Anybody running XBMC4XBOX 3.3 at 1080i ?

[poshea]

Just wondering if anybody is running at 1080i stable? I got crashes a few minutes into a movie when running at 1080, so thought I'd just set the system to 1080 so the menu system in XBMC is 1080 but changed the video setting to playback movies at 720. This seemed to be working for a while, but I've just discovered that quite a few movies crash the system when I try to play them... (Sometimes comes up with the transport buttons in the bottom left preview window... But then either nothing plays, or xbox crashes. If I disable 1080 the same movies play normally. These are streaming over a network.

Just wondering if anyone else is using 1080 at all?

Thanks, Paul.

[poshea]

Here is my debug log file.

Looks like it simply runs out of memory when initializing at 1080, even though movies are set to play at 720. Anyway tricks to get around this?

I read about an advanced setting where you could tell the system to buffer to the harddrive rather than ram, however I think this only helps with buffering off the internet? I assume the video still then needs to buffer to the xboxs ram before playback??

[poshea]

Tried the advancedsettings.xml set to both 5242800 and 0. When 1080i enabled on XBMC, but movies set to play at 720 - system still runs out of memory...

UserData/advancedsettings.xml

Code: Select all
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<cachemembuffersize>5242880</cachemembuffersize>
</network>
</advancedsettings>

[Xphazer]

No don't use 1080i, and this for several reasons.
720p is an higher resolution than 1080i. XBMC4Xbox wont play nice at 1080i, any way.

[poshea]

Thanks so much for the video Xphazer! I didn't fully understand the difference between interlaced and progressive and how it related to the HD variations until now. Ill disable 1080i. There is no doubt movies are better viewed at 720 progressive. As far as navigating around the XBMC menus, text does appear sharper with the additional lines that 1080i offers, despite being interlaced... But not worth the other issues that come with. Thanks again for the vid... It explains it really well.

[whufclee]

Yeah 1080 is a big no-no on xbmc4xbox if you want decent playback. Use 720p and a lite skin and all will be good in your xbox world

[Dan Dar3]

What most people don't realize is that in 720 vs 1080 there's more than 2x screen pixels to be processed / displayed.

720 = 1,280 x 720 = 921,600 pixels
1080 = 1,920 x 1,080 = 2,073,600 pixels

All that in a Pentium III machine with only 64 MB of RAM... It's bound to crack at either CPU (hiccups) or memory (out of memory) levels - you can see all that in your Q:\xbmc.old.log.

I believe there is a project ticket to remove that option to avoid getting into problems like this one.
http://redmine.exotica.org.uk/issues/115

[2 Bunny]

I'm sorry, but that video is wrong in that sense. 1080 Full HD is higher resolution than 720p. Yes, the "progressive vs interlaced" makes some difference, but the difference at that high of resolution is nothing like it is going from 480i to 480p (which is "night and day"). The difference between 1080i and 1080p on native 1080i and 1080p displays is almost indistinguishable. In the case of original Xbox, you're not going to be viewing any 1080anything material either way, so the only time you're going to use 1080i on Xbox is if you need to (such as in the case where you have a native 1080i HDTV that doesn't support 720p resolution, like mine )

Just wondering if anybody is running at 1080i stable? I got crashes a few minutes into a movie when running at 1080, so thought I'd just set the system to 1080 so the menu system in XBMC is 1080 but changed the video setting to playback movies at 720. This seemed to be working for a while, but I've just discovered that quite a few movies crash the system when I try to play them... (Sometimes comes up with the transport buttons in the bottom left preview window... But then either nothing plays, or xbox crashes. If I disable 1080 the same movies play normally. These are streaming over a network.

Just wondering if anyone else is using 1080 at all?

Thanks, Paul.

Good question Paul - I use Xbox in my family at Full HD 1080 quality as well. While the performance is not optimal like at lower resolutions, the console will still play and upscale 480p and 720p video to the full HD resolution offered (and required) by my HDTV set flawlessly. The only problems I have with running it that high are a slightly laggier experience switching screens and inputting text, but playback is still remarkably just as good (and the Xbox does an amazing job of upscaling lower res content up to HD).

It all boils down to what kind of display you have and what resolution it runs at. Like I said, I run an HDTV that only supports 480i, 480p, and 1080i; what are you using?

