[Testing] Kodi 18.0 Leia beta versions now available for RetroPie!

Rascas

@Gwyllion Is that the OSD problem ? It was fixed in the firmware some time ago but the Raspberry Pi Foundation didn't updated the kernel/firmware in the repos since 4 November. One solution is to disable overscan_scale in /boot/config.txt, most people don't need it. Try it and see. Another solution is to use rpi-update to update the kernel/firmware, but that might break other things in RetroPie, so be carefull with this!
I just sent an email to the Raspberry Pi Foundation engineers, lets see if they update it soon.

rodney465

@Rascas done everything and walla it works perfectly thx

Gwyllion

@Rascas nope, Kodi starts well, playing a movie well...but when you try to pause, stop or going to home menú. Black screen. Noise of moving keys are working but no image. I have to reset.

here you have the log:

LOG

Rascas

@Gwyllion Please don't post just parts of the log, it is useless, post the full log, like it is explained here:
https://kodi.wiki/view/Log_file
Anyway, I am almost sure that your problem is the one that I said. Did you tried any of the 2 solutions that I told you ?

Jan007

@Gwyllion Had the same bug after a fresh install of RetroPie and Kodi. There is a bug with the overscan.
Solution:

Backup your data
Sudo apt update
Sudo apt dist-upgrade
Sudo rpi-update
Sudo reboot
Sudo nano /boot/config.txt
Search for „overscan_scale=1“ Delete the complete line or set to „#overscan_scale=1“ (without „“ but with # at the beginning)
Should be the last line
Sudo reboot

After the next update it may be necessary to adjust the config.txt again.

WarC0zes

I just updated kodi 17.6 in 18.0, but now I can no longer read the videos that are in .rar .
I have the retropie version 4.4.8.

Rascas

@WarC0zes Compressed files in Kodi 18 are now managed by a separate binary addon called kodi-vfs-libarchive. If you updated Kodi via RetroPie-Setup -> Manage Packages -> Manage optional packages -> Kodi it should by already installed but you need to enable it in Kodi interface. Go to "Addons" - > "My addons" -> "Virtual filesystems" -> "Archive support".
Be aware that addon is still a bit buggy, and not all compressed archives might work good.

WarC0zes

@Rascas
Thanks for the quick answer, it works :)

Gwyllion

@Jan007 @Rascas Well done, fine now. many very thanks...althoug retropie menus and games are out of screen but at least kodi Works . thanks again.

Rascas

@Gwyllion overscan_scale=1 should only be used as a last resort, like if your TV does not have options to set image format, options like "panoramic", "zoom", "scaled" and such. Because overscan_scale does scaling on hardware and in most cases it isn't needed.

Anyway, the kernel/firmware was just updated, so you can enable overscan_scale=1 if you want. Then go to RetroPie Setup -> Configuration / Tools -> Raspbian Tools -> Update Raspbian Packages and reboot at the end.

ParadoxGBB

Oddly with release pictures are now rendering fine for me. I'll take it! ;-)

Rascas

@ParadoxGBB Not sure what you are talking about, but nice :D

Rascas

There is now Kodi 18.1 available. I will create a new post later about the stable versions, to keep things together and separated from the test builds.

psyke83

@Rascas,

Have you noticed any issues with game controllers on the new Kodi build? I've filed a bug here related to the hid-sony driver, tested against your packages: https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/issues/15588

Rascas

@psyke83 I don't have any "Sony joysticks" to test at the moment, I don't know about that. But I saw your issue in Kodi github, Garbear is the guy to help you I think.

psyke83

@Rascas,

I'm interested in making the Mesa driver viable for regular use on RPI3, and Kodi is a major missing piece of the puzzle. Your latest package (2:18.4-3~buster) appears to implement support for RPI4 through a separate v8binary that's detected via the CPU revision, but this will prevent an RPI3 that's running the open driver from working.

Would you consider adding an exception to your CPU check so that an RPI3 using the firmware KMS overlay will use the v8 binary, whenever you publish the next update? Here's the change that would be needed: https://gist.github.com/psyke83/31f233144ea8fa21ecf3d9bae816b2e6

The is_fkms function is the same as what raspi-configuses (RetroPie-Setup's is a bit different).

Apologies for contacting you here, but I wasn't sure of the best place to submit a patch for the packages, and the recent branches of https://github.com/PIPplware/xbmc don't seem to have a launcher script that resembles what is contained in the packages. Thanks, and great work!

Rascas

@psyke83 said in [Testing] Kodi 18.0 Leia beta versions now available for RetroPie!:

@Rascas,

I'm interested in making the Mesa driver viable for regular use on RPI3, and Kodi is a major missing piece of the puzzle. Your latest package (2:18.4-3~buster) appears to implement support for RPI4 through a separate v8binary that's detected via the CPU revision, but this will prevent an RPI3 that's running the open driver from working.

Would you consider adding an exception to your CPU check so that an RPI3 using the firmware KMS overlay will use the v8 binary, whenever you publish the next update? Here's the change that would be needed: https://gist.github.com/psyke83/31f233144ea8fa21ecf3d9bae816b2e6

The is_fkms function is the same as what raspi-configuses (RetroPie-Setup's is a bit different).

