trouble with video playback

[MaWalla]

Hello community,

I've recently got my Rock64 (4GB). For now however, I'm rather disappointed.
I already tried out several Debian and Ubuntu images, hoping to get proper video performance out of it, so far all of them only gave me disappointment and frustration.
First of all, the Rock64's intended use is for both a lightweight server (apache, sftp) and as Addon to make my TV smart(Netflix, YouTube, web surfing in general, emulators for SNES etc.). I know that the TV part can be done by Android, but the server part can't. Also I prefer a direct Linux over Android. I'm wondering how I even get such bad performance (as example, YouTube was insanely choppy in the xenial MATE build, but it all felt somewhat sluggish anyway and Debian Jessie with GNOME3 on top was pure horror), considering that I've read about good support from the hardware vendors site. Both examples I've just mentionened made use of software rendering rather than hardware rendering(YouTube in both Chromium and Firefox pushed the CPU to 100%, the test of GNOME3 showed me llvmpipe as graphics device rather than any actual GPU and a look at the CPU usage caused by gnome-shell confirmed that it was software rendering) and that's where I wonder if there is a way to fix this. I mean if there is proper support for all of this on Android (which I'll probably test just for fun) and the hardware devs are (at least if I’ve read that correctly) open to provide their divers for Linux aswell, why can’t I then get proper h264 and openGL ES support (later at least for GNOME3, but interestingly enough, GLXGears on the other hand ran with 60FPS but looked choppy on display). I have similar issues for my Pine A64-LTS aswell, but that belongs into a different thread.
I really hope for support/information, as I bought this board with good expectations in the great hardware on paper and just hope it’s some software stuff I’m doing wrong. If there are questions remaining, I’d love to answer them.

Greetings, Max

[Luke]

ayufan is working on Bionic which will, among many other things, include gstreamer so you'll be able to playback accelerated video. You can see that the latest image failed to build but I think its a matter of days. Everything will also be backported to Xenial (and included in the Debian builds I assume). As a side note, you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too. That said, with time software playback is bound to get better. 

I am a little puzzled as to why you want an image with a full DE for your use case; why not go with LibreElec and use Docker for the headless stuff?

[MaWalla]

ayufan is working on Bionic which will, among many other things, include gstreamer so you'll be able to playback accelerated video. You can see that the latest image failed to build but I think its a matter of days. Everything will also be backported to Xenial (and included in the Debian builds I assume). As a side note, you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too. That said, with time software playback is bound to get better. 

I am a little puzzled as to why you want an image with a full DE for your use case; why not go with LibreElec and use Docker for the headless stuff?

Wow, LibreElec looks quite interesting, I wonder why I didn't stumble upon it yet. Docker seems like a proper solution aswell, thanks so far, I will check it out this evening. But what about video streams that are pretty much Browser dependant, like the South Park web presence or news page video content? What can I do, if I want a fluentt playback of this(if there even is a way)?

[Luke]

ayufan is working on Bionic which will, among many other things, include gstreamer so you'll be able to playback accelerated video. You can see that the latest image failed to build but I think its a matter of days. Everything will also be backported to Xenial (and included in the Debian builds I assume). As a side note, you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too. That said, with time software playback is bound to get better. 

I am a little puzzled as to why you want an image with a full DE for your use case; why not go with LibreElec and use Docker for the headless stuff?

Wow, LibreElec looks quite interesting, I wonder why I didn't stumble upon it yet. Docker seems like a proper solution aswell, thanks so far, I will check it out this evening. But what about video streams that are pretty much Browser dependant, like the South Park web presence or news page video content? What can I do, if I want a fluentt playback of this(if there even is a way)?

Regarding in-browser content; I expect that in time you'll be able to play back 480p content using software smoothly.  Perhaps someone like Kwiboo, LongChair, Raybuntu or ayufan (or someone from Rockchip) can give you a more precise answer as to what chances there area for a wrapper for chromium/ FF.

[MaWalla]

ayufan is working on Bionic which will, among many other things, include gstreamer so you'll be able to playback accelerated video. You can see that the latest image failed to build but I think its a matter of days. Everything will also be backported to Xenial (and included in the Debian builds I assume). As a side note, you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too. That said, with time software playback is bound to get better. 

I am a little puzzled as to why you want an image with a full DE for your use case; why not go with LibreElec and use Docker for the headless stuff?

