Resolving 1080p playback errors on Raspberry Pi / Raspbmc / OpenELEC

If you're having issues with 1080p playback with raspbmc / OpenELEC - for me, it was garbled video or audio with no video - the issue most likely lies in the pi's boot configuration settings.

1. Check out your logs: ~/.kodi/temp/kodi.log   OR  ~/.xbmc/temp/xbmc.log

Try running tail -f yourlogfile and playing the file giving you the problem. If something like this appears:  

00:16:50 T:1257443248   ERROR: COMXCoreComponent::DecoderEventHandler OMX.broadcom.resize - OMX_ErrorInsufficientResources, insufficient resources 

You need to adjust the pi boot config.

2. Edit boot config, e.g. - sudo nano /boot/config.txt 

Change the value for gpu_mem_256 to 192. Any higher is probably going to cause other problems. If you have a B+ pi, change the value for gpu_mem_512 to a minimum of 192. It can probably be set higher safely, but 192 always worked fine for me. 

3. sudo shutdown -r now 

4. Retry playing your content!