Will a busy HDD lead to pixalation during playback?
#1
At random times (sometimes not at all during the whole movie) when I stream from a HDD (mkv 1080p) I get pixelation during a frame like you get when you FF/RW. I'm wondering if the reason is because the HDD I stream from is getting too busy? I'm often seeding a lot with bittorent from the same HDD.

I'm running Win7 and using trunk 28256 over a gigabit LAN.
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#2
I dont believe it should. The queues would drain and the picture would just pause all together.
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#3
Does the problem go away if you are doing nothing on the HDD but stream that video?
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#4
gabbott Wrote:Does the problem go away if you are doing nothing on the HDD but stream that video?

I haven't tried as I'm running utorrent 24/7. I guess I could turn it off for a couple days and see if it still happens. But if according to SlaveUnit pixalation isn't even a symptom of a busy HDD I don't know what good it'd do.

If pixalation occurs once during a movie, it will almost always occur multiple times later on.
If I rewind and play same scene pixalation won't show up again.
I think I've never seen it happen with DVDs, AVIs, or 720p MKVs.

So how should I troubleshoot this?
I guess I could pause the movie when it happens, see if utorrrent is seeding a lot (+5 MB/s) and try turning it off. But I don't know if it really matters if I'm seeding 10 torrents with combined upload of 1 MB/s or +5 MB/s.

Would a pixalation error show up in the normal XBMC log? Obviously I can't run the debug log during a movie. Isn't there a way to run the dubug log without the text overlay?

Maybe this thread is getting OT for the support section. Though I just wanted to know if busy HDDs led to pixalation.
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#5
What video card do you have?

Just pause the damn torrents for 5 mins. Big deal. Your credits arent going to be effected that much. You could have already tried that by now.
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#6
Quasit Wrote:I haven't tried as I'm running utorrent 24/7. I guess I could turn it off for a couple days and see if it still happens. But if according to SlaveUnit pixalation isn't even a symptom of a busy HDD I don't know what good it'd do.

It would be an easy troubleshooting step to at least answer your question of whether the problem is possibly due to a busy HDD.
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#7
Quasit Wrote:Would a pixalation error show up in the normal XBMC log? Obviously I can't run the debug log during a movie. Isn't there a way to run the dubug log without the text overlay?

if debug is enabled, then sure it is logging while playing a movie.
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#8
gabbott Wrote:if debug is enabled, then sure it is logging while playing a movie.

What I meant the RAM/CPU overlay is annoying when watching a moive. Not that it wouldn't create a debug log during playback.
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#9
Quasit Wrote:What I meant the RAM/CPU overlay is annoying when watching a moive. Not that it wouldn't create a debug log during playback.

Might be the price you'll have to pay to track down your issue if it ends up a debug is the only way to troubleshoot the problem Smile

Don't believe there is a way to disable that overlay
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#10
Oh, another troubleshooting step, what if you were to play the video locally on the xbmc box instead of streaming it?
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#11
Could some please have a look at my debug log? I got a sudden pixelation at ~01:18:00, after that I closed the movie and XBMC. I guess it might be somewhere in the log 23:21-23:22.
http://pastebin.com/YmbTDbbC

I was getting many pixelation errors today so I got tired of it and changed to an unofficial build (30234), hoping it would help. I was using 28256 before that. But it doesn't help a bit. It's not the file itself as pixelation won't happen if I rewind and play the same scene.

I'm streaming using SMB, with these settings http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=63123

I haven't tried using an external player, I'm hoping the debug log might show something.
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#12
I've used an external player (MPCHC) for over a week now and XBMC 28256. I played all 1080p MKV h264 with MPCHC and the rest (DVD & 720p) with DVDplayer. I've never gotten any pixelation since then.

So this rules out everything but the DVDplayer. Could someone please look at the debug log?
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Will a busy HDD lead to pixalation during playback?0