Buffering Local 1080p video
#1
I've been using xbmc for many years now, and have had it running on my asrock ion 330ht box as an xbmcbuntu instal for the last couple of years without issues. I am now finding a couple of my 1080p videos require buffering every minute or so. All my media is local as my network isn't reliable enough for streaming hd. So I'm finding it quite strange now getting these buffering issues. I initially thought it may be the quality of the video is too high, for my system to render easily so tweaked my settings, upped my shared video memory to its max of 512mb, fiddled with my video and playback settings, but nothing has resolved the issue in the slightest. Looking at my cpu usages, all cores are only at about 12% so its also not stressing with the playback. Any idea why this is happening and what I could do to fix it?

I'm running xbmcbuntu 12.2 and media is on a usb 2 hdd connected directly to the htpc.

Thanks!
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#2
I was curious if it could be due to the USB speed being too slow, so as a test I copied the file to my installed hdd and now it seems to be working fine. Unfortunately its not a solution as its a small hdd and I can't migrate all my hd media there. Shouldn't USB 2 speed be enough to cope with playing a 5gb 1080p movie? My other ones work fine...
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#3
According to the docs you can expect 40MB/s. Try on a commandline window:
Code:
dd if=/path/to/the/problematic/movie of=/dev/null
On an USB-3 disk I get this (while watching another movie...)
Code:
tom@xbmc:~$ dd if=/media/Mediadisk/Filme/Movies/Thriller/Lola_rennt_\(1998\).mkv of=/dev/null
2864409+1 records in
2864409+1 records out
1466577553 bytes (1.5 GB) copied, 45.7935 s, 32.0 MB/s
Reading a full movie in 45s should have enough safety margin.

On my laptop with USB2 I get this:
Code:
dd if=Unsere_Erde.mkv of=/dev/null
19401889+1 Datensätze ein
19401889+1 Datensätze aus
9933767465 Bytes (9,9 GB) kopiert, 292,657 s, 33,9 MB/s
Again, some 5 minutes for 90 minutes airplay, should be enough. You may want to retry with your machine.

What else is hooked up to your USB ports?
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#4
Are you sure the usb2 drive is plugged into a usb2 port? Could be a 1.1 port? What is the output of lsusb ?
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