Friday, April 19, 2019

Kodi Youtube plugin resolution

I recently started playing around with Kodi on a Raspberry Pi (Model 3+). I'm really interested in the Youtube plugin, because I have been binging on EDM shows lately. However, I was disappointed to discover that the plugin was only playing low quality streams (360P).

After some searching around, I learned that I need to get the MPEG-DASH functionality turned on. This can be found in the Youtube plugin settings, but it is grayed out by default. After some more wild flailing about, I finally got it working, something like this.

  1. The "kodi-inputstream-adaptive" package needs to be installed from the Raspbian repos. It doesn't get pulled in as a dep of Kodi.
  2. The inputstream plugin now needs to be enabled. Start Kodi and go to the settings menu. Select Add-ons, My add-ons, and VideoPlayer InputStream. Here you will find the InputStream Adaptive plugin. Click on it, and select "Enable".
  3. You should now be able to go back to Youtube and enable MPEG-DASH. I also installed the Inputstream Helper plugin from that menu, but I'm not sure what effect it has.