[Albo]

Are others experiencing audio cuts and dropped frames on 720p and 1080p mkv files?

Every film I watch has at least 10-12 points at which I lose audio and the frame skips forward and back repeatedly for a couple seconds. It's hilarious to watch, but kinda takes you out of the movie.
I'm wondering if the app settings or perhaps my Mac can be tweaked or if it's just a limitation of the Mini or the stage at which this software is at.

For a 0.1 release, it's an AMAZING piece of software however and a VERY welcome addition to the Mac Home Theater community. Thank you.

My system specs:
Mac Mini, 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3GB RAM, Firewire 400 Media Drive

[elan]

I've generally be able to watch movies straight through without glitches, mostly MKVs, some 720p, some 1080p. I connect over wireless gigabit. Log in with another computer, run top, and see what you see with respect to CPU usage. It can be as simple as spotlight crunching away that can make things glitch, especially if you aren't running with a lot of CPU headroom. Also, hit 'i' to see if frames are dropping.

[Albo]

While watching No Country for Old Men (720p) last night the frame skipping happened in about 6 places, completely at random it seemed. This time there was no audio dropout, only a quick burst of high speed frames, almost like fast forwarding.

The info window tells me I am dropping frames, but why I wonder? The mkv files sit on a FW400 drive, a much faster connection than your wireless, so it can't be that.

Does the app rely on any QuickTime AVC decoders? - I have some non-standard components for H.264 decoding, but I'm pretty sure XBMC is using its own method to handle this codec. Right?

I'm not that savvy on monitoring from another cpu. How would I go about this?

[elan]

A "a quick burst of high speed frames" is a dead giveaway of dropped frames. I access over Gigabit WIRED Ethernet, not wireless. Move the movie to the local drive to eliminate that variable. Otherwise, enable remote access, and ssh to the box (the System Preferences pane will tell you what to type, e.g. "ssh [email protected]") and then type "top". On the second line, see what percentage of your CPU is idle, and see what percentage of the CPU XBMC is using. I suspect either CPU overload or network issues.

[Albo]

A "a quick burst of high speed frames" is a dead giveaway of dead frames.

Meaning dropped frames?

I access over Gigabit WIRED Ethernet, not wireless.

You said wireless in your first post, I thought that was odd. My FW400 connection should at least be equal to an ethernet one, but I will try playing a file from the local drive.

Otherwise, enable remote access, and ssh to the box

Excellent, thanks for the info on how to do this.

I suspect either CPU overload or network issues.

Ok. Let me see what I can find out.

[elan]

Meaning dropped frames?

Yep. Early, can't type

You said wireless in your first post, I thought that was odd.

Not enough coffee, sleep...

-elan

[Evol]

I have some small audio dropouts when I play movies no matter what filetype it is! I dont have high speed frames or any dropped frames just occasional audio dropouts.

I am playing all my files over a gigabit network and I am using a 2Ghz Mac Mini with 2Gb of RAM!

[elan]

I have some small audio dropouts when I play movies no matter what filetype it is! I dont have high speed frames or any dropped frames just occasional audio dropouts.

I am playing all my files over a gigabit network and I am using a 2Ghz Mac Mini with 2Gb of RAM!

Without logs, I'm a mindreader. And I can't read minds

[Evol]

Without logs, I'm a mindreader. And I can't read minds

I shall send you my logfile as soon as I quit work!

[Evol]

Here is my logfile taken just after a audio dropout when playing an ISO DVD.

Hope this will help you to read minds!

http://pastebin.com/m7ecebf09

Thanks

[elan]

Thanks, Evol. If you wouldn't mind, please post future logs to Pastie, I get better results with that

There are some logs like this:

CDVDPlayerAudio:: Discontinuty - was:416210602.238621, should be:416200059.544620, error:-10542.694000

This will definitely lead to audio dropouts. I can't speak as to whether it's a bad file, there's networking issues, or there's a bug in XBMC, unfortunately.

Like I've said in other posts, try to figure out which one it is by eliminating possibilities: Play it off the local hard drive, play it in other players, play other similar videos.

Hope this helps a bit...

-elan

[Evol]

Thanx Elan!

I will continue to narrow down the problem.

As a matter of fact I am about to begin watching a movie from the local harddrive right now.

I have this problem with all my files so I dont think it is a bad file and I have been watching all my movies over the network in the past with Mac OSX DVD player, quicktime player and VLC without problems.

I will report back after the move!

Thanx again for your amazing work Elan!

[Evol]

Here is a new log file taken just after watching a whole movie on a DVD/ISO file from the local harddrive.

http://pastie.caboo.se/159545

I could not paste the whole log in pastie due to limitations to 125000 chars, if I did cut out anything of importance for you just let me know.

As you can see there is tons of logs with "CDVDPlayerAudio:: Discontinuty - was:36264076.723505, should be:36244764.361174, error:-19312.362332"

The difference I noticed by playing the file from the local harddrive was that the audio dropouts was much smaller than when I did play it over the network.

//Evol

[elan]

The other thing to check would be the CPU usage. Run in windowed mode with iStat Menus running or Activity monitor or top in a Terminal. However, for playing a DVD I doubt that's a problem. Do you see the same thing with lot of different movies (in different formats)? What hardware do you have?

-elan

[Evol]

I do have this this problem with all DVD/ISO files and all MKV files I have tested.

I have not tested any DivX files, but if that is any help to you I will gladly test that to!

XMBC uses around 18% of CPU while playing DVD/ISO and around 80% when playing MKV 720P files.

My setup is a Mac Mini with Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz with 2Gb of RAM.

/Evol