2024-12-10, 06:34
There seems to be a bit of an ongoing bug with Kodi's native media player and Bluray/4K UHD titles that employ seamless branching, specifically when playing titles from the disc menu. I have found one other thread on this, but it didn't seem to lead anywhere.
I did a bit of testing after hitting this glitch the other day. Specifically with two titles:
Aliens (BLU - the disc from the Alien Anthology box set)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (4K UHD)
I copy all my media to a NAS as BDMV folder rips, 1:1 image, nothing altered or removed. I have four installs of Kodi on four separate clients connected to four different TVs. For the testing, I didn't bother trying with my projector and stuck to 1080 and 4K TVs.
In titles with seamless branching that are launched off a disc menu (BD-J), there are both skipped frames and audio dropouts at various points. These are very short, but just annoying enough to catch your eye. This happens both with PCM and Dolby (DTS-MA) audio in passthrough (to both an LG soundbar and Denon receiver), and obviously both with 1080P and 4K video, since my main test discs are one of each (I have others, just haven't wanted to dig further).
Specifically, Aliens has dropouts/skipped frames in the chapter "Home Alone" towards the beginning of the director's cut of the movie (when Carter Burke visits Ripley at her apartment). Close Encounters of the Third Kind has them in the theatrical cut when Roy gets his car stuck by the railroad tracks, the first time he sees a UFO. The dropouts/skipped frames don't always occur at the exact same instant, but will pop up somewhere inside of a short window within these scenes.
This happens on both Kodi 21.0 and 21.1, and on both Windows 10 (an HP Laptop and an Intel NUC) and Raspberry PI 5 (Librelec with Kodi). So we can rule OS out. It happens on all three systems consistently, so we can rule the individual machine out. It does NOT happen on Cyberlink PowerDVD on the same Windows devices (can't test it on Raspberry), so we can rule out issues on the network and safely assume this is an issue with the Kodi player, or some resource it depends on.
Here's where this gets better: the issue ONLY happens when playing titles through the original bluray menu. When using Kodi's simplified menu and playing an individual title directly, the issue vanishes and titles play smoothly.
But wait, you say, didn't you just provide your own workaround? Not really. For those of us using Kodi to play back media we've purchased, well, full functionality is ideal. Beyond that, there are three versions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind on that 4K disc - theatrical, special edition, and director's cut. Plus a bunch of other titles. Basically, if you use the simplified menu you're stuck guessing which is which or trying to line up runtime. Kind of a pain in the ass. Disc menus are a lot nicer and easier to navigate. Especially if you have a non-techy user in your household trying to play back media.
Kodi's player has come a long way and BD-J support has been fantastic. That said it would be nice to get all the kinks worked out.
This issue seems to have been identified back in 2020, in this thread that notes that playing main movie eliminates the issue: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=354431
That led to PR19424 but obviously the issue persists. Any thoughts on getting this addressed?
I did a bit of testing after hitting this glitch the other day. Specifically with two titles:
Aliens (BLU - the disc from the Alien Anthology box set)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (4K UHD)
I copy all my media to a NAS as BDMV folder rips, 1:1 image, nothing altered or removed. I have four installs of Kodi on four separate clients connected to four different TVs. For the testing, I didn't bother trying with my projector and stuck to 1080 and 4K TVs.
In titles with seamless branching that are launched off a disc menu (BD-J), there are both skipped frames and audio dropouts at various points. These are very short, but just annoying enough to catch your eye. This happens both with PCM and Dolby (DTS-MA) audio in passthrough (to both an LG soundbar and Denon receiver), and obviously both with 1080P and 4K video, since my main test discs are one of each (I have others, just haven't wanted to dig further).
Specifically, Aliens has dropouts/skipped frames in the chapter "Home Alone" towards the beginning of the director's cut of the movie (when Carter Burke visits Ripley at her apartment). Close Encounters of the Third Kind has them in the theatrical cut when Roy gets his car stuck by the railroad tracks, the first time he sees a UFO. The dropouts/skipped frames don't always occur at the exact same instant, but will pop up somewhere inside of a short window within these scenes.
This happens on both Kodi 21.0 and 21.1, and on both Windows 10 (an HP Laptop and an Intel NUC) and Raspberry PI 5 (Librelec with Kodi). So we can rule OS out. It happens on all three systems consistently, so we can rule the individual machine out. It does NOT happen on Cyberlink PowerDVD on the same Windows devices (can't test it on Raspberry), so we can rule out issues on the network and safely assume this is an issue with the Kodi player, or some resource it depends on.
Here's where this gets better: the issue ONLY happens when playing titles through the original bluray menu. When using Kodi's simplified menu and playing an individual title directly, the issue vanishes and titles play smoothly.
But wait, you say, didn't you just provide your own workaround? Not really. For those of us using Kodi to play back media we've purchased, well, full functionality is ideal. Beyond that, there are three versions of Close Encounters of the Third Kind on that 4K disc - theatrical, special edition, and director's cut. Plus a bunch of other titles. Basically, if you use the simplified menu you're stuck guessing which is which or trying to line up runtime. Kind of a pain in the ass. Disc menus are a lot nicer and easier to navigate. Especially if you have a non-techy user in your household trying to play back media.
Kodi's player has come a long way and BD-J support has been fantastic. That said it would be nice to get all the kinks worked out.
This issue seems to have been identified back in 2020, in this thread that notes that playing main movie eliminates the issue: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=354431
That led to PR19424 but obviously the issue persists. Any thoughts on getting this addressed?
