Seren slowing down Nvidia Shield Pro and Fire TV Stick 4K Max, as well as causing playback issues

[Madddcow]

Hi.
I've been using Seren for many years on multiple devices and it's been fantastic. However, I've noticed over the past several months that our Nvidia Shield Pro and Fire TV Stick 4K Max platforms have been experiencing significant performances issues e.g. Kodi (v19 and 20) menu response is very laggy and there is constant playback jitter and lag etc. I've been troubleshooting this for the entire time and have just found that disabling Seren (and Seren Context Menus) appears to have fixed the problem.

What happens is that when the box or Kodi is restarted, everything works fine for about 6 hours (or one evening's use). Playback is fine and there are no problems at all with Kodi overall. However, by the next day, Seren playback is all over the place and when we try to bring up Kodi menus etc to stop/pause playback, there is massive lag within Kodi itself i.e. menus slow down and lag. It almost seems like there's a memory leak or something with Seren because I've noticed that a) RAM usage is also much higher when Seren is enabled (regardless of whether it's being used or not) and b) even though Kodi performance overall is always better when Kodi is restarted, performance then goes downhill the longer it goes between restarts. HOWEVER, as soon as Seren is disabled, there are no performance issues at all with Kodi and RAM usage is a couple of hundred MB better than when Seren is enabled.

I also have Umbrella and Fen installed, and am using Orion in addition to having AD and RD accounts. Umbrella and Fen don't seem to suffer from any direct issues but of course, the entire Kodi system is glitchy when Seren is enabled.

Unfortunately, no errors are created in logs but the fact remains that as soon as Seren is disabled, both the Shield and Fire Stick run perfectly for days without any performance issues.

I'm happy to provide any other info that's requested.

[npmstart-pray]

While I suspect still waters are running deep as far as development of Seren goes, there have been some issues for some time now that have gone unaddressed. Either there's a significant update coming, or there's a not insignificant code problem.
(I'd like to see some of the trakt stuff worked out as well and some of that is trakt's to fix I'm sure...I'd actually love to see a move from trakt to Simkl, but that's a me thing, being late to this game)

If I have to nuke my setup, I'll be taking a look at Umbrella.

[Madddcow]

I much prefer Seren over Umbrella and Fen but need to disable Seren for the time-being. I’ve tried re-enabling it a couple of times over the past few days but every time I do this, my system RAM decreases by 300-400MB after 30-60 mins, playback is often choppy and the overall system performance starts to get laggy…..whereas I have none of these issues with Umbrella and Fen.

It’s a shame because Seren has always been fantastic and it’s also been the yardstick to which I’ve always compared all other video ads-ons. Something really isn’t right with it at the moment.

[npmstart-pray]

I have a feeling it’s a Python 2 to Python 3 update/conversion scenario. Someone and/or something might be jammed up in this regard. Sent from nowhere near my ready room with my new tricorderOn Jun 6, 2023, at 08:09, Madddcow ***@***.***> wrote: I much prefer Seren over Umbrella and Fen but need to disable Seren for the time-being. I’ve tried re-enabling it a couple of times over the past few days but every time I do this, my system RAM decreases by 300-400MB after 30-60 mins, playback is often choppy and the overall system performance starts to get laggy…..whereas I have none of these issues with Umbrella and Fen. It’s a shame because Seren has always been fantastic and it’s also been the yardstick to which I’ve always compared all other video ads-ons. Something really isn’t right with it at the moment. —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Tikipeter]

Check the size of your kodi log when this happens....

[npmstart-pray]

Mine had been full of Seren errors for some time now…is there a limit we should be aware of and stay under?Sent from nowhere near my ready room with my new tricorderOn Jun 6, 2023, at 17:51, Tikipeter ***@***.***> wrote: Check the size of your kodi log when this happens.... —Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Tikipeter]

It's just a possible cause that's easy to test if it is the culprit.

When I asked what was the size, I meant more what was the size in MB's.

I don't know what limits you would look out for for total log size. It would depend on the hardware being used.

It's just a relatively easy thing to test. Add this line to your advancedsettings.xml and restart Kodi:
<loglevel>-1</loglevel>

If you don't have an advancedsettings.xml, make one within the userdata folder and place within the file these lines and restart Kodi:

<advancedsettings>
    <loglevel>-1</loglevel>
</advancedsettings>

Test for a day and see if the issue persists.

[Madddcow]

I've disabled/re-enabled Seren a number of times over the past few weeks, as well as deleting/re-installing it....but it still constantly causes the same issues with both my Nvidia Shield Pro and Fire TV 4K Max running Kodi 20.1. It's bizarre because as previously mentioned, I've never had these problems with Seren in all the years I've used it.

[Timelord1791]

I also had similar problems, which seem to be rectified by creating a new Trakt account and starting from scratch. Either that or need to delete shows that are no longer playing, have been cancelled or no longer watching. Seems that if your trakt account has too many shows/lists that it will bog down as it tries to sync all your content, including those shows that I mentioned previously that are no longer needed/necessary. Just my 2 cents.

[Madddcow]

Hmm, that’s interesting and you might be on to something. However, I wonder why Fen and Umbrella work just fine but Seren is wigging out?

[nki2bpz]

I have been experiencing this as well. On my shield pro 2019 after hours of binging i have to force close seren and reboot the shield. Sometimes it gets so bad the the box becomes unresponsive to the remote and the only way to fix it is to pull the power to restart. After a reboot the problem goes away for 4-6 hrs.