Which software and video format seems to be the most compatible across devices

[poofyhairguy]

I didn't realize deinterlace was off by default. Seems that will help with my encodings of DuckTales (for my kiddo) as well as the Shield series which appear to have some jaggies going on.

Decomb is probably the one you want more. Honestly though I just let Kodi de-interlace everything on playback.

Is fast good enough, or is it recommended to use slow or slower there?

Slow is good if you are trying to hit a certain file size.

 

[mvbighead]

Decomb is probably the one you want more. Honestly though I just let Kodi de-interlace everything on playback.



Slow is good if you are trying to hit a certain file size.

Ah, I completely forgot that it was built into XBMC. I think I vaguely remember seeing it on the Raspberry. I'll have to check that out tonight.

Only trouble is, I am noticing the jaggies on my desktop as well. Granted, I suspect 99% of the viewing I do of those files will be from the XBMC systems I'll have around, but I do tend to throw videos onto local disk when I am going on a flight, and not sure what all apps have that ability. (I'd guess most do, but I need to look into it.)

Thanks for bringing that up though. Going to check that out tonight.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Ah, I completely forgot that it was built into XBMC. I think I vaguely remember seeing it on the Raspberry. I'll have to check that out tonight.

Honestly in your case you might want Handbrake to do it. Deinterlacing is easily one of the most demanding things that can be done in Kodi, and I don't know if boxes like the FireTV can handle it. I know for a fact that Pi's could BARELY do it, like the lowest possible version of it. Heck I still use Nvidia in my primary viewing system because only their GPUs can deinterlace VC1 content. If I could do it over I would just deinterlace everything but now I am stuck 50-50 so I never do it because I have to leave the settings on anyway.

Decomb is better than deinterlace out of the two options FYI. It is newer, I don't know why the other option is still there.

But if you want this stuff to play on mobile devices, or things weaker than that Chromebox, I would maybe deinterlace as you go. I would also de-telecine all the stuff that needs it:

https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/Telecine

For me that was like half of my TV DVD collection.

 

[mvbighead]

Decomb is better than deinterlace out of the two options FYI. It is newer, I don't know why the other option is still there.

But if you want this stuff to play on mobile devices, or things weaker than that Chromebox, I would maybe deinterlace as you go.

I'm assuming you mean decomb as I go, right? Just making sure.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I'm assuming you mean decomb as I go, right? Just making sure.

Yeah sorry, good catch!

 

[poofyhairguy]

I just checked. Unlike the Chromebox or Pi a FireTV really can't deinterlace. So there you go. Leave it on.

That also means they aren't great for Live TV which is sad.

 

[mvbighead]

I just checked. Unlike the Chromebox or Pi a FireTV really can't deinterlace. So there you go. Leave it on.

That also means they aren't great for Live TV which is sad.

Ruh roh... that may limit my future use of them. Oh well, good thing I only bought one for the purposes of testing this.

 

[mvbighead]

Been tweaking and playing with the FireTV running the MythTV plugin. After working out some config issues, it does work.

Problem is, any major panning is excessively jerky. Any excessive character movement is excessively jerky. I went down to the Chromebox and it was smooth. Next test is to swap the devices around and run the Chromebox over wifi and the FireTV over hard wire, but looking at CPU stats, I think the jerkies are coming when the CPU pegs at 100, so I am fairly sure the FireTV is not up to the task. That said, it is ok watching news in the morning, but anything else is just too jerky to enjoy.

I did notice that the Chromebox CPU got fairly high, so it might be worth getting an i3 NUC, but the pricepoint there is a bit too high for my taste. The Chromebox does seem just fine, so that may be my future 'dvr' solution for the two main TVs. The bedroom will probably stay with the FireTV. I may occasionally view DVR content from it, but not the bulk of it.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Make sure under Kodi for the Chromebox you enable all the GPU acceleration in the advanced settings. If you are using the newest Openelec there are a TON of driver fixes for the Intel GPU that basically has made it so everything in my library but HEVC and VC1 plays on the GPU. In fact the GPU in Openelec now supports the second highest level of de-interlacing even possible in the software.

