[Possibly Linux] Sporadic Caching

Today, while sitting on my computer, I determined my house was too quiet. So I started up Apollo 13 on my TV in the other room from my phone (I still am giddy about this feature) while finishing some things up on the computer in the office. I was annoyed when I could hear the semi-usual buffering that occasionally seems to happen (I never know when it is going to happen either -- sometimes 720p content will play fine, other times, dvdrips will stutter). But I was sitting at my desktop (Windows 7 x64 Ultimate) and I was noticing my bandwidth meter. It showed that XBMC would buffer about ever 2 minutes. But in between that, it wouldn't have ANY network activity. And when it would buffer, it would only peak out at 300-500 KBps. I did a test over SFTP to my XBMC box, and it transfers around 2.75-3.05 MBps. Prior to this, I was so sick of all these buffering issues (mainly with 720p videos... 1080p was ridiculous to try and watch) that I finally upgraded my network from a 802.11G to 802.11N network. I definitely noticed the difference in transfer speeds from regular network transfers, but nothing seemed to change with XBMC. And now, I think am partially seeing the reason for it. (It was definitely frustrating forking out all that money to get 802.11N hardware across the house and still not be able to consistently stream 720p content.)

The first image is just the streaming by itself, the second is when I started a transfer from my Windows 7 machine to my XBMC machine using sftp via WinSCP. I can't imagine this being a network bandwidth limitation (as I see so many of these buffering threads). I know that CIFS network transfers aren't the fastest, but even if I do those, I will see around a 1.5MBps transfer.



My XBMC box is running Slackware 13.37 32bit, and I am using a self compiled nightly build 20111217-1ba878a (but the buffering has always been an issue). This doesn't happen all the time, but I have a feeling that if I can figure out what is causing this, I can start streaming all my 1080p content from my desktop, rather than copying them over to my XBMC box (which only has a 320GB drive -- tends to fill up fast when you are talking about HD content).

I have heard of people using alternative sharing methods, and I tried to get NFS working, but it seems there isn't anything available to get it working on Windows 7 x64 (I got HaneWIN NFS Server installed, but could never get it to work). I am not sure if this is a Windows problem, or something with XBMC on my linux machine, but I'd guess it has to do with XBMC since other transfer methods are faster (and consistent).

Debug Log -- Note, I did cut out well over 250,000 lines since xbmc has been running for quite a while. I kept the initial startup and the playing of the movie (although, it did a library update during the movie, so I cut those out too).

All my network shares are mounted via cifs and are located in the fstab and mounted on boot.



Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. I have tried to figure this out on my own since I got my little htpc and moved away from the XBox 360 using Serviio. Slackware was installed immediately and I initially used the slackbuild available on sbopkg. But I was soon interested in what other features were available (and hoping streaming would be a bit smoother), so I upgraded to the nightlies (which took forever to get the first build to build smoothly). But in all my upgrades from there, it seems this problem is just persistent. I have done a lot of searching on this over the last 6 months, and I am sad to say my google-fu skills are lacking in this matter. Hopefully someone can help me out.

Hi,

I've got almost the exact same problem.
I use a WNDR3700 router (which could be the problem) and WINSSHD server program.

On my local network streaming via SFTP works fine but when a friend tries at his place XBMC will start to buffer every 10 seconds (and the buffering is VERY slow!).

Very frustrating...

Do you have any solution? Is there any alternative SECURE way of streaming? I don't want to use FTP anymore, which works fine most of the time, because of the lack of security...

Thanks..

(2012-05-07 12:34)weaklund Wrote:  Hi,

I've got almost the exact same problem.
I use a WNDR3700 router (which could be the problem) and WINSSHD server program.

On my local network streaming via SFTP works fine but when a friend tries at his place XBMC will start to buffer every 10 seconds (and the buffering is VERY slow!).

Very frustrating...

Do you have any solution? Is there any alternative SECURE way of streaming? I don't want to use FTP anymore, which works fine most of the time, because of the lack of security...

Thanks..

Are you trying to stream to your friend over the internet?

Yes, exactly.

Ive found out a tweak to make it work on a windows-machine... you mount the sftp-drive with "sftp-net-drive"-software (ttp://www.eldos.com/sftp-net-drive/download-release.php) and then mount the drive into xbmc.

This works fine without buffering. But when i mount the sftp-server directly in xbmc it buffers almost every 10 seconds.
Both me and my friend use the same ISP and 100/100Mbit...

But if i use OPENELEC... this tweak fails..

Is the OpenELEC system on wireless?

My wireless caps out at half its speed on my Linux box because of poor driver support.

No, its directly connected via ethernet cable... download speed ~3mb/s at my friends win machine... The thing is that the OPENELEC machine and the my friends windows 7 htpc machine behaves exactly the same;

- It works fine browsing the sftp directories
- It works fine updating the library WITH SERIES (BUT NOT WITH MOVIES (MOVIES there is only 8/120 movies that shows!
- It works fine starting an watching a series (720p) that is less than 30min
- It works fins starting 1080p film but it must buffer every 10 seconds. (1080p works fine when my friend mount the sftp-drive in windows but not with the xbmc ssh/sftp protocol)


At the moment Im trying out haneWIN on my win 7 x64 server. I get it to work on my local xbmc windows machine. But not outside my local network.. Ive opened the ports at the "NFS"-tab inside haneWIN

(2012-05-08 20:21)weaklund Wrote:  No, its directly connected via ethernet cable... download speed ~3mb/s at my friends win machine... The thing is that the OPENELEC machine and the my friends windows 7 htpc machine behaves exactly the same;

- It works fine browsing the sftp directories
- It works fine updating the library WITH SERIES (BUT NOT WITH MOVIES (MOVIES there is only 8/120 movies that shows!

The first two items sound like permission issues. Make sure his user has access to the files. Compare the permissions of a file he can see to one he can't

(2012-05-08 20:21)weaklund Wrote:  - It works fine starting an watching a series (720p) that is less than 30min
- It works fins starting 1080p film but it must buffer every 10 seconds. (1080p works fine when my friend mount the sftp-drive in windows but not with the xbmc ssh/sftp protocol)

These two sound like a bandwidth issue. Are you mounting the remote shares through XBMC or directly through the OS? I know there are users here that have seen slowdowns when mounting through XBMC.

I'll se if there is any permission issues... its strange though that my friend kan browse all the 120 movies and play them when he's in the video -> files area... but only 8 movies pops up in the movie library...

When he'smounting directly throu xbmc the problems begin, 10s - buffering - 10s - buffering...
When he's mounting through a the sftp-net-drive program and mounting this drives inside xbmc it works fine.. no buffering, no delays when rewinding etc.

But this tweak does not work if i use OPENELEC, does it?

Then it may just be timing out when trying to scan the files into the library.

If you mount the folder in the OS and then add the mount point to XBMC as a video location it will. You should be able to auto mount the shares by editing /etc/fstab or /storage/.config/netmount.conf and adding the locations.

(2012-05-08 20:38)drivesoslow Wrote:  If you mount the folder in the OS and then add the mount point to XBMC as a video location it will. This is how I mount all my shares.

Hm, do you care to explain how? I'm very new to linux...
How do i mount my ssh/sftp-drive in my openelec-box and then add the mount point to XBMC?