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prophetizer · 2011-03-19, 22:00

well, i blocked the port externally, i used it to connect at work, and let it us anonymous user, now it works fine. only problem is that updates take forever when i start up. dunno if thats due to FTP or not.

something i haven't tried yet, i changed a local security policy on my win7 xbmc server that says EVERYONE enables anon access, might remove some of this overhead that i think is causing this, well, i think it's something with SMB and NTFS actually

prophetizer · 2011-03-20, 03:04

i think i may have fixed my SMB issues, first i ran this

Code:
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

then i went into the properties of my network card, went to the advanced tab, and disabled Interrupt Moderation. i immediately saw a HUGE jump in the 30 second skip, it is actually usable now and fast just like on my main HTPC box. FW and RW work much better as well from the OSD, or should i say actually work, only tried on 2 720p tv rips, half hour show and full hour show. no skips on those and they were buffering alot.

next i'm going to try 1080p bluray rips, see how they work.

bircoe · 2011-03-20, 03:18

It would be good to know how many people experiencing buffering issues are streaming via SMB shares on a Windows host or on a NAS...

hovnarr · 2011-03-20, 16:13

Its a good idea to check your wireless router, exactly how strong signal and throughput you actually have even if the router and atv stands close to each other. Running cable with one of the atv and its gui is much smoother and faster.

I can run both smb and upnp succesfully most format. Have issues with one mp4 1080p file. No problems with ac3 anymore.

ProphetVX · 2011-03-20, 20:39

hovnarr Wrote:Its a good idea to check your wireless router, exactly how strong signal and throughput you actually have even if the router and atv stands close to each other. Running cable with one of the atv and its gui is much smoother and faster.

I can run both smb and upnp succesfully most format. Have issues with one mp4 1080p file. No problems with ac3 anymore.

Another good practice, depending on the other devices that connect to your wireless is to run your network in wireless N exclusively in the 5ghz spectrum, there is far less interference from other wireless networks in the area.

NitrousXBMC · (This post was last modified: 2011-03-20, 23:07 by NitrousXBMC.)

I've had a lot of trouble with this issue on both XP SMB and FTP. Last night I tried the first 30 mins of a 720p x264 mkv over both smb and locally from the onboard flash. No issue playing the mkv locally but the video paused to buffer 7 times at:

0:03
6:05
6:45
16:58
17:39
25:52
26:12

there seems to be a buffer issue and a pattern the stops appeared. This also confirms the problem isn't a hardware / bitrate issue.

haffi · 2011-03-20, 23:32

bircoe Wrote:Ok Folks, I don't believe there is an issue with XBMC's SMB support or any buffer issues.

Last night I ripped my Fifth Element Bluray to an MKV, I have included a full info sheet from mediainfo, I am currently playing this file on 2 Apple TV's plus VLC on my PC at the same time, from the same SMB share hosted on a Western Digital My Book World Edition (1tb NAS) and have nearly reached the end without a single buffering pause.

As you can see this video spends allot of time at or above 12mbps... I guess it's time to look at your setup's rather than blaming XBMC.

Code:
Complete name : The Fifth Element (1997).mkv Format : Matroska File size : 7.78 GiB Duration : 2h 5mn Overall bit rate : 8 846 Kbps Encoded date : UTC 2011-03-18 20:37:06 Writing application : mkvmerge v4.0.0 ('The Stars were mine') built on Jun 18 2010 07:35:17 Writing library : libebml v1.0.0 + libmatroska v1.0.0 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : [email protected] Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC Duration : 2h 5mn Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 8 030 Kbps Maximum bit rate : 40.0 Mbps Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 800 pixels Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1 Frame rate : 23.976 fps Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.218 Stream size : 7.06 GiB (91%) Writing library : x264 core 59 r818 d4b7d2b Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=6 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=4 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=crf / crf=22.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.0 Language : English Audio ID : 2 Format : AC-3 Format/Info : Audio Coding 3 Mode extension : CM (complete main) Codec ID : A_AC3 Duration : 2h 5mn Bit rate mode : Constant Bit rate : 640 Kbps Channel(s) : 6 channels Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz Bit depth : 16 bits Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 576 MiB (7%) Language : English

Well this does not prove anything...
and it specially does not tell me that I need to "look at my setup"

Reason are this .
As you can see in my first checks is that same xbmc can stream on different hardware fine over same network. That means the problem is with the ATV2 and not the network, since the network part is not changing( there for its not a variable in the trouble shooting of this. ( you might have a differently coded movie that is not experiencing this issue, you said your self that you did the encoding yourself.) So for me the problem is still somewhere in the ATV2 hardware or xbmc code.
Some are speculating on memory issues, I have tried killing some process on the box without any success.

