Gap between videos

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21

I have a 20 seconds videoclip that will loop all day. This would be great if it could be fixed. I did make a workaround by making a website with an online player that loops, but better with content file from media library to operate.

22

Great to hear a fix is in the works for this.

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23

I can only confirm that the Android client on halfway decent hardware does not seem to have this problem.

24

What hardware do you use? I Run it on a Minix box with good preformance, same issue.

25

If you are using Android, you have to make sure your video is MPEG4 baseline correctly encoded by ffmpeg (eg. using Handbrake) or it may not use hardware acceleration. I am currently using an Amlogic S905 based device on Android 5.1.1 at 1.5GHz.

I think most MINIX devices except for the U1 are based around the S8xx series which Iā€™ve heard does have some issues. I also do not recommend MINIX devices AT ALL because they come loaded with crapware and MINIX violates the GPL by refusing to release the source code.

26

Thanks alot for this explenation. What hardware are you using? Brand and model?

27

Iā€™ve got a custom ROM on a Khadas but also tried with ODROID C2. Have you tried switching from SurfaceView to TextureView?

28

Where do I make this switch?

29

Display settings page -> edit display profile assigned to your device -> Troubleshooting tab -> Use Surfaceā€¦
Disable that checkbox to use texture view (you might need to restart your device as well), there is line on status window that can be true or false, so you can make sure which method is selected.

30

Is there anymore progress on this issue? I have been testing on both android and windows and they each have their own issues. All of my videos fade to whiteā€¦ With android if I shut off the surface view as described and put a region behind my video region with a solid white graphic I only get a quick black flash between videos. On windows even if I put a white graphic behind my video I get a flash to the background image of the layout then a flash to black and then the new video.

I would prefer to continue using the intel compute sticks I have been using as they are smaller than the android boxes. However, I plan to have long strings of short 30 second videos and whatever can be down to minimize that flash is of great importance. If it means having to go with android that is what I will do.

31

Hi Ericcd,

If possible, can you send me a layout or videos youā€™re trying to get to work. I havenā€™t noticed the flashing on my players so I want to see whether I can trigger the issue you are having.

Send to: evi@evcircuits.com

32

At this moment I am testing the difference in this matter between 1.7.9 and 1.8.0. The gaps have not reduced a bit in the latest version.

I have tested both the scenario where I use four layouts and the scenario where I place al four videos (mp4, Full HD, 10 seconds each) in one layout. This does not make a noticeable difference.

We are using Intel Compute Sticks but the problem also exists on three tested Android devices (two different MINIXā€™s and one device that was embedded into one of our displays).

After testing on my own desktop computers (one AMD A8/8GB RAM/ATI HD6890 and one Intel i5/6GB/ATI HD6970) I have to conclude that the gaps on these devices are nog significantly shorter than on the Intel Compute Stick.

33

Yeah, we are on the latest version and even if I add a video, set its duration high and then check the loop box, it still has a flicker to it.

34

I do not have a solution yet but this might be useful for further troubleshooting:

Iā€™ve been using MyGica ATV582 Quad Core players for the last 4 years from ice cream sandwich and later KitKat running Xibo for Android from version 1.4 R35 onwards. With these players I never have a delay between videos, I use full screen and videos embedded on the content screens.
However today I tried a MINIX U1 running lollipop & Xibo for Android R102 (the device also has 4K H.265 HEVC Hardware Decoding) using the same CMS and Campaign and suddenly I have 1-3sec gap between loading video content.

Therefore:

  • I do not agree that this is ā€œnaturalā€ device load time
  • The Minix is basically the same and better hardware spec as Mygica so I donā€™t think its CPU, GPU or Storage related
  • Doubt if the video encoding is the issue
  • Toggling Surface View in Xibo settings (Peter) unfortunately do not make any noticeable difference.
35

It seem this issue have not solve yet cause with player v64, i still meet this issue

I try to split the one big video into several video, and each size no more than 50MB,
cause i met at my place some bandwidth limitation issue for internet network,
that makes all files that being transfered will not pass if the files size more than 50MB.
I put all those videos into one region with sequential order.
the next step, i displaying all those video with my android box player.

At the end, all those videos cannot play sequential smoothly,
because between those videos, there is a gap that separates those videos.

I dont have any clue how to get rid this gap,
i hope i can play all those videos as one full single video without any interruption between

So what i have to do to make all those videos playing smoothly ?
Any clues or solution ?

1 Like
36

I will tell you my workaround that works foe sure on windows without any black gap.
But before I will add my points i have noticed:

  1. The black gap between videos depends a little on a video coding scheme - hevc, vp9,. h264. Your eyes can see the difference - so it is to try.

  2. The black gap doesnā€™t depend very much on a hardware. No noticeable difference between
    E7300+ HDD + AMD R9 280X and the latest core i7 6 core + ssd + GTX1050ti.

  3. If the layout region has video1 (20.5 seconds long), video2 (19.8 seconds long),video3 (15.1 seconds long). I donā€™t know how player determines the video length in seconds but it seems for me that it rounds the length to a single second. Because the gap is different in above written scenario.
    To see the big difference in black gaps for above written scenario I set a duration for each video one second shorter - e.g video1 - 19, video2 - 18, video3 - 14 - And like a magic the gap is shorter and the gap is THE SAME.

  4. Again three videos in a region. the gap between video3-video1 is longer than video1-video2-video3. I mean the gap when a region duration restarts is longer than just between videos. Why?

  5. ABSOLUTELY NO GAP scenario: You put inside a layout region only one video and set duration 500000 (big enough) seconds and also set ā€œloop video if it finishes before provided durationā€. Here you have absolutely no gap even with an old hardware pc.

So the workaround is based on my point 5. If you need to show a number of videos without gaps you combine these videos in a video-editing software as a single video and put it inside a region with huge duration and loop checkbox.

37

I have looked through a source code of Windows player. Wanted to do some tweaks to make video change faster.
.Dispose() method and .EndInit() for WindowsPlayer component each takes around 150 ms.

In order to make tweaks, I need to rewrite a lot of code and change the logic behind this software. Which is not possible for me.

Dear developers - you really need to tackle this issue in the future Windows players.

Thank you.