[siddharta42]

I've installed XBMC on a basic Arch Linux setup, the hardware is AMD Phenom X3 with nVidia GT220. Media are stored an UnRAID server connected through Gbit Ethernet.

Arch is up to date, nvidia and nvidia-utils are installed, using Xfce4.

Occasionally (on average I'd say every 10 min or so) there is a pause in video playback of 1-2 seconds. The little video control OSD pops up briefly in the lower right corner.

In the log I find the following:

Code:

11:14:01 T:139636500330256 M:3853729792 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - retrieved last data packet of queue
11:14:02 T:139636500330256 M:3853729792   ERROR: Pause - pcm_pause, alsa error: -77 - File descriptor in bad state
11:14:02 T:139636500330256 M:3853729792 WARNING: CALSADirectSound::CALSADirectSound - device is not able to pause playback, will flush instead
11:14:02 T:139636576724752 M:3853729792 WARNING: Decode - avcodec_decode_video didn't consume the full packet. size: 7561, consumed: 0

My audio output device is a Musical Fidelity V-DAC connected over USB and otherwise works fine. VDPAU is enabled for video playback and works well too with CPU usage averaging 1-3% on each core.

Which direction would I need to look into to solve this (quite annoying) problem?

[bobo1on1]

The audio queue holds encoded audio data, when you get the "retrieved last data packet of queue" warning it means it has no data to decode, it's possible that XBMC can't read the file fast enough for some reason, the first thing I'd try is playing the file from a local disk and see if that fixes anything.

Also, please turn on debug logging in XBMC and post the full debug log on pastebin, there might be a different reason why this happens.

[siddharta42]

Thank you, I'll do as suggested and post back. Could the problem be related to the specific content as well?

[siddharta42]

Here's my XBMC debug log on pastebin: http://pastebin.com/4JsGhZFk

I've stopped playback immediately after the first pause. Please let me know should I need to log more or try anything else.

Haven't had a chance yet to try with local content but other content from the same server in 1080p h264 with bitrates up to 20 Mb/s plays fine.

TIA for any insights...

[bobo1on1]

It looks like an IO issue, but it could also be a problem with the file itself.