and again I want to point out to readers that putting Wifi network into this loop is just going to throw this subject off track, so let’s try to keep the chat to this problem which is on the Wired 100MB Full duplex network( there for any discussions on whether its 54N/G/A or what not is not relative)

What I have found out be trying some network throttling and sending the network traffic through a Router ( dual Ethernet ) is that if I throttle the speed to about 17 mb/s Videos that do play fine on both hardware ( linux PC / ATV2 ) the ATV2 client starts the buffering behavior , even though the video stream ( with audio ) is not going over 5mb/s encoding. (plays fine on PC hardware )

jwdv22 · 2011-03-20, 23:33

prophetizer Wrote:i think i may have fixed my SMB issues, first i ran this

Code:
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

then i went into the properties of my network card, went to the advanced tab, and disabled Interrupt Moderation. i immediately saw a HUGE jump in the 30 second skip, it is actually usable now and fast just like on my main HTPC box. FW and RW work much better as well from the OSD, or should i say actually work, only tried on 2 720p tv rips, half hour show and full hour show. no skips on those and they were buffering alot.

next i'm going to try 1080p bluray rips, see how they work.

Many thanks. That fixed some of my buffering isues, but not all of them. Most of the other buffering is caused by DivX of Xvid. I re-encoded my libarary to DivX mostly because the original Xbox could play 720p Divx. Now it looks like I might have to re-encode everything to h.264

haffi · 2011-03-20, 23:34

prophetizer Wrote:i think i may have fixed my SMB issues, first i ran this

Code:
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

then i went into the properties of my network card, went to the advanced tab, and disabled Interrupt Moderation. i immediately saw a HUGE jump in the 30 second skip, it is actually usable now and fast just like on my main HTPC box. FW and RW work much better as well from the OSD, or should i say actually work, only tried on 2 720p tv rips, half hour show and full hour show. no skips on those and they were buffering alot.

next i'm going to try 1080p bluray rips, see how they work.

The command

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

does not work on the ATV2 ( unless you have some special dep packs that included the netsh command)

jwdv22 · 2011-03-20, 23:35

haffi Wrote:The command

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

does not work on the ATV2 ( unless you have some special dep packs that included the netsh command)

That command is for the Windows Server, not the atv2

haffi · 2011-03-20, 23:36

bircoe Wrote:It would be good to know how many people experiencing buffering issues are streaming via SMB shares on a Windows host or on a NAS...

I have tried smb to Nas box ( Icybox) , windows 2008 r2 server, and Ubuntu.
Same video same network as my first test, all deliver the same results.

Ubuntu running xbmc ( work's fine )
Atv2 ( buffers alot on alot of 720p videos ) ( 1080 also )

jwdv22 · 2011-03-20, 23:37

haffi Wrote:I have tried smb to Nas box ( Icybox) , windows 2008 r2 server, and Ubuntu.
Same video same network as my first test, all deliver the same results.

Ubuntu running xbmc ( work's fine )
Atv2 ( buffers alot on alot of 720p videos ) ( 1080 also )

What is the container and codecs of the files you are trying?

haffi · 2011-03-20, 23:40

NitrousXBMC Wrote:I've had a lot of trouble with this issue on both XP SMB and FTP. Last night I tried the first 30 mins of a 720p x264 mkv over both smb and locally from the onboard flash. No issue playing the mkv locally but the video paused to buffer 7 times at:

0:03
6:05
6:45
16:58
17:39
25:52
26:12

there seems to be a buffer issue and a pattern the stops appeared. This also confirms the problem isn't a hardware / bitrate issue.

I can confirm this my video works fine of the local flash , so this tells us its somewhere in the TCp/network Stack.
Whether its the smb or a buffering issue ( to small size buffer or to agressive for the hardware )

Also something I did notice , not sure if its related at all, when I was streaming from apple some movie 720p trailers ( I saw that using top in console ) the proccess that was getting most cpu time was only going to about 15% cpu, however xbmc playing same stream from apple , was doing around 50%-70%.

haffi · 2011-03-20, 23:41

jwdv22 Wrote:What is the container and codecs of the files you are trying?

mkv file,
Codec info is on the first page ( start of the thread )

jwdv22 · 2011-03-20, 23:47

haffi Wrote:mkv file,
Codec info is on the first page ( start of the thread )

Sorry didn't realize this was the OP.

So assuming it isn't network related. Could you use MKVExtract to have a file with just the video and see if it is still having an issue?