With these new driver updates the only reason someone should mess with an i3 is if they want a guaranteed future proof box that can cut through the very worst h265 years from now when we have those 4k disks. And then probably they need the i5 one, or even better a Mini ITX rig that can take a GPU upgrade.

 

[mvbighead]

Make sure under Kodi for the Chromebox you enable all the GPU acceleration in the advanced settings. If you are using the newest Openelec there are a TON of driver fixes for the Intel GPU that basically has made it so everything in my library but HEVC and VC1 plays on the GPU. In fact the GPU in Openelec now supports the second highest level of de-interlacing even possible in the software.

With these new driver updates the only reason someone should mess with an i3 is if they want a guaranteed future proof box that can cut through the very worst h265 years from now when we have those 4k disks. And then probably they need the i5 one, or even better a Mini ITX rig that can take a GPU upgrade.

True. To be honest, I can't see a need for more than the Chromebox, but I simply saw the CPU get up a little here and there. It'd be nice if FireFox box could be tweaked for smoother video with lesser quality or something to make it tolerable, but it appears to be what it is.

 

[poofyhairguy]

True. To be honest, I can't see a need for more than the Chromebox, but I simply saw the CPU get up a little here and there. It'd be nice if FireFox box could be tweaked for smoother video with lesser quality or something to make it tolerable, but it appears to be what it is.

There is some development in the works to get some basic de-interlacing for it but really the CPU is the limit. There is just not enough power in the box to handle it all. Oh well for simple Kodi needs mixed with Netflix it is a good basic box. Personally I am so excited that the Chromebox/NUC development is still ongoing, we might even get some basic HEVC decode someday.

 

[Paladin]

Lots of great info here! I've been looking at ripping all my DVDs and Blu-Rays also. I have the process down for my DVDs, but what do you all use for ripping your Blu-Ray discs?
What software, and settings?

 

[LoveMachine]

Oh well for simple Kodi needs mixed with Netflix it is a good basic box.

THREADJACK ALERT - Poofy, I'm likely soon going to dive into the OpenELEC/Kodi/Chromebox thing (already running Kodi/Win7 on the main HTPC). The only thing holding me back is Netflix. From my readings, it seems there isn't a way to get Netflix through OpenElec, and that XBMCbuntu is needed to get NetflixBMC working through Chrome. Am I wrong on this? I'm a complete Linux virgin, so I'm not wild about having to learn a new OS (not really needed with OpenElec). The whole PlayOn thingy sounds overly complicated as well.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Lots of great info here! I've been looking at ripping all my DVDs and Blu-Rays also. I have the process down for my DVDs, but what do you all use for ripping your Blu-Ray discs?
What software, and settings?

I use MakeMKV, which just dumps the stream from the disk into a mkv file. Worth the money IMHO.

Every now and then I don't want a 30GB file for a some romantic comedy so I will re-encode it to be smaller in Handbrake (same FPS, 19 setting, passthrough the audio).

 

[poofyhairguy]

THREADJACK ALERT - Poofy, I'm likely soon going to dive into the OpenELEC/Kodi/Chromebox thing (already running Kodi/Win7 on the main HTPC). The only thing holding me back is Netflix. From my readings, it seems there isn't a way to get Netflix through OpenElec, and that XBMCbuntu is needed to get NetflixBMC working through Chrome. Am I wrong on this? I'm a complete Linux virgin, so I'm not wild about having to learn a new OS (not really needed with OpenElec). The whole PlayOn thingy sounds overly complicated as well.

Yeah I personally don't think there is a way to get a really slick Netflix or Amazon into Openelec. I mean the Playon does work pretty well, but not like Roku app well.

That leaves two options really:

-scale down your Kodi needs so something like a FireTV works. The FireTV can't do refresh rate matching, interlaced video or HD audio passthrough, but if any of that is nonsense to you then that box is a clear winner.

