XBMC Playback Randomly Freezes and Kicks Back to Home
#1
Hello XBMC Community,

Recently I have been trying to perfect my XBMC experience in the past few weeks, but am unable to figure out what could be causing the issue I am currently experiencing with only one of my XBMC machines. Below I have listed by home setup in case it will be needed for understanding my issue more:

XBMC Machine #1 is running off of a MacBook Pro 8,2 with 10.7.5 installed as its Operating System. I am running XBMC 12.3 with the default Confluence skin and the only add-on I installed was Advance Wake-On LAN, so that I may wake the server that contains my media. It is connected to the network by its built in Wi-Fi card.

XBMC Machine #2 is running off of a Raspberry Pi 512 MB Model B with OpenELEC installed as its Operating system. I am running what I believe to be OpenELEC 3.9.5 which has XBMC 12.2 with the default Confluence skin and the only add-on I installed again was Advance Wake-On LAN. It is connected to the network by a Bridge/AP.

Media Server is running off of my gaming computer with Windows 7 installed as its Operating System. I am using MySQL 5.5 to keep store the library, and just basic Samba shares so that the other machines can read them. It is connected to the network by Ethernet directly into my router.

The issue I am experiencing only seems to be happening on XBMC Machine #1, the MacBook Pro, where I will be watching a movie or a television show and randomly it will freeze for a couple of seconds (about 15 to 30 seconds), and without pressing any keys on the keyboard it will stop playback and kick back to the XBMC home screen. I typically only use this machine on the weekends as that is the only time I get to relax in my living room, but I use XBMC Machine #2, the Raspberry Pi, every night in my bedroom before I fall asleep and have not seen this issue yet.

Both XBMC machines have the exact same advancedsettings.xml, which only contain the server address so that I may share the library among them. The only difference in their XBMC configuration is the Custom Shutdown Timer on the Raspberry Pi instead stops playback when it reaches 0.

Here is my xbmc.log on Pastebin.com, which I hopes help figure out what is occurring on XBMC Machine #1.

I turned on Debugging when I was watching The Longest Yard after it had occurred the first time at exactly 40 minutes into the movie. This log is from the second time it happened while I was watching the movie starting at the 40 minute mark until it occurred again, and then I imminently turned off Debugging and copied the xbmc.log file to my desktop so that I may troubleshoot it further. Once I attempted to watch the movie after this issue occurred for a second time it happened three more times, which totaled five times of it freezing and kicking me back to the XBMC home screen.

Thank you to everyone who reads this I really do appreciate any guidance and assistance you could give me, and if there are any questions I would be happy to answer them.
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#2
Hello Again,

After creating this thread I was looking around the Internet a little more and found this, which is a blog entry that explains my exact issue with further testing. As I did not write this I apologize for the author's last comment in that he is complaining about an open source free programming, because I appreciate all the work going into XBMC and always looking to improve it.

Anyways after reading this blog entry I went ahead and pulled out a box of CAT5 and made a temporary cable that reached from my router all the way to my living room, so it is basically laying in the middle of the floor making it a tripping hazard making it all the more temporary. Once ran I went ahead and tested it and finished two full episodes of The Big Bang Theory without any issues, which were causing problems before on the Wi-Fi connection.

Logically I thought it was my Wi-Fi connection, but after running a ping test and file transfer (like in the blog) it dropped no packets and the file transfer processed pretty quickly, so there is no interference at all or packet drops. Also my Bridge/AP is the same amount of distance away from my router as the MacBook Pro is, so the Raspberry Pi should be having these issues as well and it is not.

As I live in an apartment complex I am unable to run CAT5 under the carpet nor through the walls, so if possible I would like this to be a temporary fix.

Once again thank you all for your efforts and I appreciate all the help you can give!
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#3
I think it's unrelated to the issue mentioned in that blog posting. The issue in the blog post had XBMC itself crashing, so it probably wasn't even a network issue.

In your case XBMC seems to think the file is actually ending or is no longer readable, and simply stops playback. Obviously the file has not ended, and XBMC should not think this. One of our devs will likely need to look at this to be able to tell you more.

We do have the Gotham beta (wiki) build out, but since you are using MySQL, I wouldn't recommend trying it unless you temporarily move your XBMC settings folder (parent folder of the userdata folder (wiki)) to the desktop, so it doesn't mess up your MySQL server or try to update any of your add-ons. If you do this, then see if the issue happens with just adding the SMB share to Files -> Videos, without the library setup, as that shouldn't really be a factor in this case.
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#4
I'm the author of said blog post, which is a number of years old. Odd that you would mention that the issue is that XBMC is crashing, when I never once said that. It's quite clear in the logfile what is going on which is what I was complaining about.

My set up has changed a number of times since then. I'm currently running Openelec on a Raspberry Pi and it has the same issue still. As I was not getting any feedback I just kept on using a cabled link. Not ideal but it works.

No need to apologize for my last comment. I absolutely appreciate the work going into XBMC, but it's a problem which definitely exists.
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#5
Sorry, crashing/freezing. Completely freezing typically implies XBMC is dead in the water one way or another, and would still be a different issue than what OP is posting about,
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#6
OP says his log shows this:
Code:
18:48:42 T:4723236864 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available

My log showed this:
Code:
WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available

Both happened on wireless, both stopped happening on a wired link.


How are they any different?
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#7
Well golly, if you get the same generic error in the debug log, but totally different behavior in the application, then it must be the same issue.

Have fun with that.
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#8
Why do you see the need to be sarcastic? The errors in the log are the same. The cause is the same. Sure, initially the behaviour was different, but my post is from years ago and hence I would expect the behaviour to be slightly different when getting this error.


I noted this on this very forum a few years back right here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=86444
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