Develop Bugs

[Q] Netflix on CM11 is Freezing

Hi. When I try to watch netflix movies on cm11 on my ouya, the movie would freeze at a random frame and gets stuck.
Does anyone else have this issue? If so, how can we resolve it?

What version of Netflix are you using?

Yeah, I've seen that happen with mine also. Haven't found a fix for it either, and it seems to occur at random. Not just when something else is hogging up all your Internet bandwidth. I think it has to do with the Ouya not buffering or caching the stream...
But since with CM11, you don't get player controls on Netflix (Play, Pause, FF with preview, etc) I use my WDTV for Netflix streaming in the bedroom instead...

Have you tried one of these versions in this post... http://www.progressivethink.in/on/ouya/and/netflix-on-ouya-now-with-profile-support/

Ok I'm using the app I posted above and I'm getting this issue also now and I'm on the stock OUYA ROM. I never used to have this problem, maybe something to do with Netflix itself? I wonder if any other devices are having problems?

d0ubl3_d1zzl3 said:
Yeah, I've seen that happen with mine also. Haven't found a fix for it either, and it seems to occur at random. Not just when something else is hogging up all your Internet bandwidth. I think it has to do with the Ouya not buffering or caching the stream...
But since with CM11, you don't get player controls on Netflix (Play, Pause, FF with preview, etc) I use my WDTV for Netflix streaming in the bedroom instead...
Click to expand...
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http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=51405105&highlight=hardware+overlays#post51405105

evaporic said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=51405105&highlight=hardware+overlays#post51405105
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So does this resolve the freezing as well?

evaporic said:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=51405105&highlight=hardware+overlays#post51405105
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Nice, thnx! Just found out thru another thread on here that there's a more permanent way of fixing this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=52725661&postcount=262

Hi, how do you do for change language on Netflix with Ouya controller?
Thanks!
when I play movie, I don't see the Menu...

d0ubl3_d1zzl3 said:
Nice, thnx! Just found out thru another thread on here that there's a more permanent way of fixing this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=52725661&postcount=262
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Click to collapse
Hey Guys,
Not sure if anyone's still look at this. Disabling the HW Overlay certainly does fix the freezing issue, but it really messes up the playback smoothness. It's especially noticeable with high action movies. I've tried a bunch of the other settings to like forcing GPU drawing, CPU and memory tweaks with no better results. I've gone back to playing it with the Overlay turned on for netflix. It will freeze a few times, but after several stop and restarts, it seems to play okay once the video catches up. It's just so random.
I would definitely rather play without Overlay since it gives me all the on screen controls in both Netflix and Youtube.

Video playback micro-stuttering after a two months

Hello!
I am very very satisfied from the AFTV.
Rooted, using latest SPMC with RBox modules...
I have noticed that in the last week or two, the device became somewhat unstable (than usual anyway).
Video playback in XBMC (and maybe some other apps like YouTube/Animal Planet/PlutoTV/etc...) is worse, I get a microstutter every few minutes, sometimes even more than a microstutter, video hangs for a second or two... This is very annoying.
*XBMC suffers the most.
This happens regardless of video quality (checked SD/720/1080/2k...).
I am used to taking this kind of irritating behavior from Android, same thing happened to me with every Android Phone / TV Stick I have every had.
My solution was always to reflash a new ROM, start everything from scratch every few months..
I was really hoping that with the AFTV, I could just use it daily without messing around constantly around the clock with bug fixes and reflashes.
The problem here is, that there are no ROMS that I can reflash.
I have also tried installing Seeder, made everything MUCH worse.
Does anyone have any tips for fixing this?
Thanks in advance!

I started to notice the micro stutters last night as well. But the Aftv is at my girls friends place and she had terrible wifi connection. At some point I'm going to take it to my place and hardwire it to see if there's a difference.
I'm assuming it's an internet connectivity issue. Is yours hard wired?