[poshea]

I use a 40" Toshiba Full HD LCD TV 40RV700A http://www.mytoshiba.com.au/products/te ... ifications

So I have the option to run at any of the available resolutions. I can see, and as the video indicated- there is debate over wether or not 720p should be considered 'better' than 1080i. After seeing the artifacts that an interlaced system introduces, particularly on fast moving images... I can see a huge benefit to running progressive if you have that option.

My original question was more about running the XBMC dash at 1080i, whilst playing movies at 720p. The still menus are much sharper and clearer at 1080i.... But there is the lag, running out of memory and CPU issues that go with it. I think since my TV supports 720p, that's going to be a much more stable option.

I had tried a few tweaks I'd read on a thread somewhere... Disabling flicker filter and soften etc which may free up some resources... But I still experienced crashes.

Oh... A side note. I had some video files that were pushing the CPU limit sometimes over 100% and therefore dropping frames. In the video playback settings, I changed h.264 skip loop filter to "Skip Everything". This change gave me an extra 10% or so CPU during playback... now the same movies hover around 90% CPU with no dropped frames. Not sure what difference this setting is making to the quality of playback? Anybody know?

[Redneck9]

**** I have found xbmc4xbox v3.1 w/slik set to minimal gui settings displaying only "system/power/videos/playdisc." This configuration will play dvds in 1080i (I have this build set as the default dvd player path in unleash X build used only for dvds) set fanspeed to 30% override.

http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... p?f=4&t=37




I have a 1080p set and I can defiantly see the difference between 720p & 1080i (on a 39" 1080p LED TV)

Just get XBMC4xbox 3.1 and FTP it to your E:F:or G: games folder(not apps, Games) If You are launching to UnleashX then Set the default DVD player path for UnleashX to the .xbe file located in the XBMC3.1 folder.

3.3 underwent many changes, the RAM and CPU use different resources mostly to allow for better playback and streaming of SD h.264 files. 3.3 is hit and miss when playing video in 1080i.

3.1 will playback almost anything in 1080i so long as it isn't h.264, It will even upscale 720p encodes to 1080i, which in my opinion is they way it should be.

[2 Bunny]

**** I have found xbmc4xbox v3.1 w/slik set to minimal gui settings displaying only "system/power/videos/playdisc." This configuration will play dvds in 1080i (I have this build set as the default dvd player path in unleash X build used only for dvds) set fanspeed to 30% override.

http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... p?f=4&t=37




I have a 1080p set and I can defiantly see the difference between 720p & 1080i (on a 39" 1080p LED TV)

Just get XBMC4xbox 3.1 and FTP it to your E:F:or G: games folder(not apps, Games) If You are launching to UnleashX then Set the default DVD player path for UnleashX to the .xbe file located in the XBMC3.1 folder.

3.3 underwent many changes, the RAM and CPU use different resources mostly to allow for better playback and streaming of SD h.264 files. 3.3 is hit and miss when playing video in 1080i.

3.1 will playback almost anything in 1080i so long as it isn't h.264, It will even upscale 720p encodes to 1080i, which in my opinion is they way it should be.

I have no trouble playing SD or HD videos or DVD movies on 3.3 on my 1080i television with the fans set all the way down.

I use a 40" Toshiba Full HD LCD TV 40RV700A http://www.mytoshiba.com.au/products/te ... ifications

So I have the option to run at any of the available resolutions. I can see, and as the video indicated- there is debate over wether or not 720p should be considered 'better' than 1080i. After seeing the artifacts that an interlaced system introduces, particularly on fast moving images... I can see a huge benefit to running progressive if you have that option.

My original question was more about running the XBMC dash at 1080i, whilst playing movies at 720p. The still menus are much sharper and clearer at 1080i.... But there is the lag, running out of memory and CPU issues that go with it. I think since my TV supports 720p, that's going to be a much more stable option.

I had tried a few tweaks I'd read on a thread somewhere... Disabling flicker filter and soften etc which may free up some resources... But I still experienced crashes.

Oh... A side note. I had some video files that were pushing the CPU limit sometimes over 100% and therefore dropping frames. In the video playback settings, I changed h.264 skip loop filter to "Skip Everything". This change gave me an extra 10% or so CPU during playback... now the same movies hover around 90% CPU with no dropped frames. Not sure what difference this setting is making to the quality of playback? Anybody know?

