[ptoyonj]

I have seen the thread about color management, and have tried to toggle color management on and off ( setting already appeared to be in " off " state when I first checked ), but no change. 

My collection is an old one ( largely static ), and all of the titles now presenting this issue worked fine prior to update. 

I am running KODI alongside/with/from a Batocera Linux install on an Intel Core i5 10th generation running a Radeon GPU, outputting to a Samsung 4k TV via HDMI. 

My 19.4 KODI install running from Windows 10 Pro plays these files just fine. 

Please help me, oh Kodi gods!

Logs:
https://paste.kodi.tv/pizatezeku.kodi

[ptoyonj]

Oh just to add that .avi files seem to play just fine

[CrystalP]

Maybe you could compare with 20.2 on Windows to find out if it's about the platform or the Kodi version?
And try with/without hardware acceleration.

[ptoyonj]

Interesting. 

Yes, disabling hardware acceleration immediately fixed the issue. Thanks!

Also, even weirder, I discovered that not ALL mkv's exhibit the problem, which blows my mind a bit. I compared two separate mkv's which both were using H-265 / 1080p / AAC 5.1 audio and I scratch my head trying to guess why one gets a black screen ( since updating that hardware platform from Kodi 19.0 to 20.2 ) while the other file plays fine. I do recall having a similar mkv playback issue on my windows install with a different kodi build a few years ago, but it disappeared after a kodi update so I didn't pay it much mind. 

I'm not using a particularly old GPU, Radeon RX6400 ( released June of 2022 ). I imagine it would be a popular card given its decent chops for being a single slot. 



Can you suggest what I should do to help find / solve root cause?

Not that I must have HW acceleration, but I assume since it's the default it's generally the preferred way to go.  

Thanks, btw!

[CrystalP]

That makes it a linux issue with hardware acceleration and the thread should be moved to linux support for better handling.

[black_eagle]

Have you tried with VAAPI rather than VDPAU as VDPAU is mainly for nVidia cards?

[ptoyonj]

Ah. Who moves the thread? Do I repost it?


Also, regarding VAAPI / VDPAU I have looked and don't understand how to force Kodi to use it or even to prefer it. I don't even see it mentioned. 

The way the menu reads VDPAU is all that exists, but there is an option indicating that I can ' not explicitly prefer VDPAU '.

Did I miss the setting somewhere?

[black_eagle]

I have an nVidia card in my PC.  Settings look like this



Also see https://kodi.wiki/view/Settings/Player/V...c_settings

[ptoyonj]

My player settings look exactly the same ( except that I've now disabled Hardware Acceleration ). Radeon GPU since first install.

The mainboard does have an onboard graphics chip ( Intel based, I think ). I suppose I can try disabling it in BIOS to see whether that makes any difference.

Thoughts?

[black_eagle]

Thoughts?

Well, not heard of your distro before but a bit of googling throws up this in their wiki which may or may not be relevant. It does mention black screens though so.....

[ptoyonj]

I don't think it's relevant to my situation, but thanks.


The thread you referenced is about the fact that HDMI audio is disabled by default to avoid a black screen issue on certain monitors. 

It also references an old build of theirs from 4 years ago (they've released at least 10 builds since then ), and my build's audio / video worked out of the box and I never had to go out of my way to enable the audio stream as they describe in that wiki, so I suspect that's stale documentation and no longer relevant. 

In fact, I never had this problem at all until I installed their latest stable build, which included an update to Kodi 20.2

Also, the " black screen " symptom as they describe it doesn't seem to be what I'm experiencing, which is that only the video output stream is black.
Kodi's interface is still perfectly accessible and visible during playback.  At no point does anything except the video output stream itself display as a black screen.

Also, the symptom only appears in Kodi, only with some mkv / mp4 files ( and never an old avi file ), and disappears when I disable hardware acceleration. 



I think Crystal P is on point with his statement about it being a Linux issue with hardware accel.  

In their changelog for this build ( 38 ), it looks like they also updated the ati driver version they're using. 

https://batocera.org/changelog



At any rate, if the thread should be moved, who does it? Does a mod do it, or do I simply repost?

Thanks

[black_eagle]

At any rate, if the thread should be moved, who does it? Does a mod do it, or do I simply repost?

I've moved it for you.

[ptoyonj]

Thanks much. Should I do anything further from this point?

[fritsch]

https://kodi.wiki/view/Supported_hardware#Linux

Set the mentioned environment variable to EGL and use vaapi. Vdpau has no support for 10 bit interop and will end up green.

[ptoyonj]

The link you provided only shows how to set it to VPDAU.  How, pray-tell, do I force VAAPI ?


"For hardware video decoding, which may be necessary on low-performance CPUs to playback 1080p content, make sure your GPU or VPU supports either VAAPI or VDPAU. For everything but older AMD cards and Nvidia, VAAPI is recommended. On AMD, you might have to start with the environment variable KODI_GL_INTERFACE set to GLX in order to get VDPAU support."

According to the link, it seems to suggest that I MIGHT have to set it to GLX IF I'm on AMD && IF it doesn't allow me to select VDPAU. 


So.....please help me understand what I've missed her. 

Also, what do you mean by " Vdpau [sic] will end up green " ?

I am not getting a green display output for the render. Maybe it's just a codec issue? I feel like I told the surgeon I have an earache and he wants to amputate my leg.