I've noticed this issue with my parents AFTV, but don't experience it on my own. The only difference with their setup is that it is configured with multiple profiles and set to output 5.1 with pass through enabled. If I had to guess, I'd put my money on the stutter being caused by something with the audio engine.

WisdomWolf said:
I've noticed this issue with my parents AFTV, but don't experience it on my own. The only difference with their setup is that it is configured with multiple profiles and set to output 5.1 with pass through enabled. If I had to guess, I'd put my money on the stutter being caused by something with the audio engine.
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I have mine set on stock. 2.0 optimized.

vi3tl23n3gad3 said:
I started to notice the micro stutters last night as well. But the Aftv is at my girls friends place and she had terrible wifi connection. At some point I'm going to take it to my place and hardwire it to see if there's a difference.
I'm assuming it's an internet connectivity issue. Is yours hard wired?
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It's not an internet issue, in XBMC I see the movie caching very fast, and when the stutter happens, everything freezes (menus etc...)
WisdomWolf said:
I've noticed this issue with my parents AFTV, but don't experience it on my own. The only difference with their setup is that it is configured with multiple profiles and set to output 5.1 with pass through enabled. If I had to guess, I'd put my money on the stutter being caused by something with the audio engine.
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ATFV connected through HDMI Cable to the Phillips TV... standard 2.0 audio system, nothing fancy...
Perhaps it's something with my AdvancedSettings xml? My SPMC version? Trickster installed (and not used at all)?

Gaiosan said:
It's not an internet issue, in XBMC I see the movie caching very fast, and when the stutter happens, everything freezes (menus etc...)
ATFV connected through HDMI Cable to the Phillips TV... standard 2.0 audio system, nothing fancy...
Perhaps it's something with my AdvancedSettings xml? My SPMC version? Trickster installed (and not used at all)?
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What's trickster?

vi3tl23n3gad3 said:
What's trickster?
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Kernel control app, but it's off and I don't use it.

[Q] Subtitles cause video playback stutter in kodi/xbmc

Hi all
Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this issue. Sometimes when subtitles are enabled in kodi, the video very noticeably stutters on my AFTV. It doesn't happen all the time, but will happen eventually and once it does, it will stay like that until I restart the Fire TV OR sometimes only fix is to restart my Ubuntu file server.
I read over at the kodi forums that peeps on lower CPU boxes have this issue, but there was no solution and the post was from 2 years ago.
This happens to me on SPMC, Gotham and latest Helix. It's a fairly recent issue (last 2 months) as I never noticed it when I first got the AFTV back in July. I also tried both nfs and smb and fiddling with buffer and cache sizes.
It's either a server issue or an AFTV/kodi issue and I can't work out why and what to do. I'm running latest pre-rooted firmware.
Any others with this issue and any solutions?
Cheers

Well in case anyone else is experiencing this, I found a solution that works for me. SPMC 13.4.0 seems to be working flawlessly. The previous version was not. Hope that helps someone somewhere.

Netflix sucks on FTV

My Netflix sucks big time on my rooted fire TV. Stutters quite a bit. No combination of the video frame rate helps in the settings. What more can I do? I shouldn't have to wipe cache and restart every hour to get smooth playback. Thanks

supremekizzle said:
My Netflix sucks big time on my rooted fire TV. Stutters quite a bit. No combination of the video frame rate helps in the settings. What more can I do? I shouldn't have to wipe cache and restart every hour to get smooth playback. Thanks
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Netflix has been terrible on aftv. Between the loading to 99%, and "unable to play this title right now" not to mention that atv2 has a much better resolution (for me anyway).
I was experiencing a stutter and I think I switched to WiFi to fix it. Not 100% on that but its working better now.

KLit75 said:
Netflix has been terrible on aftv. Between the loading to 99%, and "unable to play this title right now" not to mention that atv2 has a much better resolution (for me anyway).
I was experiencing a stutter and I think I switched to WiFi to fix it. Not 100% on that but its working better now.
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How'd you fix the two issues you mentioned? Netflix just started doing the same, for no apparent reason about a week ago on my FTV. I found one that here that was said to have the fix, but I've performed each of the steps listed there with no luck. Right now, I'm on 51.1.6.0... I tried the latest, but am affected by the HDCP issue, so had to roll back.

