[aliencreature]

The resolution/refresh rate whitelisting in kodi18 does not work for resolution switching.  I can set resolution to 480p  and watch 4k version of Sintel for example and it still plays at 480p even though 4k is whitelisted.

Just want it to pick available resolution closest to the video without downscale.  Have a ton of SD content that is hard to watch without the TVs  upscaler.

[DarrenHill]

Thread moved to OS independent, as it's not a feature request

[jjd-uk]

To receive meaningful assistance you will need to provide a full debug log.

The instructions are here... debug log (wiki)

If you are using the Basic Method, then ensure the following is applied...
1.Enable debugging in Settings>System Settings>Logging,
2.Restart Kodi
3.Replicate the problem.

If you are using the Advanced Method ensure you have correctly created and applied the advancedsettings.xml file.

In both instances, you should see the word DEBUG throughout the log.

Note: Full logs only. No partial or redacted logs
Do NOT post your logs directly into the forum. Always use a paste site like pastebin.com. Post the link to your pasted log in the forum

[aliencreature]

Thanks yet intended for this to be a feature request.  My understanding current behavior is intentional.  A resolution change does not occur by design if content does not exactly match a whitelisted resolution.

Best whitelisted resolution is 3840 x 2160p
Sintel is 4096 x 1744.

Therefore a resolution switch does not occur from 480p to 4k as intended.

See this thread.
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/13274

Relevant source:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...lution.cpp

Please consider changing whitelist to do a best resolution match rather than exact.  Something generally more like LOWEST whitelisted resolution that will not result in downscale in any dimension or highest available if content larger than highest whitelisted resolution in any dimension.

[fritsch]

Thanks yet intended for this to be a feature request.  My understanding current behavior is intentional.  A resolution change does not occur by design if content does not exactly match a whitelisted resolution.

Best whitelisted resolution is 3840 x 2160p
Sintel is 4096 x 1744.

Therefore a resolution switch does not occur from 480p to 4k as intended.

See this thread.
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/13274

Relevant source:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/master...lution.cpp

Please consider changing whitelist to do a best resolution match rather than exact.  Something generally more like LOWEST whitelisted resolution that will not result in downscale in any dimension or highest available if content larger than highest whitelisted resolution in any dimension.

 I already had code exactly for that, but it was rejected. The reason behind rejecting is to not introduce double scaling, e.g. scaling by kodi and addiontally by TV. But instead the "Select Resolution" was added to the video menu, here you can manually select the resolution you want it to switch to.

[aliencreature]

Some arguments for reconsidering..

1. Just because resolutions do not match doesn't mean double up-scaling is occurring.  Would also necessarily depend on view mode selected.  Commonly disparity between content resolution and available display modes is merely content does not have an aspect ratio matching a display mode resulting in letterboxing.  This occurs when letterboxing is not "in-band" with content like the Sintel movie.  In this case only the TV upscaler would be activated.

2. If chosen view mode does result in scaling.. then doing so by a few percent before the TV's far superior upscaler takes over and does the heavy lifting from what I have noticed STILL results in noticeably better outcomes than not doing resolution switch.  SD content with 480p display mode even when zoomed and or stretched by Kodi before TV upscale looks much better via the TV vs same content with a 4k display mode bypassing TV upscaler.

Try watching old SD content on a modern TV with database upscalers (x-reality pro..etc) in native resolution vs upscaling in Kodi.  It's not that Kodi is terrible as much as TVs do a spectacular job.

3. Nobody can seriously argue watching 4k content at 480p when 4k is whitelisted makes any sense whatsoever.  The movie browser is correctly able to classifying content as 480/1080/4k... perhaps this same data can be used to inform resolution switching?  If the movie browser sees something as 480p and 480p is whitelisted then why not switch to it?

I know about the resolution switch on a per item basis yet as far as I can tell this is not persistent and has to be set every time.  If resolution can be made persistent one could at the very least run some queries and update everything.