-Just get something else to handle that stuff. I find my Samsung Blu Ray player is the perfect Chromebox compliment, as it does things well Kodi can't (frame packed 3D, Netflix, disc playback, etc.) while Kodi plays the files it can't.

 

[LevelSea]

Which Chromebox do you recommend, Poofy? There seems to be several manufacturers, along with several processors.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I am partial to the Asus model. It is very easy to get going. I also think the Celeron model is perfect for everything short of 4K.

Here are all the steps, the guy who keeps this up does great work:

http://kodi.wiki/view/ASUS_Chromebox

I would use the absolute newest Openelec as the OS.

 

[mvbighead]

Ugh, out of the blue my DVR stuff (LiveTV, EPG, etc) dropped off of both Firebox and Chromecast. Took a while before I had a chance to try to fix it. Was able to bring the Chromebox up by simply installing Script/Mythbox something or other and removing the MythTV DVR plugin (not sure how to reinstall that now). Watching a recording a live tv with no issue after that.

Seems I need to reinstall XBMC on the firebox as after removing Mythtv plugin and no longer being able to retrieve it, I can't get it configured on there in any way at the moment. And the script/mythbox feature doesn't work at all because of how it is an app on the Firebox; it can't see certain underlying directories that it expects.

Also noticing some strange stuttering in Netflix on the Firebox so I am not sure if the application is interfering somehow. I did configure Llama to kill Kodi when Netflix starts which allowed Netflix to work. Without it, I could run Netflix but not stream videos as it would fail to connect at 99% if the Kodi app was running in the background. All in all, the Firebox seems to be a very bad way to run Kodi at present. Probably going to move the Chromebox to a different TV and run over wifi and see how that goes. If that works, I'll buy another Chromebox for my main TV.

Thus far, the mythtv solution seems to be stable. Not sure why the interface just dropped out of Kodi on both systems at the same time, but the recordings were still taking place and I was able to pull up MythWeb to manage it. I initially suspected it was a MythTV backend problem, but it was responsive and has recorded numerous programs for me.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I will say try spmc if you haven't yet. It is a Kodi fork made for ARM. It has some deinterlacing built in that Kodi doesn't have which might make the live TV quality better. It is a close to official fork (it exists because they are nervous about putting kodi in the Play Store) so I have been using it.

 

[mvbighead]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give that a shot and see what happens.

Wife and I are getting closer to clearing off the DirecTV DVR, so we could be making the full time switch to XBMC/MythTV/etc once we cut the cord.

 

[Muadib]

I've been looking at the setup for XBMC on a Chromebox, and don't know which way to go. Which is better, installing Ubuntu and then adding kodi to it, or installing OpenELEC?

 

[poofyhairguy]

I've been looking at the setup for XBMC on a Chromebox, and don't know which way to go. Which is better, installing Ubuntu and then adding kodi to it, or installing OpenELEC?

Openelec. It has the right drivers by default.

 

[mvbighead]

I will say try spmc if you haven't yet. It is a Kodi fork made for ARM. It has some deinterlacing built in that Kodi doesn't have which might make the live TV quality better. It is a close to official fork (it exists because they are nervous about putting kodi in the Play Store) so I have been using it.

So far so good. My limited testing (5 min) and it seems to be very quick, and the MythTV plugin currently works. Going to check and see if I still have to kill it before running Netflix or similar, but it appears to be very fluid.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I am curious what you think of the deinterlacing they built in. It is a step below what a Chromebox does, but it should be WAY better than the old nothing.

 

[mvbighead]

I am curious what you think of the deinterlacing they built in. It is a step below what a Chromebox does, but it should be WAY better than the old nothing.

It didn't seem to be great, but it has been a while since I've been able to use the other. Need more thorough viewing, and also to have the wife take a peek.

Does turn out that I still have to use Llama to kill SPMC elsewise Netflix will not stream video. Seems odd, but oh well, not that hard to fix.