Apologies for contacting you here, but I wasn't sure of the best place to submit a patch for the packages, and the recent branches of https://github.com/PIPplware/xbmc don't seem to have a launcher script that resembles what is contained in the packages. Thanks, and great work!

Well, that won't work, it is not easy as it seems.
The armv6 (for RPi 0/1) and armv7 binaries (for RPi 2/3) are compiled in the old style , using a specific window rendering system for the Raspberry Pi which uses, and is compiled against the proprietary Broadcom video drivers, also know as "Legacy driver". This is what everybody that I know does on the Raspberry Pi for the Pi versions up to version 3, including LibreELEC.
The armv8 (for the RPi 4) is compiled using GBM + MMAL, which uses and is compiled against the open-source video driver, also known as "OpenGL driver".

So for that, besides the 3 different binaries already available, I would need to compile another one, that would be something like done on the Pi4, which is GBM + MMAL against against open-source drivers. And besides the extra work, that is something that I don't know anyone that already attempted that, probably it would need extra patches, the h265/HEVC hardware acceleration done through NEON code would be lost, etc, etc.

In the future, for what I read in some places, the intention of the RPi Foundation engineers/devs is to make every versions of the Rpi using the open-source video drivers. They are appointing that for Kodi 19 already, but that may take some time. Then all RPi versions will use GBM + v4l2 for the hardware acceleration.

psyke83

@Rascas,

I'm aware of the difference between the legacy and Mesa driver; I've been testing all of my submissions to the fkms_rpi4 branch against both RPI4 and RPI3 with firmware kms enabled, as well as sending minor fixes to upstream projects such as SDL2, related to KMS support.

I understand that the RPI3 and RPI4 are not at feature parity regarding accelerated h265/hevc decoding support, but I can assure you that your current kodi-rbpi_v8 binary runs absolutely fine on RPI3 with the fkms overlay enabled, and accelerated h264 decoding works via MMAL, just as with the legacy driver. It's just the launcher script that is preventing it from working as-is.

Rascas

@psyke83 said in [Testing] Kodi 18.0 Leia beta versions now available for RetroPie!:

@Rascas,

I'm aware of the difference between the legacy and Mesa driver; I've been testing all of my submissions to the fkms_rpi4 branch against both RPI4 and RPI3 with firmware kms enabled, as well as sending minor fixes to upstream projects such as SDL2, related to KMS support.

I understand that the RPI3 and RPI4 are not at feature parity regarding accelerated h265/hevc decoding support, but I can assure you that your current kodi-rbpi_v8 binary runs absolutely fine on RPI3 with the fkms overlay enabled, and accelerated h264 decoding works via MMAL, just as with the legacy driver. It's just the launcher script that is preventing it from working as-is.

Nice find, I wasn't expecting that it would work on earlier RPi versions as is, great! I will test it tomorrow, I became curious on what the performance will be. And if it works fine for you, sure, I will add it to the next version, no problem ;)

psyke83

@Rascas said in [Testing] Kodi 18.0 Leia beta versions now available for RetroPie!:

@psyke83 said in [Testing] Kodi 18.0 Leia beta versions now available for RetroPie!:

@Rascas,

I'm aware of the difference between the legacy and Mesa driver; I've been testing all of my submissions to the fkms_rpi4 branch against both RPI4 and RPI3 with firmware kms enabled, as well as sending minor fixes to upstream projects such as SDL2, related to KMS support.

I understand that the RPI3 and RPI4 are not at feature parity regarding accelerated h265/hevc decoding support, but I can assure you that your current kodi-rbpi_v8 binary runs absolutely fine on RPI3 with the fkms overlay enabled, and accelerated h264 decoding works via MMAL, just as with the legacy driver. It's just the launcher script that is preventing it from working as-is.

Nice find, I wasn't expecting that it would work on earlier RPi versions, great! I will test it tomorrow, I became curious on what the performance will be. And if it works fine for you, sure, I will add it to the next version, no problem ;)

That would be much appreciated, thanks! The only small issue I noticed with this build so far is that GUI elements are tearing - i.e. vsync is not enabled - but this is happens on my Pi 4 B as well, so it's not a RPI3-specific issue, and doesn't seem to affect video playback for either Pi version, fortunately.

Off-topic: aside from Kodi, the Mesa driver is performing very well on RPI3 - much better than when I last tested a year or so ago. I'd say it's definitely a viable alternative to the legacy driver, although there are still some outstanding issues that need addressing. We're not planning to switch RetroPie builds for RPI3 to the open driver by default, but, once the fkms_rpi4 branch is merged into master, it'll be possible for RPI3 users to build packages against Mesa/KMS if they wish to do so. I'm updating as many scriptmodules as possible to support KMS, targeting RPI3, RPI4 and even generic x86 KMS (using my laptop's Intel i965 driver for testing). Having Kodi work on RPI3 for both the legacy and Mesa driver would be a great step towards the goal of having robust RPI3 support.