That's an interesting point - I believe there is an option somewhere where you can play videos at resolutions independent of the dashboard. Maybe you could configure it so that you can play videos at 720p (since the Xbox can't really play any resolution above that anyway) and run the dashboard at 1080i. Although personally, if I could, I'd run the dashboard on mine at 720p because 1080i makes it a little less responsive, especially when using the MS DVD remote for some reason, even though it is higher resolution and clearer text.

[poshea]

There are 3 independent settings relating to screen resolution in xbmc4xbox.

SETTINGS | SYSTEM | VIDEO OUTPUT

Here you can enable or disable 480p, 720p, and 1080i modes

SETTINGS | APPEARANCE | DISPLAY

Here you can set the resolution for the xbmc dash. (Auto will default to highest available as I understand)

SETTINGS | VIDEOS | PLAYBACK

Here you can set the resolution for video playback. (Default is best available, but when I was running the system at 1080i, I had this playback resolution set to 720p.)

This worked 90% of the time for me, but with the lag you described - and then I got a few crashes when trying to start some movies, not others - depending on how the were encoded I guess.

*** Interestingly, if I enable 1080i in system... And then try to switch to 1080i 16:9 in appearance-I get a crash. But when I choose Auto in appearance (with 1080i enabled in system, the xbmc dash resets to 1080i with no problem.

In any case, the overall system is much happier at 720p.

[2 Bunny]

There are 3 independent settings relating to screen resolution in xbmc4xbox.

SETTINGS | SYSTEM | VIDEO OUTPUT

Here you can enable or disable 480p, 720p, and 1080i modes

SETTINGS | APPEARANCE | DISPLAY

Here you can set the resolution for the xbmc dash. (Auto will default to highest available as I understand)

SETTINGS | VIDEOS | PLAYBACK

Here you can set the resolution for video playback. (Default is best available, but when I was running the system at 1080i, I had this playback resolution set to 720p.)

This worked 90% of the time for me, but with the lag you described - and then I got a few crashes when trying to start some movies, not others - depending on how the were encoded I guess.

*** Interestingly, if I enable 1080i in system... And then try to switch to 1080i 16:9 in appearance-I get a crash. But when I choose Auto in appearance (with 1080i enabled in system, the xbmc dash resets to 1080i with no problem.

In any case, the overall system is much happier at 720p.

Exactly right, that pretty much sums it up.

[Redneck9]

3.1 is perfectly responsive in 1080i. no skin stuttering or crashes when video is played.(won't play HD .mkv, has trouble with h.264) It will however upscale 720p avi xvid files and DVDs to 1080i.

3.3 will cause skins to be less responsive. 3.3 will playback videos in 1080i just so long as the video isn't encoded in 30fps, 720p or a super high bitrate.



If you boot to UnleashX, enable both 1080i and 720p.(unleashX will display in 1080i)

Set 3.1 to display in 1080i and play video in 1080i, disable file sharing and set fan to 30%, use slik skin. Won't run milkdrop visualisations over 35fps. place build in emulators folder.

Set 3.3 to display in 720p, and play video in 720p, use any settings and skin you want, place build in apps folder.

[BuZz]

3.1 is perfectly responsive in 1080i. no skin stuttering or crashes when video is played.(won't play HD .mkv, has trouble with h.264) It will however upscale 720p avi xvid files and DVDs to 1080i.

3.3 will cause skins to be less responsive. 3.3 will playback videos in 1080i just so long as the video isn't encoded in 30fps, 720p or a super high bitrate.

im sorry but this is just misinformation and completely false. in fact 3.3 is much faster than 3.1 when loading jpg images such as skin backgrounds.

You also don't seem to know the difference between a container and a codec. mkv is a container. saying "HD .mkv" makes no sense when talking about performance - it depends what the codec is.

both 3.1 3.2 and 3.3 will work at 1080i dependent on free memory. It's all about the free ram and nothing else. I recommend running at 720p though unless you have a 128mb xbox.

[2 Bunny]

3.1 is perfectly responsive in 1080i. no skin stuttering or crashes when video is played.(won't play HD .mkv, has trouble with h.264) It will however upscale 720p avi xvid files and DVDs to 1080i.

3.3 will cause skins to be less responsive. 3.3 will playback videos in 1080i just so long as the video isn't encoded in 30fps, 720p or a super high bitrate.

im sorry but this is just misinformation and completely false. in fact 3.3 is much faster than 3.1 when loading jpg images such as skin backgrounds.

