Kodi/XBMC on Armbian with HW Accleration possible?

[rellla]

Hi all,

I have been reading through this thread and it makes me kind of sad...
 

here you can find some information about cedarx http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX

This software called CedarX is known to violate the GPL. Please do not do any things with this but i ask everyone to work with http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus, the libre open source reverse engineered counterpart.
 

Hi @all!
For all noops who want to have Kodi on your Cubietruck.
In the other Forum (linked on top in this thread from Igor), the User Tom81 has build a OpenElec Image with Kodi Jarvis. In my opinion it is the fastest end best Solution to get Kodi running on your Truck. You can get the Image on this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rv9kdo7trwn9807/OpenELEC-A20.Cubietruck.arm-6.0.3-A20.img.gz?dl=0

Thanks goes to Tom81.

Based on Allwinner software? GPL?
 

And after some more wasted hours, i can say for sure - Kodi/XBMC can't work on A10/A20 devices in current state, with vdpau, mali driver version etc. as a part of OS (Armbian, but i am sure in other distros too).

Sure it won't work with the effort of a few hours because this is WIP software, hacked around developer boards. And it's not a matter of Armbian, because Armbian is just Debian and you can do everything you do can with Debian, too.
 

There is link in the other forum for OpenElec image, which author claim to work with hwacceleration, but i am not tested and have no interests of this kind of usage.

Good to know that you don't want to use this because iirc this is using Allwinner code, probably GPL violating. People always want quick solutions. And this is the main problem. They even don't care of using GPL violating software.
If interest in open source software -> http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus would be more present, we could have had a more mainlined kernel driver for the video engine already. And maybe Team-Kodi would have recognized this effort, too. But only talking about "CedarX", the GPL violating Allwinner code, slows that effort down dramatically.
 

Even with correct setting - CMA, UMP patches, framebuffer version of Mali driver, valgrind removed, all @mostera sources build successful and installed, i still have undefined symbols in libvdpau-sunxi. XBMC build failed with some ffmpeg error. And they use some AML headers which break mali driver and i am not sure how all this even work. There are only two guys in the whole topic claim to see this madness working (but not in Armbian) and i am way before their level of knowledgnment. And some others claim to have XBMC built (which is known to be only 50% of the way) but can't start it after.
I give up. This is unworkable at all and a huge waste of time. Until some new mali driver with working OpenGL video acceleration appear this program can't be run on Linux for AllWinner devices. Since Kodi developers have no intention to add vdpau support for those boards and they have a good reason not to.
Maybe i will try to build it normally (which will probably be adventure too, i think) and try to use external mpv, or mplayer as a last attempt to make it work. Or most likely just use OpenElec image on my OrangePi. But i can only advise anyone who value their time, not to waste it with this.

With the right bits of software, it will for sure run on linux. There are just too few people working on a suitable, long-term, solution using open source software.
New Mali drivers are not needed.
What is the good reason, why Team-Kodi has no intention?
I advise everyone, that has the skills, to work on mosterta's solution, working with GPL violation software is not the right way.
There are still efforts to make Kodi available on Allwinner with open source software. This simply needs time. See mosterta's post as a personal memo. Though some bits are missing there, which can be found all over the net somewhere.

Regards
rellla

[damien78]

Hi all,

 

Kodi is a beautiful software, but it's very complicated.

for my personal use I'd settle for a small program that shows only the jacket in single screen and which launches mpv or mplayer.

and to recover jacket tiny media manager is very good things,

same if it is in java

[help40]

 

a small program that shows only the jacket in single screen and which launches mpv or mplayer.

and to recover jacket tiny media manager is very good things,

same if it is in java

 

 

Excuse me for my stupidity. I did not understand much of what you wrote.

what is that  "jacket" ? Are you cold?

you are using "tiny media manager"  instead of KODI

but there is missing functionality to watch video streams ... ? is not it ?

[damien78]

Hi,

 

sorry for my english!

I use tiny media manager because it do the same some things of KODI (retrieving some information of media such as fanart, trailer , etc( not a jacket but a dvd cover) but it works out of the box with armbian.

tiny media manager is able to launch video player such as mpv or mplayer but is not suitable for use with a remote.

 

HD video playback and HD audio (DTS,ac3 pass-trougth) is quite difficult with the CPU Allwinner and those despite the incredible work of developers.

 

the idea of my post is to constitute a team in order to create or find as suitable solution for workaround the very difficult work to port kodi on allwinner.

 

there is no question of remake kodi but only the essential function:
Display wholesale video present on the disk and launch an external player and not internally in kodi.

control this with a remote

[jernej]

Continuation from here: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1380-h3-kernel-repo/?p=10663
 

 

Yes. Mali is just the 3D engine. But afaik you can at least display the frame with an EGL window (native or X based).

For rendering it should be possible to use the vdpau presentation queue API or use the display ioctls directly in the app...

Depends... In case of Kodi, i'm a friend of adapting libvdpau-sunxi  to imitate the nvidia/gl interoperation as near as possible to the spec. Just using neither nvidia nor gl but sunxi and gles It is and will always be a hack, because vdpau is not intended to work on ARM at all.

But If we can achieve this, the adaptions within e.g. kodi should be not that big. I have some minor success with nv_gles_interop and VDR (www.tvdr.de) already. But now we really get offtopic

 

Regards rellla

 

Interesting, it seems that even Tegra doesn't have VDPAU support. I concur that gles interop is most portable one, but it's not the most efficient, at least for H3. Maybe we could support both, presentation queue api and gles interop, with a switch in settings. Then both could be evaluated.

 

I saw some problems mentioned in regards of bandwidth capabilities on A10 (or A20?). Do you know what was that about? HW scaling and compositing is not possible at FullHD resolution? Could Mali mitigate the issue?

[Gary]

Hi @all!

For all noops who want to have Kodi on your Cubietruck.

In the other Forum (linked on top in this thread from Igor), the User Tom81 has build a OpenElec Image with Kodi Jarvis. In my opinion it is the fastest end best Solution to get Kodi running on your Truck. You can get the Image on this link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rv9kdo7trwn9807/OpenELEC-A20.Cubietruck.arm-6.0.3-A20.img.gz?dl=0

 

Thanks goes to Tom81.

Tried that image. Found info from TOM81, saying that vdpau mixed should be disabled. After that kodi works fine. Also changed sound driver to the HDMI one. After that works fine.