Watch videos from SMB over WiFi - Streaming Option?
#1
Hi there!
My problem is as follows:
My movies are located on a Synology NAS in my workroom which is connected to my Home network over 802.11N-WiFi. My XBMC is located in the living room, also connected to via 802.11N-WiFi, connection quality is about 60-80%. I cannot use a Gigabit-LAN for several reasons, my wife amongst them.
Over WiFi we can watch movies with up to 4GB without problems, however I have more and more mkv-files beyond 4GB. I have no doubt that due to my WiFi-setup these largish mkv-files lag during playback (every 10 seconds xbmc pauses playback to fill its buffer). My current workaround is to copy movies to a usb stick to watch from.

I wonder if there exists some "Streaming-Support" addon available for xmbc which would allow me to pre-buffer videos from SMB to the xbmc-local disk, as there are about 100GB free space?
Maybe I also have the possiblity to increase the buffer size in minutes or MB xbmc uses?
Maybe you guys have other ideas to solve my problem?

My Setup:
Movies (AVI, MKV) on a Synology SMB-Share, connected over 802.11N-WiFi
Intel NUC 2820FYKH with XBMCbuntu 13 Gotham on a 128GB SSD, about 120GB free space.
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#2
I have similar issues with streaming large files over wifi to my Gotham 13.0 install on my Fire TV. Some files play OK, but others will buffer with some regularity. It seems to become more of a problem after skipping forward or backwards while the movie it playing. Its not every file, but most of these are compressed bluray rips around 8-12 GB for a full length movie in MKV format.

I have a server running Windows Home Server 2011. I am running wirelessly with 802.11N to the fire TV. Connection is very strong. When I run an ethernet cable to it, it seems to take care of the issue. I know streaming a 10GB file over 2 hours is not saturating the wifi. That's only 83 mb/minute or 1.4mb/s. 802.11N with a strong signal should be able to do this easily. Am I missing something here?

I have done the following to adjust some buffering settings which seemed to improve the issue, but it has not solved it.
I followed the instructions here: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...ideo_cache

I changed my setting to the following and sent it to the fireTV box:
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>122880000</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>8.0</readbufferfactor>
</network>
</advancedsettings>

It seemed to improve it, but I'm hoping there is something else to tweak.
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#3
Thanks for your hints, i'll try them in the meantime.
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#4
Did you try nfs share? With smb i can only stream 720p, with nfs i can do 1080p over wifi.
Give it a try.
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Watch videos from SMB over WiFi - Streaming Option?0