omxplayer randomly crash and then doesn't play any video

[SebDominguez]

I'm running a simple script (omxplayer-sync) to play 2 synced video on 2 Pi 4 running buster lite.

The command that I'm running into the master player is: omxplayer-sync -muv video.mp4

and on the slave: omxplayer-sync -luv video.mp4

Sometimes one of the Pi (always the slave one) will hangup and then he will refuse to playback anything even if I'm issuing the following command: omxplayer anyting.mp4

I cannot see any omxplayer process that I can kill with ps -aux | grep omxplayer

$> omxplayer synctest.mp4
Video codec omx-h264 width 1280 height 720 profile 100 fps 25.000000
Subtitle count: 0, state: off, index: 1, delay: 0
[after waiting a really long time]
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
[...truncated output]
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
COMXVideo::Decode timeout
omxplayer.bin: OMXCore.cpp:786: OMX_ERRORTYPE COMXCoreComponent::FreeInputBuffers(): Assertion `m_omx_input_buffers.size() == m_omx_input_avaliable.size()' failed.
/usr/bin/omxplayer: line 67:  3902 Aborted                 LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$OMXPLAYER_LIBS${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH}" $OMXPLAYER_BIN "$@"

Only a reboot make omxplaye working again until the next crash

---

I thing this could be related to:

https://github.com/willprice/python-omxplayer-wrapper/issues/206

https://github.com/willprice/python-omxplayer-wrapper/issues/119

[SebDominguez]

So sadly it seems that this is the end for omxplayer. It was really convenient and simple to use. I used it in a lot of Raspberry Pi project until 2018. I guess I'll have to switch to vlc now. Good luck to every Omxplayer users!

[premultiply]

VLC is no replacement for omxplayer as it lacks unique features like clock recovery and hdmi clock adjustment for live stream decoding.

[SebDominguez]

As stated in the README.md (and I have to admite: I totally missed this before opening my issue)

Note: omxplayer is being deprecated and resources are directed at improving vlc. This is due to: omxplayer uses openvg for OSD and subtitles which isn't supported on Pi4. omxplayer uses openmax which has been deprecated for a long time and isn't supported with 64-bit kernels. omxplayer does not support software decode omxplayer does not support advanced subtitles omxplayer does not support playback from ISO files. omxplayer does not integrate with the X desktop

Please try using vlc. If there are features of omxplayer that vlc does not handle then try reporting here.

I'm agree that VLC is lacking features and ease of use of omxplayer, but right now omxplayer is just unreliable on new Raspberry Pi hardware. Also with the new Raspberry Pi OS 64bits coming I think this is just making this project even more obsolete. Maybe x86 environment is still fine but sadly I have to use recent hardware and software for my project.