[jjd-uk]

What is your desktop resolution set to? I assume 3840 x 2160p is the native resolution of your monitor, in which case I'd expect the set desktop resolution match this. Why do I ask this? because if there is no exact match between what is being played and one of the whitelisted resolutions then it should fullback to using the desktop resolution, thus in your Sintel example I'd expect 3840 x 2160p to be always used.

[aliencreature]

No desktop.  Using Odriod C2 (libreelec) /w resolution set 720 x 480 in settings / system / display.

[jjd-uk]

Not exactly sure how embedded works in conjunction with whitelist, but I'd expect the Kodi set display resolution to be used as the desktop resolution for the fallback in the case of LE.

[jjd-uk]

Just noticed your edited reply.

Why do you have the Kodi resolution set to 480p? I assume it's maybe not capable of 2160p but why not 1080p?

[FernetMenta]

Some arguments for reconsidering..

2. If chosen view mode does result in scaling.. then doing so by a few percent before the TV's far superior upscaler takes over and does the heavy lifting from what I have noticed STILL results in noticeably better outcomes than not doing resolution switch.  SD content with 480p display mode even when zoomed and or stretched by Kodi before TV upscale looks much better via the TV vs same content with a 4k display mode bypassing TV upscaler.

Try watching old SD content on a modern TV with database upscalers (x-reality pro..etc) in native resolution vs upscaling in Kodi.  It's not that Kodi is terrible as much as TVs do a spectacular job.
 

In regard to scaling there is a huge difference between Kodi running on OpenGL platforms and Kodi running on Android or AML. There won't be a one-fits-all solution that fits the needs on the reference platform and low end AML devices.
I see that a mechanism like select closest is desirable on AML systems but it is not true for all platforms. Maybe you find someone who wants to implements this behaviour as an addon.

[Koying]

What's the reference platform using opengl, now that apple deprecated it in favor of metal?

[aliencreature]

In regard to scaling there is a huge difference between Kodi running on OpenGL platforms and Kodi running on Android or AML. There won't be a one-fits-all solution that fits the needs on the reference platform and low end AML devices.
I see that a mechanism like select closest is desirable on AML systems but it is not true for all platforms. Maybe you find someone who wants to implements this behaviour as an addon. 

Also have Kodi on desktop /w 1080ti and madvr.. good stuff.

In cases where Kodi upscale is better than display hard to understand why someone would want to whitelist lower resolutions than display assuming refresh rates are equal.  Mode switching alone would be unnecessarily annoying and the resulting product would be lower quality.

 

• Even with exact resolution match there are currently view modes where double upscaling is occurring anyway.
  
• There are view modes where double upscaling would not occur when there is not an exact match due to aspect differences.
  
• Not moving resolution up to a whitelisted res doesn't help anyone including high end systems with fancy GPUs.
  

[aliencreature]

Just noticed your edited reply.

Why do you have the Kodi resolution set to 480p? I assume it's maybe not capable of 2160p but why not 1080p?

I love these things.  Puts a smile on my face just thinking about it.  Dirt cheap tiny little buggers will do 4k /60fps even high bitrate content in excess of 100mbit/s.  2160p works well.

Quite a lot of what people like to watch are oldschool SD so 480p was selected to provide the best result even if it leaves Kodi UI a bit grainy.  If I had picked a more standard 1080 resolution Kodi would not go to 4k by itself when watching 4k.  More importantly it wouldn't go to 480p when watching 480p content.

[jjd-uk]

With the whitelist function you should always set the Kodi resolution for the GUI to the highest possible value your device can handle, I asked because I wasn't sure if the Amlogic SoC in that Odriod C2 is capable of a 2160p GUI, as devices that can do 4K video without breaking a sweat via VPU hardware accelerated decoding, may not be able to do 4K GUI rendering via software operation on the CPU which are more resource intensive. If that Amlogic can run a 2160p GUI ok then you should set that as the Kodi resolution, and select both 2160p and 480p in the whitelist (or if you want native output for all resolutions when select everything in whitelist), that way when you play 480p it sends 480p then everything else will be sent as 2160p.