Amlogic S905x5 Lag/Decode issue?

[andy-sre]

Device Configuration:

• Model: Ugoos AM9 (Amlogic S905X5)
• OS: Android 14 (AOSP)
• Host PC: RTX 4080
• Connection: Verified on both Gigabit Ethernet and 5GHz Wi-Fi (Same results)

The Problem:
Video stream is visually stalled at < 10 FPS, behaving like a slideshow. This occurs despite "perfect" performance statistics on the performance stats built into the app

Performance Stats (Confirmed via performance stats ):

• Decoding Time: ~1.35ms (Steady/Fast)
• Network Latency: ~4ms (No spikes)
• Frames Dropped by Network: 0% (Stable)
• Incoming Frame Rate: Stalled at ~10.7 FPS

Key Troubleshooting Observations:

1. Client Agnostic: I have tested this on Vanilla Moonlight (Play Store), Artemis, Both exhibit the exact same 10 FPS cap/stutter. This rules out app-specific bugs.
2. Network: Tested on both Ethernet and 5GHz Wi-Fi. 0% packet loss on both, yet the incoming frame rate remains throttled to < 10 FPS internally.
3. App Comparison: Steam Link on this same hardware manages a 60 FPS stream.
4. Decode vs. Presentation: The c2.amlogic.hevc.decoder reports good decode times (<2ms), but the frames never reach the display at the intended 60Hz.

Technical Request:
Since the S905X5 is a newer SoC, it appears that the way Moonlight/Artemis interacts with the MediaCodec surface is causing the Android 14 hwcomposer to drop or hold frames. Are there any known issues with frame pacing logic for this specific chipset?

[CloudWallace81]

I've just created an account to report the same issue: recently got an UGOOS AM9 myself, and can confirm thge same behaviour

Device Configuration:

• Model: Ugoos AM9 (Amlogic S905X5, not X5M)
• OS: Android 14 (AOSP) with Projectivy Launcher
• Host PC: RTX 2080S, 5800X3D with 32Gb RAM
• Connection: Gigabit Home network, cat 6A wired from host to router & router to client. Never had an issue
• TV is an old 2016 4K samsung Qled (KS9000), with Game mode on

The Problem:
Trying to stream Steam Big Picture fromt he host PC via Apollo -> Artemis on the UGOOS. If I use HEVC decoding on client I can't even get 10fps, more like 0.1 (1 frame update every 10s or so). Performance overlay is reporting flawless behaviour, game captured at 1080@60fps (my host has a 1080p monitor connected), econding and network processing below 3-4ms. When I exit the stream I get the toast on the client app that the HVEC dedoder also reported 3-4ms of latency, so everything seems good to me.
If I force avc decoder either from Apollo (by simply not advertising support for HEVC) or from Artemis via settings I get a solid 60fps on the client, no matter the bitrate I set (I tried also 150Mb/s)
I cannot test AV1 unfortunately, my host GPU cannot encode it

Key Troubleshooting Observations:
App Comparison: Steam Link Android app on this same UGOOS hardware manages a 60 FPS stream with NVFBC+NVENC capture+encode on host and HEVC decoding on the client, but with some hiccups over time (sometimes the total latency spikes to absurd levels every few minutes or so, before going back to ~12ms)

[ClassicOldSong]

I don't have such a device and I don't plan to buy one. amlogic isn't open about their documents so it's hard to debug and adapt.

[CloudWallace81]

Is there some form of logging we can do in order to help you?

[ClassicOldSong]

Logs are far from enough to tinker with a chip/device

I think the best option for now is to avoid Amlogic devices until they get more open.

[CloudWallace81]

I don't want to be brash, but "avoid amlogic" may not be a feasible solution for the short, medium or long term. All the major Android box OEMs run Amlogic silicon one way or another (think tanix, Ugoos, sdmc...). Retail boxes released this year are for the vast majority a variation upon the S905X5M, Y5 or X4 (think Xiaomi, Homatics, acer, ONN, Mecool, Thomson...)

Sure, there are still OEMs using mediatek and realtek stuff.... but with Amazon closing off its own garden with its proprietary OS on new Fire boxes and Google, well, being Google, I struggled to find a box which could offer mainstream support to h265, h266, av1, lots audio formats and gigabit ethernet and which was NOT amlogic...

I know it's not your fault by any chance, but if the nice ppl at CoreELEC can make all the codecs and HDR / Dolby Vision work on amlogic stuff maybe there is a chance also here for something much more basic,...

[ClassicOldSong]

Well generally I want to be helpful but I think I'm the one who needs help right now lol

First this project doesn't have much support and occasional commits usually only cover little parts of all the issues, further issues almost nobody has resources (including time and effort) to solve. Bigger commits are flooded with AI generated code that I'm too scared to merge and they need to be reviewed very carefully.

Second is, my financial status isn't great(due to COVID caused side effects, not the disease itself), as mentioned multiple times, and I need to finish my years running main project which I'll be relying on to make a living(will be open sourced as well). I'm short in time and human resources but my financial situation doesn't allow me to hire capable enough people to separate the pressure of finishing(actually finishing the bootstrap of) the project, so I have to put all my energy on it.

I also do hardware development(literally burning money lol) and I know how much different an open ecosystem can be compared to a closed ecosystem. Like Amlogic, they won't even read your inquiries for specific questions about their product, only when you have the potential to buy at least several thousand of their chips they'll provide some more detailed information about their products, and there can still have hidden things they won't tell you to keep you continue to use their chips in exchange for their support.

They're selling things cheap, but the cost for being cheap is a very high MoQ, which third party like the open source community won't do in any means.

You mentioned some other projects that handles video playback well on these chips, but the thing is, game streaming requires low latency realtime video decoding capabilities but video playback doesn't. They look similar but actually quite different under the hood. And these boxes are designed to watch videos but not streaming in real time, so they may even deliberately drop the low latency decoding capabilities to make the chip even cheaper.

My best experience for living room streaming is a SteamDeck with a HDMI+ethernet dock, it's really the lowest latency device that outputs to your TV I have used, even those Windows based machines can't beat it. It's a very complicated problem for latency so I'm not explaining it here.

[CloudWallace81]

I understand all your points. I'm just saying "I'm here to help". I know nothing at all about android app development, but if you ever want to talk to the coreELEC guys (or other knowledgeable ppl) and then throw random exp build out I would gladly test and report, even if it requires thinkering. You have our "test hardware" at your disposal