Mezzmo Media Player is jittery and glitchy on Amazon FireTV & FireTV Stick

[Peter]

There is only one codec available for hardware decoding so it is not possible to improve the decoding performance. Reducing the bitrate and/or resolution of the video through transcoding appears to be the only way to remove the jitters and smooth out the playback.

[Peter]

I have also seen reports that 24fps videos have a problem on the FireTV http://www.aftvnews.com/fire-tv-upda...kodi-and-spmc/

[smitbret]

I have also seen reports that 24fps videos have a problem on the FireTV http://www.aftvnews.com/fire-tv-upda...kodi-and-spmc/

Are VLC and/or Kodi doing some post processing then because the issues only exist with playback through the internal video player?

[Peter]

Kodi does have a fix for the 24 fps issue http://www.aftvnews.com/fire-tv-upda...kodi-and-spmc/, we will need to check to see if something similar can be done for the internal video player.

[smitbret]

Discovered something interesting this morning while I was messing with some lower bitrate HEVC/h265 encoded files. Until now, I was using Vimu Media Player to playback an BD Rips and the Mezzmo Media Player for everything else (other than the stuttering issue, everything is better about the Mezzmo Media Player). I tried playing back one of the h265 encoded files with the Mezzmo player and it was choppy and stuttery like the BD rips have been. While flipping between files I accidentally played back the same file with Vimu and it played smoothly. On a hunch, I disabled the Hardware encoder and VOILA, playback looked exactly like it does on the FireTV. I played back the same file with the Mezzmo Player, flipping between having the HW and SW decoders active and the picture jitters the same either way.

Is there a chance this is an issue where the CPU in the FireTV stick is not capable of playing back high bitrate and HEVC files and the Mezzmo Media Player is not actually using the HW decoder even though it is set to do so?

[Peter]

Yes it is possible that even though HW is selected the player will fallback to software decoding as a hardware decoder cannot be found or is blacklisted due to performance issues. Vimu may be providing their own driver for the hardware decoding or could be using one of the blacklisted decoders, we can investigate here to see if HEVC files are being decoded using a software decoder.

[smitbret]

Yes it is possible that even though HW is selected the player will fallback to software decoding as a hardware decoder cannot be found or is blacklisted due to performance issues. Vimu may be providing their own driver for the hardware decoding or could be using one of the blacklisted decoders, we can investigate here to see if HEVC files are being decoded using a software decoder.

As I think about it, this would also explain why the FireTV box with its beefier CPU presents the same problem with BD Rips but not nearly to the extreme that I see on the sticks.