 said:
Hello,
This is my first post regarding MX Player but I think it could be useful for others if they find themselves in a similar situation.
I recently purchased a new Android box for streaming and have been using MX Player without issue for a couple years.
When installing the latest version of MX Player(1.52.1) and Latest version of codecs (1.49.0 ARMv7 neon) I have intermittent stutters and videos sometimes crash or fail to play.
I have a T95z Plus model. 2022 Upgrade Android 12
OSAndroid 12.0CPUH618 Quad-core cortex-A53GPUMali-G31 MP2RAM4GBROM32GB
The specs are similar or identical to my previous unit. I replaced due to frequent crashing and software annoyances.
My solution was to find a downgrade. I'm not sure if posting links is acceptable here but google is your friend.
In my case I was able to open MX Player on my old unit and browse the About section in the settings drop down.
There I was able to find the current version and codec version that I knew to be stable.
The version of MX Player that seems to be working without issue for me is 1.48.9 using Codec version 1.44.
Hopefully someone finds this post useful and google will find this thread. I was unable to find any solutions after a couple hours of searching google and the xda forums.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse