RK3399 Legacy Multimedia Framework

[JMCC]

23 minutes ago, tony013 said:

what needs to be done to start kodi?

Please see post #1 of this thread

[JMCC]

2 hours ago, tony013 said:

top menu is outside of my screen

Sorry, I didn't notice this. Can't you set up your monitor to disable overscan and show the full screen? If you want to use the desktop, you will miss the top panel and/or window bars anyway.

 

If you cannot change your monitor overscan setting, the easiest solution is to create a custom LightDM configuration, with a menu in some place that you can see. You can find instructions for that via Google.

 

Otherwise, you need to stop lightdm and launch Kodi manually from console.

[tony013]

vor 8 Stunden schrieb JMCC:

If you want to use the desktop, you will miss the top panel and/or window bars anyway

Yes, but I found a way around that.

I use the second bar with iconsize of 100 and changed conky to have all informations, I otherwise want in top bar ...

With twister I could start cody from desktop without changing lightdm session. That was beautiful :)

But as I can't use twister any longer, I have to live with your solution

 

vor 11 Stunden schrieb JMCC:

Please see post #1 of this thread

Sorry, I was unprecise.

Of cause I tried the hints from #1 to disable lightdm, but I don't know, how to recover desktop. So I had to reinstall armbian from sdcard.

 

vor 8 Stunden schrieb JMCC:

is to create a custom LightDM configuration, with a menu in some place that you can see. You can find instructions for that via Google.

Ok, I'll try that. Thank you

[JMCC]

3 hours ago, tony013 said:

With twister I could start cody from desktop

That's because it does not have VPU acceleration. You can probably also do that in Armbian, simply by installing the regular Debian Kodi packages (never tried it myself), but performance will be terrible. If you want fullacceleration on this chip, you need to disable X server for GBM KMS to take exclusive control of the display block.

[tony013]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb JMCC:

That's because it does not have VPU acceleration.

I'm not convinced, that it is true.

TwisterOS has same kodi-version like armbian legacy and movie playback gives the same impression like armbian legacy - smooth video and fresh sound.

Firefox-implementation of armbian pushed me towards twisteros.

... and I'm already completely angry about firefox experience on armbian. Really, that sort of spam turns me into a spree killer :(

 

vor 7 Stunden schrieb JMCC:

You can probably also do that in Armbian, simply by installing the regular Debian Kodi packages (never tried it myself)

Well, I tried it. Very disappointing experience. Kodi on armbian current is 3 generations back and has no hardware support for video and audio is the same very poor.

 

vor 7 Stunden schrieb JMCC:

If you want fullacceleration on this chip, you need to disable X server for GBM KMS to take exclusive control of the display block.

I guess, you should give twisteros a try. They use current kernel (same version like armbian current and LE) and have hardware acceleration for video and desktop - and best of all, switch between desktop and kodi in a wink.

Don't know, if that propaganda is true, but from twisterOS you can read:

• Latest PanfrostGPU drivers with desktop hardware acceleration
• Kodi and MPV media players with built-in hardware acceleration support
  
  

 

[JMCC]

2 hours ago, tony013 said:

movie playback gives the same impression like armbian legacy

Did you try 4k?

[tony013]

I finally was able to kill armbian-spammer, so don't need to search for other os any more :)

 

vor 9 Stunden schrieb JMCC:

Did you try 4k?

No, I'm not interested in 4k. Don't have equipment for 4k.

I'm happy with 2k and the equipment that I own.

But I do have movies, that none of rockpi images is able to play (like inception). Some movies have wrong colors on playback or you see jpg-artifacts or the like ...

But I couldn't detect any difference between armbian legacy and twisteros.

 

Anyway - as I can't use twisteros any more, armbian legacy is the only desktop os with acceptable movie playback.

 

Am 6.6.2021 um 19:24 schrieb JMCC:

create a custom LightDM configuration, with a menu in some place that you can see.

I found the settings for login top bar and changed fontsize to 100 or so, now I can use the menu.

Having that bar moveable like it is possible for the second bar would be wonderful. I'll keep searching.

[balbes150]

@JMCCNow I tested the latest versions of Station-legacy P1\M1 with the installation of the media package. I get the same error - hard binding of the package to the rockchip64-legacy kernel. This creates a lot of problems. Back to the question, maybe you should remove the hard binding to the kernel ?

[JMCC]

11 minutes ago, balbes150 said:

@JMCCNow I tested the latest versions of Station-legacy P1\M1 with the installation of the media package. I get the same error - hard binding of the package to the rockchip64-legacy kernel. This creates a lot of problems. Back to the question, maybe you should remove the hard binding to the kernel ?

Well, my position is the same as before. I can summarize it in two points:

• I don't like the idea of adding a new kernel to the already oversaturated mess of RK BSP. We had two (RK3399 and rockchip64), and we were trying to find ways to merge them. It has been a long issue with @piter75, @TonyMac32, @chwe, myself and others trying to find ways of getting rid of this duality, which we haven't gotten yet. But introducing a third one makes the issue even worse.
• The dependency is necessary for a proper debian packaging. If a package requires another package in order to work (as it is the case), then it must be reflected in the Debian dependencies.

The problem with any additional kernel that you may use either in standard Armbian or Armbian-TV, can be easily solved just by adding a field "Provides: linux-rockchip64-legacy" to your custom kernel package.

[balbes150]

I suggest not to add separate versions of kernels, but to remove the very presence of a hard binding to some kernel.

[JMCC]

3 minutes ago, balbes150 said:

to add separate versions of kernels

But, if the package is giving an error when installing, then it means that the system does not have the rk3399 nor rockchip64 kernel package, but a different one. Am I understanding well?

[balbes150]

The problem is that the system rigidly replaces the kernel, without giving the user the option to refuse to replace the kernel.

[JMCC]

21 minutes ago, balbes150 said:

The problem is that the system rigidly replaces the kernel, without giving the user the option to refuse to replace the kernel.

But then it means that the system has already installed some other kernel, other than rk3399 or rockchip64, am I understanding well?

[balbes150]

yes

[JMCC]

Then it can be easily solved by adding a field like "Provides: linux-image-legacy-rockchip64" to the Debian control file of that kernel.

[balbes150]

the formation of the core is laid down in the build patches and there is no change provided.

[tony013]

Hi,

 

I did some more tests and it turned out, that there is little difference between LE and armbian legacy for x264 or avc movies - but I found no movieplayer, that worked half as good as armbian legacy with vc-1 movies.

Don't have that many movies with vc-1 but some much-loved like inception ...

 

I already wrote, that I use rockpi as movieplayer together with a beamer, so session selection of armbian legacy is suboptimal for me, as about 10-15% on top and bottom of the screen are invisible (outside of screen). Lightdm/xfce is so dumb, that icons in topbar will not be scaled to bar height, which works fine for second bar ...

Sadly I didn't find any other greeter, that runs on armbian and is more attractive like lightdm-gtk-greeter.

So I started to build my own, which took lot more of time than expected ...

 

any way - I finally have a working sample:

 

is uses gtk too, so it works with armbian.

 

I check the available sessions and if there's no session definition for kody-gbm, the kodi-button will be disabled (as in the screenshot taken from my desktop computer).

Font- and button-size have been increased for a screen distance of 3m approximately.

 

Last login will be cached, so user will be prefilled and hitting ENTER in the password field will login to the last session. Left most button starts kody and right most button the desktop.

 

[JMCC]

3 minutes ago, tony013 said:

So I started to build my own, which took lot more of time than expected ...

 

any way - I finally have a working sample:

 

is uses gtk too, so it works with armbian.

 

I check the available sessions and if there's no session definition for kody-gbm, the kodi-button will be disabled (as in the screenshot taken from my desktop computer).

Font- and button-size have been increased for a screen distance of 3m approximately.

 

Last login will be cached, so user will be prefilled and hitting ENTER in the password field will login to the last session. Left most button starts kody and right most button the desktop.

 

Hey, that looks very good!

[tony013]

The greeter can be downloaded from github.

[JMCC]

44 minutes ago, d00m178 said:

there is also variant based on Mainline version of Armbian?

We are working on that: 

 

[JMCC]

25 minutes ago, d00m178 said:

got there recommendation to return here

Are you sure? Maybe you should read again and follow the link

[JMCC]

Follow my link

[JMCC]

This one, and the link in the post

 

 

[ATK]

Just downloaded latest legacy buster image from download page of OPI4 few hours ago , then did sudo apt update and then sudo apt upgrade  .. Rebooted... After which started getting error " Failed to start Light Display Manager " Picture of same attached... on terminal after update/upgrade the OS version shown NOW is Armbian 21.05.6  with Linux 4.4.213-rk3399 . 

hardware is Orange Pi 4 

[ATK]

UPDATE  : just checked inside armbian-config there "enable desktop environment" was disabled (don't know why this happened, before updating/upgrading this fresh installation desktop was all good and running)... So I just "enabled desktop environment" Again... Rebooted... And was back in DE... 

BUT one more observation/issue came up even before this update/upgrade....when I first installed this image I plugged in a "Dell" Wireless mouse/Keyboard pair (WIRELESS Kb/mouse receiver dongle inserted in USB2).. strange thing is happening now... It's all ok if I only use mouse BUT the moment I punch in few keys using the keyboard the system just suddenly halts.. I further investigated this by plugging in a USB/SERIAL cable.. I observed that the moment this keyboard activity/system halt happens the terminal throws up some messages which seems to be some "sleep" /PMIC  related and also some "exceptions" are reported.... Picture of those messages are attached. 

[JMCC]

4 hours ago, ATK said:

UPDATE  : just checked inside armbian-config there "enable desktop environment" was disabled (don't know why this happened, before updating/upgrading this fresh installation desktop was all good and running)... So I just "enabled desktop environment" Again... Rebooted... And was back in DE... 

BUT one more observation/issue came up even before this update/upgrade....when I first installed this image I plugged in a "Dell" Wireless mouse/Keyboard pair (WIRELESS Kb/mouse receiver dongle inserted in USB2).. strange thing is happening now... It's all ok if I only use mouse BUT the moment I punch in few keys using the keyboard the system just suddenly halts.. I further investigated this by plugging in a USB/SERIAL cable.. I observed that the moment this keyboard activity/system halt happens the terminal throws up some messages which seems to be some "sleep" /PMIC  related and also some "exceptions" are reported.... Picture of those messages are attached. 

I'm not sure how this issue can be related to the multimedia framework. Please post armbianmonitor -u

[ATK]

I finally moved the installation from SD card to eMMC (using NAND SATA Install script)and after that no problem experienced BUT F.Y.I below I am sharing Armbianmonitor output for both condition (when OS was on SD card and later when the OS was on eMMC) .

Armbianmonitor output  (OS on SD card)>>   http://ix.io/3uY1

Armbianmonitor output  (OS on eMMC)>>   http://ix.io/3uYa

 

Please also suggest which is the best scheme for CPU Governor  "On demand" or "Performance"  ?

[JMCC]

6 minutes ago, ATK said:

which is the best scheme for CPU Governor  "On demand" or "Performance"  ?

Ondemand works very well in this kernel, more efficient and you won't notice any performance loss in most use cases

[ATK]

Another issue ...Bluetooth not enabled , getting this below message when starting Bluetooth manager   >>

[balbes150]

@JMCC continuing testing

 

 

 

I tested the new KODI on a Nanopc T4 + 4k TV with 4k resolution. Everything works fine. When playing test videos to the full screen, which works in 4k mode (desktop resolution 3840x2160), the load on the processor is minimal, here is a fragment of monitoring. For those who want to try a new version of KODI on Nanopc T4, there is a link to Bullseye test images with a new core. 

 

https://disk.yandex.ru/d/oUSTsAI_oRCGMA

 

 

Time       big.LITTLE   load %cpu %sys %usr %nice %io %irq   CPU  C.St.
15:09:09:  408/1416MHz  1.43   8%   2%   3%   1%   0%   0% 50.6�°C  0/5
15:09:15:  600/ 600MHz  1.47   4%   1%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:20:  408/ 600MHz  1.44   5%   1%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:25:  600/ 408MHz  1.48   4%   1%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:30:  408/ 600MHz  1.44   4%   1%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:35:  408/ 408MHz  1.41   5%   1%   1%   0%   0%   1% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:40:  408/ 408MHz  1.45   5%   2%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:45:  408/ 600MHz  1.50   4%   2%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:51:  408/ 408MHz  1.54   4%   1%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:09:56:  408/ 408MHz  1.60   4%   1%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:10:01: 1800/ 600MHz  1.64   4%   2%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.6�°C  0/5
15:10:06:  408/ 408MHz  1.66   4%   2%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5
15:10:11: 1800/ 408MHz  1.61   4%   1%   1%   0%   0%   0% 50.0�°C  0/5