Kodi sound problem after upgrading to F28

[weitjong]

I had a perfectly working Kodi before the upgrade. After upgrading from F27 to F28, I can still play the video smoothly but the audio becomes so choppy. The audio is OK when playing music on Rhythmbox or Spotify on Chrome or when playing movies with Totem. So far, this audio problem only happens on Kodi. Not sure how to troubleshoot this. Any help would be appreciated.

[alexbarborica]

I have a similar issue, I get garbled sound when playing any DTS movie.

[modemPunk]

I also have this problem after the update to F28. It appears to only affect certain files, which played fine on F27. VLC is able to play the same files without distortion. An uninstall/reinstall of Kodi (+removing config folder) did not help.

[alexbarborica]

I also have this problem after the update to F28. It appears to only affect certain files, which played fine on F27. VLC is able to play the same files without distortion. An uninstall/reinstall of Kodi (+removing config folder) did not help.

Yes exactly. I also tried reinstalling and vlc does play videos just fine. Also it affects all outputs, analog and digital.

[hogweed]

Same issue here. Some play fine but a few x265 encoded videos I tried all had garbled sound which wasn't the case before.

I see the version of Kodi changed in rpmfusion between 27 and 28 from Kodi-17.6-1.fc27 to kodi-17.6-8.fc28 - Looks like the issue is with the new Kodi build.

As an experiment I downloaded the master branch of Kodi 18 Alpha 2 from github and built from source (which took some time!) and the sound problem is fixed. There are Fedora build instructions at https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/ma.../README.fedora and https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/ma...s/README.linux . You may have to install some extra packages if the build fails (and repeat cycle until success) but the error messages should point you to what's missing.

Yes it's an Alpha release but it at least it runs and plays the sound correctly for me. Hopefully a newer update in rpmfusion will fix the problem.

[weitjong]

Thanks for all the responses. I guess that "I am not alone" is a good sign that it will be fixed soon in the next build by rpmfusion. Having said that, I don't see anyone creating a bugzilla issue yet and I cannot help to do it because I don't know what kind of technical detail is required to be attached aside from the description of the problem.

[weitjong]

I got some time to waste, so I have installed a fresh Fedora 28 using netinstall on a VirtualBox guest VM. Turned on rpmfusion and install Kodi. No doubt the video playback won't be smooth in that kind of setup, but it is playing nevertheless. And I could reproduce the exact garbled audio playback there.

[weitjong]

Same issue here. Some play fine but a few x265 encoded videos I tried all had garbled sound which wasn't the case before.

I see the version of Kodi changed in rpmfusion between 27 and 28 from Kodi-17.6-1.fc27 to kodi-17.6-8.fc28 - Looks like the issue is with the new Kodi build.

As an experiment I downloaded the master branch of Kodi 18 Alpha 2 from github and built from source (which took some time!) and the sound problem is fixed. There are Fedora build instructions at https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/ma.../README.fedora and https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/blob/ma...s/README.linux . You may have to install some extra packages if the build fails (and repeat cycle until success) but the error messages should point you to what's missing.

Yes it's an Alpha release but it at least it runs and plays the sound correctly for me. Hopefully a newer update in rpmfusion will fix the problem.

Thanks for those links. I could rebuild as well from source with Kodi 17.6 Krypton branch in my Fedora 28 guest VM and I can confirm the audio is working correctly using the newly built binary. After changing the VM to use X11 session instead of wayland (I have proprietary nvidia driver on my main host which does not play well with wayland), the video playback on my guest VM becomes bearable. So, that should get my fix of kodi for the time being.

[kamilel]

Are there any chances to rebuild Kodi through RPMFusion? I was forced to downgrade to F27

[mooninite]

This issue has already been fixed. Please update to the kodi package sitting in updates-testing.

dnf --enablerepo=rpmfusion-free-updates-testing update kodi

The kodi package uses the system copy of ffmpeg, version 4.0. Kodi 17.x and earlier used many, legacy ffmpeg interfaces and mechanisms that simply break when using a modern version. Kodi 18 has all of this fixed and works with modern ffmpeg libraries... I will be pushing Kodi 18 to Fedora 28+ once the beta is out.

[weitjong]

I have tried the new package (Kodi 17.6.9) and I can confirm it fixes my audio playback issue. Thanks.

[unibuild]

UnitedRPMs ( https://unitedrpms.github.io/#repository ), has Kodi 18 working perfectly (Some months testing and updating it)...

[hogweed]

Okay just updated from rpmfusion testing and can also confirm that the sound problem is fixed. Thanks for the quick work!

[oneguycoding]

Ditto on all counts. After update from updates-testing sound was fine.