[AppleTV2] - Stutter 720p mkv over smb
#1
Hi hi, just wanted to report a problem I'm having with playback. Getting buffering sporadically at the start of, and then constantly during 720p content larger than ~1.5gb. Anything less than 1.5gb in 720p appears fine (ie, HD TV episodes appear ok, HD Movies are not).

If needed I can provide any additional info.

AppleTV2:
Darwin Apple-TV 11.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 11.0.0: Thu Feb 10 21:46:56 PST 2011; root:xnu-1735.46~2/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8930X AppleTV2,1 arm K66AP Darwin

OS version: 4.3 (8F305)
S/W version:4.2.2 / 2203

XBMC PRE-11.0 Git:20110711-10e09ec (Compiled : July 11 2011)

Installed with dpkg -i latest_atv2.deb from http://hadm.net/xbmc/

Physicals:
Win7 64bit <GB-Eth> Cisco E3000 on DDWRT <100mbit-Eth> AppleTV2

Logs:
xbmc.log - http://pastebin.com/jvTWHq8c
syslog - http://pastebin.com/HvbDfUdR
crashreport - none for todays date, still required?
mediainfo - http://pastebin.com/2cdrbTqM

I've read about the issues plaguing smb. Just want some confirmation that that is the problem I am seeing... This is the first time I've played with XBMC outside of the original XBox so bit of a n00b.

Code:
18:05:26 T:104325120 M: 86216704 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
18:05:30 T:120700928 M: 72425472 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
18:05:31 T:115277824 M: 72663040 WARNING: CDVDPlayer::CheckContinuity - wrapback of stream:1, prev:4102000.000000, curr:4075000.000000, diff:-27000.000000
18:05:31 T:115277824 M: 72663040 WARNING: CDVDPlayer::CheckContinuity - wrapback of stream:1, prev:6064000.000000, curr:6037000.000000, diff:-27000.000000
18:05:33 T:118136832 M: 72798208   DEBUG: Thread Jobworker 118136832 terminating (autodelete)
18:05:33 T:104325120 M: 72810496   DEBUG: CPullupCorrection: detected pattern of length 1: 41708.33, frameduration: 41708.333333
18:05:33 T:120700928 M: 72806400 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available

The "asked for new data packet, with nothing available" - is that purely related to network issues?
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#2
I can't really help here - but awesome post dude. Thats a great report of an issue (though this one hase been posted in 1000 other threads). And just fyi - crashlogs are only there when xbmc crashed Wink

To rule out network you could try to copy the movie onto the atv2 and try to play locally. The mediainfo states 5 ref frames - don't know if this could a bit to much for the h.264 decoder of the atv2.

The "asked for new data packet, with nothing available" means that there might be a network slowdown.
AppleTV4/iPhone/iPod/iPad: HowTo find debug logs and everything else which the devs like so much: click here
HowTo setup NFS for Kodi: NFS (wiki)
HowTo configure avahi (zeroconf): Avahi_Zeroconf (wiki)
READ THE IOS FAQ!: iOS FAQ (wiki)
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#3
Memphiz Wrote:(though this one hase been posted in 1000 other threads)

I couldn't find that many (if any) that had reported all of the information that is normally asked for, figured I'd start from scratch...

Memphiz Wrote:To rule out network you could try to copy the movie onto the atv2 and try to play locally.

The only issue with that is, small files play fine over the network, so I have no reason to suspect that it won't when played locally. I can't copy a movie to the ATV2 due to storage space...

Memphiz Wrote:The mediainfo states 5 ref frames - don't know if this could a bit to much for the h.264 decoder of the atv2.

Would be interesting to know if that was the case or not.

Memphiz Wrote:The "asked for new data packet, with nothing available" means that there might be a network slowdown.

I'm getting hold of an NFS capable NAS tonight, so I'll give that a go and post up the reports.
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#4
Just to finish up this thread, currently using the latest nightly from Keith (20110727-30a9070), and a custom built debian NAS using NFS, and my AppleTV buffering woes are no longer.

Can play any H264 file with no buffering problems. Even 1080p Avatar mkv is working perfectly, searching, skipping, subtitles and all.

Cheers;
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#5
stubbed,

Was it the nightly that solved the issue or was it the NAS server running NFS? I am currently having the same stuttering issue streaming 720p and 1080p from a Windows 7 box through SMB. I have a WDTV Live that has no issues streaming from the same box, so I assume it is not a network issue. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
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#6
Using the latest nightly (xbmc-20110820-046ab03-master-atv2.deb), SMB still does not work on HD content for me. I'm in the same situation, other devices on the same network can stream off SMB fine.

I had planned to do a roll your own NAS anyhow so it wasn't a major for me to just use SMB for my Windows machines and NFS for the ATV2. Any future XBMC devices I use will more than likely be some sort of linux based so for me personally it made sense to get NFS sorted anyhow.
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#7
stubbed Wrote:Just to finish up this thread, currently using the latest nightly from Keith (20110727-30a9070), and a custom built debian NAS using NFS, and my AppleTV buffering woes are no longer.

Can play any H264 file with no buffering problems. Even 1080p Avatar mkv is working perfectly, searching, skipping, subtitles and all.

Cheers;

Hey, I would be interested to know how it performs over SMB with your debian based NAS. I am running FreeNAS with SMB and never have any issues like I read on these forums. All the problems I read about are with Windows file servers.
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#8
Will try when I'm home tonight, but really, I don't see the point. NFS is more native to the ATV2 than SMB will ever be...?
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#9
stubbed Wrote:Will try when I'm home tonight, but really, I don't see the point. NFS is more native to the ATV2 than SMB will ever be...?

Agreed. Just interested whether the implementation of smb in debian is better for this.
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#10
I came across this last night: http://www.petri.co.il/how-to-disable-sm...r-2008.htm

Talks about why SMB can be slow for some people and not others. Or at least one possible reason. Seems on networks that have both SMB1 and SMB2, there will be some lag time due to how the network determines which protocol to use. I haven't played around with it much myself, but if it was bad enough that this guy wrote up a how-to on disabling SMB2 in order to increase speed then it might be worth checking out.

Granted this shouldn't affect the ATV2, which only supports SMB1 at the moment (soon, Billy, soon!), but some of the stuff in that page might still apply. Like I said, I haven't played around with tweaking SMB much myself.
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#11
There was a point in the builds where this smb stuttering was not an issue, the version I am running from April 20th 2011 is actually one of those builds. Any attempt to run one of the current builds has always left me with stuttering issues, yet this old version has no problems whatsoever with the exact same shares and content. Something had to have changed with the smb implementation since then, though I have no idea how to track that sort of thing unfortunately.

(11.0.0 AppleTV2,1). Built on Apr 20 2011 (Git:20110419-28f5811)

Edit: Link to the post that solved my issues.
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#12
^-- are you saying you're running one of the latest nightly builds, but taking a file out of a really old one to fix your SMB issues?
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#13
No, running the April 20th build with the XBMC file provided in the linked post copied over the April 20th default copy.
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[AppleTV2] - Stutter 720p mkv over smb0