JediSooner said:
How'd you fix the two issues you mentioned? Netflix just started doing the same, for no apparent reason about a week ago on my FTV. I found one that here that was said to have the fix, but I've performed each of the steps listed there with no luck. Right now, I'm on 51.1.6.0... I tried the latest, but am affected by the HDCP issue, so had to roll back.
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Not sure I did fix it. It may have got better on its own. You could try uninstalling Netflix, clear data 3 times in Amazon video, unplug for 10 seconds. Then it may be beneficial to boot recovery and wipe dalvik and cache partitions. Finally reinstall Netflix.
Mine occasionally doesn't load all the way but restarting the video fixes it.

KLit75 said:
Not sure I did fix it. It may have got better on its own. You could try uninstalling Netflix, clear data 3 times in Amazon video, unplug for 10 seconds. Then it may be beneficial to boot recovery and wipe dalvik and cache partitions. Finally reinstall Netflix.
Mine occasionally doesn't load all the way but restarting the video fixes it.
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I don't know what the deal is, but I've tried all of the suggested fixes, but continue to get the same error message. I'll wait for pre-rooted 51.1.6.3 and see if that fixes it.

JediSooner said:
I don't know what the deal is, but I've tried all of the suggested fixes, but continue to get the same error message. I'll wait for pre-rooted 51.1.6.3 and see if that fixes it.
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Sorry. Overall Netflix on Amazon has been terrible for a lot of users while others seem to have no problems at all. They're not likely to provide a fix but it doesn't hurt to contact Amazon. At the very least you'll join a growing list of dissatisfied customers. Problem is Amazon points the finger a Netflix and vice versa. But like I've said before, Netflix has always been fine on my other devices going back almost a decade.

KLit75 said:
Sorry. Overall Netflix on Amazon has been terrible for a lot of users while others seem to have no problems at all. They're not likely to provide a fix but it doesn't hurt to contact Amazon. At the very least you'll join a growing list of dissatisfied customers. Problem is Amazon points the finger a Netflix and vice versa. But like I've said before, Netflix has always been fine on my other devices going back almost a decade.
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Yeah, the part I don't get is that it just stopped working for no apparent reason. It'd been working fine for months, then all of a sudden I start getting the "can't play video at this time" error (something to that effect). Anyway, thanks for the suggestions and feedback.

JediSooner said:
Yeah, the part I don't get is that it just stopped working for no apparent reason. It'd been working fine for months, then all of a sudden I start getting the "can't play video at this time" error (something to that effect). Anyway, thanks for the suggestions and feedback.
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If it's any consolation... on 51.1.x.x versions of Fire TV, I never had issues where it wouldn't play video, but I did have studdering and slow/fast issues. On the 51.5.3.0 Fire OS 5 preview, all that has gone away and aside from an issue with 5.1 sound which is solved by putting it on stereo, netflix is working great.

KLit75 said:
Netflix has been terrible on aftv. Between the loading to 99%, and "unable to play this title right now" not to mention that atv2 has a much better resolution (for me anyway).
I was experiencing a stutter and I think I switched to WiFi to fix it. Not 100% on that but its working better now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. Netflix performance actually gotten worse on the Fire TV since the latest official stable update. For months I been using it and it was fine but now once again I have issues where the video would freeze up for about 5 to 10 seconds then speed up right away everyone is super fast while the audio continues. Very annoying as I thought they finally fixed it but it came back again. Now I also been getting the "unable to play title" error again too.
I actually started to use my Apple TV 3rd Generation which is connected to Wifi 5ghz channel 36. Loads programs quickly, no stuttering, no unable to, no credit shrinking.