You also don't seem to know the difference between a container and a codec. mkv is a container. saying "HD .mkv" makes no sense when talking about performance - it depends what the codec is.

both 3.1 3.2 and 3.3 will work at 1080i dependent on free memory. It's all about the free ram and nothing else. I recommend running at 720p though unless you have a 128mb xbox.

Good call - I thought a lot of that stuff he wrote sounded a little funny. I'm running 3.3 and the skin is just as responsive at 1080 Full HD as 3.1 was, which is okay (but not ideal). High definition videos play back fine on both versions with the fans set at their lowest settings, contrary to what that other dude wrote.

When you've gotta use 1080 Full HD, you've gotta use 1080 Full HD, there's no way around it for displays that don't support the lower 720p resolution.

[Redneck9]

im sorry but this is just misinformation and completely false. in fact 3.3 is much faster than 3.1 when loading jpg images such as skin backgrounds.

You also don't seem to know the difference between a container and a codec. mkv is a container. saying "HD .mkv" makes no sense when talking about performance - it depends what the codec is.

both 3.1 3.2 and 3.3 will work at 1080i dependent on free memory. It's all about the free ram and nothing else. I recommend running at 720p though unless you have a 128mb xbox.

avi and mkv are containers, I've played/encoded both.

720p avi containers w/xvid will upscale to 1080i w/3.1, 720p avi w/xvid wont upscale to to 1080i w/3.3, Not one 720p mpeg-4 mkv i've played has been able to upscale to 1080i.



BTW 2Bunny, fullhd means 1080p not 1080i.

Logs.(said setup)

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43735 (3.3 720p avi upscaled to 1080i/crash)Confuence-lite

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43736 (3.1 720p avi upscaled to 1080i/success)slik

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43739 (3.1 720p mkv upscaled to 1080i/8mb ram free video stuttering)slik

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43747 (3.3 30fps dvd upscaled to 1080i running prefectly)slik. mkv also upscaled to 1080i played. avi 720p xvid crashed.


That being said; nobody posted anything about running 3.3 w/slik in 1080i(file shares disabled)

[2 Bunny]

im sorry but this is just misinformation and completely false. in fact 3.3 is much faster than 3.1 when loading jpg images such as skin backgrounds.

You also don't seem to know the difference between a container and a codec. mkv is a container. saying "HD .mkv" makes no sense when talking about performance - it depends what the codec is.

both 3.1 3.2 and 3.3 will work at 1080i dependent on free memory. It's all about the free ram and nothing else. I recommend running at 720p though unless you have a 128mb xbox.

avi and mkv are containers, I've played/encoded both.

720p avi containers w/xvid will upscale to 1080i w/3.1, 720p avi w/xvid wont upscale to to 1080i w/3.3, Not one 720p mpeg-4 mkv i've played has been able to upscale to 1080i.



BTW 2Bunny, fullhd means 1080p not 1080i.

Logs.(said setup)

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43735 (3.3 720p avi upscaled to 1080i/crash)Confuence-lite

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43736 (3.1 720p avi upscaled to 1080i/success)slik

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43739 (3.1 720p mkv upscaled to 1080i/8mb ram free video stuttering)slik

http://www.xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=43747 (3.3 30fps dvd upscaled to 1080i running prefectly)slik. mkv also upscaled to 1080i played. avi 720p xvid crashed.


That being said; nobody posted anything about running 3.3 w/slik in 1080i(file shares disabled)

If you're using a nonstandard format that the console already struggles with, then that may be why the higher resolution pushes it out of range of smooth playback. FF MPEG is the new way to convert 720p videos to play in 720p on the Xbox, regardless of what resolution it is outputting to the display. Check it out in the other thread and you'll find that you should have no problems any longer with 720p on the Xbox.

[Redneck9]

I fixed the problem with 720p .mkv playback in 1080i (xbmc4xbox 3.1/SLik)

DVDPlayer default Cache settings were too high.
use:

video cache:1024
video cache max time: 5 sec
audio cache:256
audio cache-max time: 5 sec

[NOTTHESAME]

i just got a hdtv lcd that can output up to 1080i and when i sent my xbmc4xbox to 720p in appearance and then my video (movies) to show in 720p, does it say what its outputing? for some reason, i saw with the white button it says yuv420p is this where it suppose to show what its outputing? well it still shows 420p when i try to set to 720 in video? can someone help me

im using 3.3 xbmc4xbox confluence lite