Wow, LibreElec looks quite interesting, I wonder why I didn't stumble upon it yet. Docker seems like a proper solution aswell, thanks so far, I will check it out this evening. But what about video streams that are pretty much Browser dependant, like the South Park web presence or news page video content? What can I do, if I want a fluentt playback of this(if there even is a way)?

Regarding in-browser content; I expect that in time you'll be able to play back 480p content using software smoothly.  Perhaps someone like Kwiboo, LongChair, Raybuntu or ayufan (or someone from Rockchip) can give you a more precise answer as to what chances there area for a wrapper for chromium/ FF.

Thank you once again, I will just check it out this evening and then probably reply here for further questions and eventually PM one of them regarding browser video playback (or are there rather recommended ways for communication?)
//OT: I made another post concerning similar problems with my Pine A64-LTS can you possibly help me there aswell?

[Luke]

ayufan is working on Bionic which will, among many other things, include gstreamer so you'll be able to playback accelerated video. You can see that the latest image failed to build but I think its a matter of days. Everything will also be backported to Xenial (and included in the Debian builds I assume). As a side note, you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too. That said, with time software playback is bound to get better. 

I am a little puzzled as to why you want an image with a full DE for your use case; why not go with LibreElec and use Docker for the headless stuff?

Wow, LibreElec looks quite interesting, I wonder why I didn't stumble upon it yet. Docker seems like a proper solution aswell, thanks so far, I will check it out this evening. But what about video streams that are pretty much Browser dependant, like the South Park web presence or news page video content? What can I do, if I want a fluentt playback of this(if there even is a way)?

Regarding in-browser content; I expect that in time you'll be able to play back 480p content using software smoothly.  Perhaps someone like Kwiboo, LongChair, Raybuntu or ayufan (or someone from Rockchip) can give you a more precise answer as to what chances there area for a wrapper for chromium/ FF.

Thank you once again, I will just check it out this evening and then probably reply here for further questions and eventually PM one of them regarding browser video playback (or are there rather recommended ways for communication?)
//OT: I made another post concerning similar problems with my Pine A64-LTS can you possibly help me there aswell?

For queries regarding LibreElec, post in Raybuntu's thread. If you want to chat about development and status of particular features join the IRC and post your questions (please do not just post and leave, it may take time before someone gets back to you).

[elatllat]

...you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too...

https://youtu.be/euB1ZRPpFgs

[Luke]

...you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too...

https://youtu.be/euB1ZRPpFgs

Touche. I should have qualified the statement; "you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for most other ARM boards too"

[Lalith]

ayufan is working on Bionic which will, among many other things, include gstreamer so you'll be able to playback accelerated video. You can see that the latest image failed to build but I think its a matter of days. Everything will also be backported to Xenial (and included in the Debian builds I assume). As a side note, you wont be getting accelerated video in-browser, but this is true for other ARM boards too. That said, with time software playback is bound to get better. 

I am a little puzzled as to why you want an image with a full DE for your use case; why not go with LibreElec and use Docker for the headless stuff?

Wow, LibreElec looks quite interesting, I wonder why I didn't stumble upon it yet. Docker seems like a proper solution aswell, thanks so far, I will check it out this evening. But what about video streams that are pretty much Browser dependant, like the South Park web presence or news page video content? What can I do, if I want a fluentt playback of this(if there even is a way)?

Hello,


I used the LibreElec buildfrom Raybutu to play back UHD video streams from a Astra satellite.  
I have  a VU solo receiver and it can stream any satellite content, and I wanted to see how good the Rock64boards capability is.
Playing back a UHD video stream takes on 20%-30% of a core with Rabuntus LibreElec build. pretty impressive. Not a single bit of jitter for UDH and HDR streams

The PVR clients dont work yet, so dont bother using them. Instead, create a file with .stream extension and get Kodi to play it.
in my case the file  .strm looks like:

Code:

#EXTM3U 
#EXTVLCOPT--http-reconnect=true 
#EXTINF:-1,UHD1 by ASTRA / HD 
#EXTVLCOPT:program=2
http://192.168.124.106:8001/1:0:1F:2:40B:1:C22AF2:0:0:0:

Where the IP of the streaming server (satellite receiver) 192.168.124.106.
You can try the same method for other streamed content.

The Raybuntu version I used is : 
https://github.com/Raybuntu/LibreELEC.tv...a21.img.gz