Selecting Kodi package on RPi

[graysky]

Kodi Matrix v19 is now current/stable. We are currently providing three Kodi packages for Raspberry Pis. All packages feature some flavor of hardware accelerated decoding. Full hardware decoding of both h264 and x265 (HEVC) content is only possible for on RPi 4B/400. Older models can do some level of h264 only. This is a hardware limitation.

1. Raspberry Pi 2 should use kodi-rpi-legacy.
2. Raspberry Pi 3/3B+, 4B, and 400 should use kodi-rpi
3. Raspberry Pi 3/3B+, 4B, and 400 can optionally use kodi-rpi-git if a periodic development version is desired. Be sure to check what version is being offered as it might be older than the stable package. For example, at the time I type this, the git package is supplying an OLDER version of kodi relative to the stable package (RC1 vs final). The git package features alpha, beta, and RC versions.

[barracuda]

Hi,
Thanks a lot for Kodi 19.
I have a RPI 4, in the description of kodi-rpi, it says that it's a gbm fork. I have read on the Kodi web site that there is now only one binary for multiple windowing systems (X11, Wayland, and gbm).
Does your package could be run in a x11 session, and not only in a tty console ?
Thanks

[graysky]

Firstly, the "gbm fork" is a reference to popcornmix's "gbm" branch which includes a number of tweaks but mainly a patch to ffmpeg which enables hardware accel decoding for h264/x265 on RPi 4, and h264 on lower models. I do not believe that the modified ffmpeg works to offload decoding with gl rendering of x11 for example. I believe it is gbm/gles only.

[barracuda]

I understand what you mean.
Nevertheless, before to switch to Arch ARM, i used Raspberry Pi OS.
I switched because of the MS repo they added recently.
Well, i used Raspberry Pi OS with Pixel. I then installed Kodi as a full desktop application. It was Kodi 18.7 from their repo.
I do have hw acceleration with h264 and h265 content by default.
That's why i am wondering in which conditions it would be possible to have Kodi working with Arch ARM and x11 session.
I guess there is not technical reason not to have it.

[graysky]

Building for X11 and gbm does not require any more deps and only increases the binary size by approx 0.25 M but running Kodi under X11 offers no hardware accel decoding, at least when I tried under LXQT. I do not see any ill effects for standalone operation; I made the change to the package but without hardware accel decoding, it's limited in its utility IMO.

[barracuda]

Indeed, there is not hardware acceleration, i tested your new package.
For my information, in order for me to understand how things are, could you please tell me why, or even point me a link where i could understand a little bit more.

The situation is :
- In arch arm 64 bits, there is no hw accelaration with x11
- In arch arm 64 bits, there is hw acceleration with gdm
- In Rpi OS and x11, therefore in 32 bits, there is hw accelaration, via MMAL

I really do not know what to conclude honestly. Is it related to the combination of 64 bits and x11 so that we don't have hardware acceleration ?

[graysky]

Kodi 19 does not use MMAL, that was an old work-around for 18.x in an unofficial fork that we too shipped. See: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=360654

We ship popcornmix's gbm branch for our kodi package. It has the hw decoding vs vanilla kodi which does not. As to x11, I do not believe it allows for hw decoding as I stated previously. You can open a thread in the kodi forums using the @popcornmix tag to ask him if enabling hw decoding is possible under x11 with his gbm branch if you want the definitive answer from the source.

[barracuda]

Thanks for your answers, i will ask in Kodi's forum

[amhairghin]

A question, Raspberry Pi 3/3B+ users with ARMv7 installation, must use kodi-rpi or kodi-rpi-legacy package?

[graysky]

A question, Raspberry Pi 3/3B+ users with ARMv7 installation, must use kodi-rpi or kodi-rpi-legacy package?

See first post.