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Hi guys, got two atv2s one running cydia and one I mess around with using the nightlies. Both are otherwise setup exactly the same in every way via the menus and advancedsetting.XML etc.
Both running via Mysql database and shared thumbs etc, movies on a qnap nas via smb.

Both units are cooked with 4.3 via season pass and the firecore atvflash.
Everything that can be turned off is, ie rss feeds.

The cydia box runs 99.9% of my 1080p perfectly with super smooth flawless playback. Why 99.9 well the odd file just crashes xbmc at the start but thats no important here.
The only issue I ever have the this box is the normal out of memory crashes.

My nighties box now running the dec 10 has issues playing a fair few 1080p files with fairly regular video slowdown for some seconds say every 5 minutes, sound is not affected. Never get the buffering icon on screen and movie will play without crashing just not smoothly. Really bugging me now.
Some 720p movies also slowdown a bit. This never happened with cydia.

Both boxes are wired, all files are scene mkv no home brew etc.

Overall I would say the nighties box is a bit slower all round with regards to gui and shows less free memory in sys info at around 120mb free, the cydia box normally shows around 160mb free?

Sorry for the lack of files in the post can add for both boxes if required.
Don't flame me please, long term user but short on time to contribute much, normally work everything out myself.
Spent the last month migrating 12tb library from pc to nas and rebuilding from scratch so a little burnt out right now.

Thanks,
Mac
I noticed that online streams do not buffer correctly with the nightlies (icefilms, etc) but, I have no issues with the cydia version. I really hope the ATV2 bugs are worked out when the stable Eden is released. Hopefully someone can offer insight into this in the meantime.
"ATV2 bugs are worked out" This ONLY happens if you participate and provide xbmc devs with feedback in the form of xbmc.log/crashreporter logs/etc. Wishing will not make it happen, unfortunately.
Ok no problem but first will re cook my nightlies box with 4.3 and install cydia via ssh, then bare config, check playback for smoothness and see if a known crashing movie still crashes during play.
Then upgrade to 10 dec nightly and do same playback test, that way I can completely discount is it has anything to do with the atvflash install using resources etc in this case.

Once I'm happy and have logs for this will again re cook box and use atvflash to install xbmc then update to 10 dec and so recreate the current setup as it will take longer to fully test it.

Only takes ten minutes to re do and setup the box each time and leaving a movie running is no hassle at all. Once I have all the data will post files as requested.

By the way one thing I did notice on the 10 dec is that you can no longer go round in poster view, what I mean is if you have a movie starting z ie zombieland you have to go through all the movies to get to the end when before you could just click left and get to other end straight away.
There is also no menu exit on screen as before so you cant get to movie options that way or to the playlists.
Using current confluence vertical atv2 skin.
Hi guys, ok so did some testing and here the logs etc.

Should start by saying that if this movie had not played perfectly on this atv2 would have just put it down to the file having issues etc but apart from the out of memory crashes it does play ultra smoothly.

also never see buffering on any xbmc atv2 versions with my nas via smb

movies is...

The.Chronicles.of.Narnia.The.Voyage.of.the.Dawn.Treader.2010.BluRay.1080p.DTS.x264-CHD.mkv

mediainfo link http://pastebin.com/nbEc9wiq

text from nfo

ViDEO BiTRATE...: x264 @ 12305 Kbps
FRAME RATE......: 23.976 fps
AUDiO 1.........: ENG DTS-CORE 5.1CH@1536K
RUNTiME ........: 01:52:40 (h:mConfused)
ASPECT RATiO....: 1.778: 1
RESOLUTiON......: 1920 X 1080
SUBTiTLES.......: N/A
FilE SiZE.......: 10.8G
x264 [info]: frame I:1707 Avg QP:19.02 size:319609
x264 [info]: frame P:41300 Avg QP:20.30 size:107208
x264 [info]: frame B:119089 Avg QP:22.56 size: 45539

1. What i consider to be the more stable atv2 (apart from the low mem crashes that is)

Platform: AppleTV2
Version of iOS: 4.3 - 8F455
XBMC Build version and date compiled: Git:20110623-62171b3 23 jun 2011
Install Method: ATVflash 1.1

Jealbreak via seasonpass, only xbmc installed, media via qnap ts-410 smb streaming, multiple shared profiles and thumbnails/art setup.
Running confluence vertical skin with most stuff turned off to save memory usage a bit.

On this box the movie plays perfectly with zero slowdown/framedropping etc, just constant 24 frames a second playback, then at random timing a low memory crash.
Interestingly having debugging on while playing the movie the memory usage really shoots up pretty much from the start and keeps rising till the crash. Have seen other movies also do this but not crash and others use a lot less memory but also crash so not sure there.