I've learned that having another video app open while trying to access Netflix is what causes the problem. The reason rebooting fixes it is because you essentially flush the FireTV's memory when you do the reboot. If you exit out of other apps fully, you shouldn't have anymore problems. I miss being able to click the Home button when switching between video apps but ever since I started doing a proper shutdown for video apps before switching to the next one, I no longer need to reboot to get the different video apps work.

JediSooner said:
Yeah, the part I don't get is that it just stopped working for no apparent reason. It'd been working fine for months, then all of a sudden I start getting the "can't play video at this time" error (something to that effect). Anyway, thanks for the suggestions and feedback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That message occurs when you have another background application tying up the video process.
Try rebooting. And never use the home button to exit Kodi or any other video application. Quit it properly. And watch out for SPMC, the way it's been implemented to minimize to the home screen with the back button is really unhelpful on the AFTV.
Same goes for using Kodi as a launcher. Don't expect it to be reliable.

Claude Koch said:
That message occurs when you have another background application tying up the video process.
Try rebooting. And never use the home button to exit Kodi or any other video application. Quit it properly. And watch out for SPMC, the way it's been implemented to minimize to the home screen with the back button is really unhelpful on the AFTV.
Same goes for using Kodi as a launcher. Don't expect it to be reliable.
Click to expand...
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Hadn't considered that possibility; however, I don't use an alternate launcher and I always shutdown Kodi properly. Maybe there's something else tying up the video process? I've gone through the 'clear data' process on Amazon Video multiple times, but that didn't fix Netflix. I'll try to go straight into Netflix after a fresh reboot and see what I get.

FTV (gen1) and Kodi 15.1 stutters ???

So I had Kodi 14.something on all my fireTVs with a shared MySQL on my net. Memory is hazy but I think it was stock Kodi not SPMC, but I wouldnt bet my life on it.
I dont remember any stuttering, and even tested / watched 1080 as working ok.. I am not a super highbite rate full size BluRay type consumer and I could be wrong but I just remember it working 99% of the time for the files I threw at it. Enough that I was happy as a media center in all rooms.
Just because I thought I maybe was missing out, I upgraded to 15.1.. Tested Kodi was running on one box OK and as the MySQL all has to match, I updated all my boxes. They are all hard wired BTW. They seemed OK and first few things I watched I noticed no issues.
Just noticed stuttering playback on a series.. Assumed it was that series as high bitrate.. Now soon after and seeing stuttering on another series.. Looking at my files they are 'only' 720p files (MKV).. I am sure I was playing 720 fine before the update. Other far higher bitrate MP4s seem to play just fine.
Is 15.1 somehow worse on the fireTV than 14.x ??
Is 15.1 Kodi not HW accelerating and maybe I had SPMC ??
Is 15.1 Kodi on the FTV worse with MKV's ??
Are others using 15.1 and playing 1080 content smooth ??
Just looking for some input before I start the process of testing builds or rolling back. Its a hassle to do all the boxes and its a live system in the house.
Thanks.

I was just told that this may be related to an amazon update in August ??
Thats possible.. I was travelling from July to Sept and I did see amazon did some update but didnt notice stuttering then..
My boxes were fine before.. If amazon have made them useless (or at least poor) for kodi somehow I will be pissed as I have them in each room.

I'm also seeing that very symptoms on my FireTV stick, where high bitrate 1080p movies, even 50gb blu-rays play smooth and fine on Kodi 14.2, I'm seeing micro-stutters so to speak even when playing a 720p video on 15+ builds.
I believe it might have something to do with hw acceleration options, like stagefright, as I've come across quite a few threads about the same issue mainly across SD/HD videos in the latest versions.
So, yes, you are not alone and it's safe to say not related to your firmware version, I've been forth and back btw FireOS 4 and 5, yet the problem persists.

Well thats at least good news in that its kodi related and potentially fixable or I can find a build that works.. Rather than FTV firmware build which wouldnt be.
I will have to divert time to test HW acceleration, SPMC builds, and maybe roll back my network to 14 (PITA)..
I wouldnt call these micro stutters really tho.. Its not like 24hz v 50hz pans not being silky smooth.. Its like processor 100% or even network issues.. Its pretty large. Borderline not worth watching.

