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Video "Buffering" stutter every few minutes on 10.9
#1
I just read a bunch of threads here talking about 12.2 not loading on mavericks and few other problems. ofcourse to be expected. I have a problem of a different nature. I am on a nightly so my xbmc loads fine. But when i play media it pauses every few minutes to buffer. SO it will play smoothly for a few minutes, then pauses for 2-3 seconds, as if its buffering, then starts again. while its playing though its smooth like it always was. just the pause is new.

Also on a few files, when i load i will actually get that "buffering 1%..." screen in top right for a few seconds then it starts. and then the pausing every few minutes.

And yes, i realize 10.9 is fresh. and the devs alway warn against updating so early. fact is a lot of people will, and ultimately xbmc has to fix this. So i'm not necessarily looking for a solution - just confirmation if others are having the issue (and if they have solutions), and bringing the issue to devs attention.
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#2
Yep, I can confirm I have the same issue after updating to 10.9 Mavericks.
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#3
You should know that Debug Log is needed since our crystal ball is not working.... I installed 10.9 on it...
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#4
(2013-10-24, 05:04)amet Wrote: You should know that debug log is needed since our crystal ball is not working.... I installed 10.9 on it...

attached are two logs.

1:
http://pastebin.com/6Dn1aJNb

This is when I attached my hard drive locally via USB

In this case media plays fine.

2:

http://pastebin.com/qaF6ypF9

This is when media is connected via network (Samba).

This is when the stuttering happens.

I've noticed a few things. In the first case, playing media locally, my drive activity light is constantly blinking. The speed of blinking seems like the media is being read constantly from drive at a consistent rate as required by the media type. It seems like it is reading data real time at a low rate.

In the second case, playing via samba, the drive activity light blinks faster for the first little while, then stops, no blinking, but media is playing.Then after a little while the light blinks very fast again, then stops. In this case it seems like xbmc caches the data at the full speed of the drive, then when its cached it stops reading until it needs to fill the buffer again. A few times the pauses coincided with this buffering. The buffering happens for 10-15 seconds, but the pause lasts only a second or so.

I am not sure if this is an xbmc issue or a mavericks issue. my windows 7 htpc and other mac mini with 10.8 seem to be performing fine via network play as it always had.

I also did some testing playing the same file (which btw is a 1.7 gb 45 min mkv so not particularly heavy on the system) in vlc with the samba network share, and the file plays fine, without any pauses, and consistent with the drive activity behaviour in scenario 1 above (i.e. drive activity light is constantly blinking at a low rate indicating constant drive read rather than buffering).

The xbmc version i used with the log was from early october. I actually tested the recent nightlies as well with same issue (up till 22nd oct nightly), as well as trying some earlier ones pre-october.
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#5
updated to latest nightly. problem is exactly the same. in fact I also noticed another issue .. unrelated to the smb issue i'm assuming. There seems to be artifacting playing videos. not constantly. not the blocky screen pixelation. but it seems like deinterlacing issues or someting of the sort.
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#6
Having the same symptoms, XBMC 12.2 (fixed for start-up) stutters every minute or so on the SMB shares. The same file/media played fine when it is transferred to a local USB drive share.

Following is the debug.log during playback with stutter:
http://xbmclogs.com/show.php?id=75879
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#7
That sounds like the problem I had with Mountain Lion's SMB (XBMC Eden would eventually lock up and crash). Mavericks just gives a "broken pipe" error with its SMB instead. Installing SBMUp solved the problem (I had to check all my file permissions, though. Some of them didn't have the "everyone" setting set to READ and they didn't show up at all). Everything is fine here with XBMC Eden on my Gen1 AppleTV units now and Mavericks except on reboots of Mavericks I have to make sure it didn't re-enable SMB2 and turn off SMBUp since Mavericks seems to forget that preference setting for some reason. I normally leave my server on 24/7, though so I don't reboot very often (maybe every few months at most, sometimes not for the better part of a year in the past with my previous server).
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#8
i'll look into smbup. My server though is not always on, so i'm not sure this would create an elegant solution. I think whatever the problem is, should hopefully be fixed once someone spends some time on it, but from the lack of dev responses in this thread i'm not sure about the level of priority being given to smb.
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#9
for those having the same issue I am, I MIGHT have found a solution. I'm not near my xbmc machine so can't give it a shot, but if someone else is having my problem try both solutions in the link below to see if they work. and if so, which one works better.

http://www.zdnet.com/mavericks-smb2-prob...000022519/

please do report back with what you find. and i will aswell when i am able to try it.
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#10
just tried both solutions. neither worked for me.
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#11
I have the same problem both with the build from 2013-10-05 of version 13.0 and the Frodo build with 10.9 patch when using my win 8.1 machine as the smb server. if I use my qnap as the smb server the picture/sound just freezes for a second or two every now and then.
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#12
Newest nightlies same problem
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#13
Hi
Any news concerning the origin of the buffering issue?
I read somewhere that XBMC EDEN would cause less problems with Mavericks than Frodo...?!
Did you try that?
Thanks
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#14
(2013-11-14, 00:57)jhonny30 Wrote: Hi
Any news concerning the origin of the buffering issue?
I read somewhere that XBMC EDEN would cause less problems with Mavericks than Frodo...?!
Did you try that?
Thanks

Yes the origin of the buffering issues in my case is samba/smb3 whatever 10.9 uses. LOcal files from same drive play fine. Streaming through samba though has the buffering issue.

Ive included logs but so far no devs have gotten back to me on this issue. Id imahine it definitely deserves some attention and not sure what the priority is for a fix.
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#15
(2013-11-14, 00:57)jhonny30 Wrote: Hi
Any news concerning the origin of the buffering issue?
I read somewhere that XBMC EDEN would cause less problems with Mavericks than Frodo...?!
Did you try that?
Thanks

The pre-12.3 test builds are better: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=176721

I think Eden will still have issues with mouse and windowing/external display, and some other stuff.
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Video "Buffering" stutter every few minutes on 10.91