LowMemory-2011-12-16-234801.plist http://pastebin.com/bQg3iZ3p
syslog http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/773478/ big file!
xbmclog from a crash with this movie http://pastebin.com/tjYJGY4Y
xbmclog playing another movie perfectly for comparison http://pastebin.com/K5PbPcRL


2. Other atv2 fresh seasonpass clean again with 4.3 and xbmc 23 jun installed via ssh also begone run thats it

Platform: AppleTV2
Version of iOS: 4.3 - 8F455
XBMC Build version and date compiled: Git:20110623-62171b3 23 jun 2011
Install Method: ssh

xbmc setup same as other unit etc, movie plays smooth mostly but has slowdowns/framedrops every now and then with the framerate dropping from 24 to as low as 12 then back up again over 4 or so seconds, memory usage is much less than with the atvflash install and the movie play right to the end, watchable but the framedrops are annoying.

no crash log this time
syslog http://paste.ubuntu.com/773492/
xbmclog http://pastebin.com/SLmFSyM1

3. Same atv2 after being updated to 10 dec nightly with all same settings as with previous version

Platform: AppleTV2
Version of iOS: 4.3 - 8F455
XBMC Build version and date compiled: xbmc-20111210-f1ae0b6-master-atv2.deb
Install Method: ssh

Ok, now it plays pretty bad with content framedrops/slowdowns from the start, framerate on screen average of 20 but up and down only staying at 24 for a few seconds before dropping again, gave up after a few minutes of this as unwatchable.

no crash log this time
syslog http://paste.ubuntu.com/773499/
xbmclog http://pastebin.com/HuwQ5qA6
Did you already try to set audio output to optical/coax (even if you pass it through HDMI ... doesn't matter) - its reported multiple times that this might fix stuttering issues ...
Hi Memphiz, yes did try that a while back although I unselected the passthroughs for testing just leaving sound set to coax and 5.1.

Read all faqs/posts regarding similar playback issues but all of those just didn't play well at well, mine does play under different atv2 setups that's way I'm posting it otherwise I would just put it down to a bad file.
Re done atv2 a couple of more times and I cant see why but playback is better/smoother if xbmc IS installed with atvflash?

Still crashes on jun 23 cydia, dec 10 nightly will play the whole movie but with some slowdowns again.

Tried installing all different ways, none were perfect, guess the box is just very fussy on file playback and yet it played a massive 30gb mkv of lotr return of king extended and that has a stupid bitrate of 14000 i think

hang on, will log into imac at home and check....

no its 14549kbps, 4hrs 23min 29.5gb movie, watched an hour of it last week on the jun 23 release no issues at all? has 5 ref frames?

Hope the betas may solve the playback issues or at least some them, just seems to hit and miss to be a main system at the moment.

Memory usage seems to be the key as another said recently, is there no way to run everything from a ramdisk using some of the 8gb flash?

By the way, reinstalled everything like 12 times over the weekend, no joy, waiting now till the betas are out before I rejig again Wink
flash != ram - and might be possible: see http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=960...stcount=97

beside that ... don't expect anything other in beta. We have no clue what your problem might be and can't reproduce it for now...
Hi guys,

Did more testing and basically regardless of the xbmc version certain movies will either crash back to frontrow (early) or drop in frame rate (nightlies) as low as 12fps for a while then pick up back to 24fps again at the same places in the film.

This only happens on some movies 720p or 1080p in fact (I got a shed load) so must be an encoding issue.

Most other movies do however play perfectly on the 10 dec nightly Smile

Now one thing, ALL the movies I had issues with play perfectly using the lastest version of firecore's media player and I'm not sure if its down to more free memory or there new ffshow or whatever that drives the playback?

I read somewhere that after some months firecore's new whatever may be intergrated into xbmc would this happen?

Too busy at work at the moment to check my facts, will look into that later and amend.

Thanks again guys for getting the ATV2 version of XBMC to where it is already Wink
mgc_bb Wrote:I read somewhere that after some months firecore's new whatever may be intergrated into xbmc would this happen?

If you've read this somewhere, and the post was from me ... then it might be true. But you can ask every 2 weeks now if you want Wink
Ok found it, it was mentioned here and yes you did post in the thread Memphiz Wink

Its a newer build of FFmpeg according to Ned Scott

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=116523

Who knows, perhaps early next year after eden is final something may happen with it.
If you could run MediaInfo on some of your files we might be able to tell you if you can play things now, but maybe with some changed settings, etc.
Yeah no problem will post some stuff after the christmas weekend Wink
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