It is the 720p content causing micro stutters here, the rest is causing a much bigger issue as even stopping for few seconds as if it was buffering, but actually its not. The menus and the interface looks sluggish and yeah it cant be a panning issue as my Ftvstick runs at 24Hz all the time.
Anyway, try and play with some options and report back if you find something, I only found that if you force close all apps and create more free memory, it runs a tad better, not still smooth as 14.2 though.

OK I just went back to 14.2 via a restore, disabled my MYSQL and tested via file playback.. And its WAY better !!!
It does still stutter, but only a small amount.. In the same places where it unwatchable in 15.2.
VLC on my desktop plays it fine.. Maybe a single dropped frame where Kodi is dropping loads..
Actually its not dropped frame.. I found a wired keyboard and with the codecinfo its 'skipped' frames ?!?! I also think it had higher CPU useage in 15.2
So order of playback quality
PC desktop with via VLC to verify file.. Fine, maybe a skipped frame or two but audio all stays in sync.
14.2.. Some slight skips.. But catches up fast..
15.1.. Skipping.. stuttering.. Audio gets out of sync.
15.2 the worst !! awful.. As above but just that bit more.
In each setup I tested HW accl on / off / each option on or off.. It looks subjectively a tiny bit better with the HW acceleration turned off or with mediacodec one off.. I think its skipping less.. But its hard to be sure as its subjective and it seems like its skipping differently different playbacks.. Eg what started me on this was 15.1 was unwatchable.. I have now gone through 3 different kodi versions.. All options on and off.. And my final playback (back on 15.1 HW acl 'reset' so back on and stock) and its bad but ?? was it worse ??
All I know is its skipping frames now.. And more than on 14.2
I cant get SPMC on there for some reason.. I get an error from adbfire

Phat - I'm noticing the same on Kodi 15.1 and 15.2 as well. I'm going to setup external media player to play videos to see if it makes any difference - Kodi front end and MX Player.

I just gave the Kodi 16.0 a3 "a try". No issues whatsoever apart from a small delay when exiting the full screen mode, no stutters, no lag, runs just as beautiful as 14.2 does, but that's only the video part, the rest is buggy as buggery and force closes from time to time. I believe it is best to stuck with 14.2 for the moment and wait for a stable version of 16.0 as 15.x versions seem hopeless to me.
Also try clearing your memory or start Kodi from a fresh restart before you try next time, it does help.

I'm going to suggest an old fix to see if it helps. Have you tried disabling MediaCodec video acceleration?

OK I got to the bottom of this last night.. To a solution I am 'happy' enough with..
I have found it is 2 related errors giving me the same symptoms..
1) the media files I was testing with primarily.. Have errors.. VLC on my desktop handles those errors better.
2) the mediacodec HW acceleration is buggering it up.
Because my testing was on files with errors.. I wasnt seeing it work properly when disabling media codec and other media I checked I had not checked with that specific config.
Once I realized the above.. Disabled mediacodec and now 99% of what I played last night played as good as 14.2 did.. The exception of course being the damn series I was trying to watch and test with !! That due to its encode errors, still looks poor, but it looks poor with other players also.. VLC handles it better, but its the medias problem. I also 'think' 14.2 handled it better, eg the error handling ability may have had a downgrade in 14 -> 15 on the FireTV but I am now relieved to find a config thats working for most of everything.
Mediacodec definitely to blame but I havent pinned down why or rather in what cases.. One 'good' error free 1080p 5.1 rip I was checking with after the realization was simply a stop starty mess with mediacodec on and smooth acceptable playback when it was off.. Yet other 1080 rips were playing ok with it enabled ?!? Not I am not talking 24/25hz issues or more subtle videophile considerations. Simply the boxes play video to a level thats fine for my house network non projection HT setup.