Kodi Community Forum

New user - any help greatly appreciated!

I have a UK Amazon Fire TV and have installed separately Gotham 13.2, SPMC and a recent nightly Kodi build via sideloading and have encountered the same buffering problem with all three different versions.

Everything seems to work wonderfully apart from a buffering issue when trying to play files (various different files attempted, usually between 1-2gb in size, 720p HD .mkv video files) from a local NAS drive using predominantly NFS (but also tried SMB).

This is not a problem with internet connection speed and upload / download buffering from a webstream. I have previously successfully streamed the same video files from the same NAS using Boxee box and a WDTV player with no buffering issues on same network, so I believe the issue is directly related to XBMC.

The files will play normally, then after a minute or so stop for buffering (for about 20 seconds). This repeats every five minutes or so which makes viewing very frustrating.

I have attempted various different buffer settings using advancedsettings.xml files - but nothing has done the job. The same buffering problem is encountered with XBMC, SPMC and Kodi.

I have managed to find a work around that does enable files to play without stopping to buffer, but would like to make things work perfectly in one variant of XBMC! Using the officially bought version of Plex and selecting media profile, external player and using SPMC files play perfectly with no buffering. I have noticed that when playing these files if I press the menu button on the remote in SPMC the debugging text shows on the fifth line (line beginning C( ad...) at the end shows for example "cache 20MB 100%". When playing files in SPMC without using Plex this cache number is always at 0b.

So, can anyone help with how to enable caching directly in SPMC/Kodi when playing network files from my local NAS storage to stop the buffering interrupting the video? (I'm a bit of a novice in terms of log files, especially from the AFTV but will try if given instructions! - thanks).

Many thanks

What are your network settings in your advancedsettings.xml? I had this buffering issue until I made some adjustments. Here are my settings:

I might try those. Running my xbmc on firetv, streaming over 5GHz with my Synology Nas

(2014-11-07, 15:48)gizbug Wrote: [ -> ]I might try those. Running my xbmc on firetv, streaming over 5GHz with my Synology Nas

I had similar issues...video streamed fine on other devices too.

On my Synology in network settings I had my two lan connections bonded. I expected that to mean improved stability and performance. Synology support recommended I unbond it. As soon as I unlinked them and allocated them two different ip addresses my problems went away.

Might not be your problem but thought I'd mention it as it fixed my issues

I only have 1 LAN connection listed under network on my Synology. Thanks

(2014-10-31, 12:54)BGC131 Wrote: [ -> ]The same buffering problem is encountered with XBMC, SPMC and Kodi.

Did you find any solution?

(2014-11-10, 20:05)gizbug Wrote: [ -> ]I only have 1 LAN connection listed under network on my Synology. Thanks

Was your video stopping every few minutes to buffer? Did you find any solution?

Same here.
Have you found anything - if not a solution but a reason for this?

(2014-10-31, 12:54)BGC131 Wrote: [ -> ]The files will play normally, then after a minute or so stop for buffering (for about 20 seconds). This repeats every five minutes or so which makes viewing very frustrating.

Am having similar issues on the Fire TV running Kodi 14.0. I keep getting the message "Cache Full, Cache filled before reaching required[...]" about every 2-5 minutes when streaming a video. Very annoying as it keeps pausing the video for 1-2 mins, buffers up, shows the message and then continues playback only to repeat a few mins later.





I would really appreciate it if someone could help me find the cause and/or solution.

Thank you.

I have exactly the same problem with hd videos.Is there a way to increase the cache or free it up if something else is in there?

i tried all these settings tonight. I'm running XBMC Kodi 14.0 and altho most of my MKV's play fine, there are a couple that do not, especially if they are high bitrate of course.
I'm running the PleXBMC plugin but i dont think that has anything to do with it honestly. My intranet in the house is of massive bandwidth availability, it's not the available bandwidth, it's the AFTV itself.
It's got 2gb of RAM, which if you look at other android set-top players out there, they've only got that much as well running kit kat, so the question remains, is this a setting which we can by pass??

I even tried setting the cachbuffersize to 0, which didnt make a difference, so I dont even know if it actually "sticks" on the AFTV.

All I know is that in this instance, it's not a streaming bottleneck, but rather a device specific.or setting specific.

I'm very close to returning and getting another XBMC capable device, as I've only had this AFTV for a couple weeks. I had a WDTV before, but Plex sucks using that. Smooth playback tho.

This one is a little overpriced, but looks like XBMC comes loaded with all the bells and whistles.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M03ULH2/ref=...0B5HPPHH31

This one literally has same specs as above but a fraction of the price, and not as strong of a CPU. I'm leary as it's cheaper than any of the WDTV, Roku, or AFTV.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JYCE1PU/ref=...5R0R&psc=1


I hope I'm not doing anything wrong by posting generic Amazon links. I am not advertising that is where you get it, I'm just doing it for product XBMC comparison as far as specs go.

(2015-01-12, 04:22)scooby092477 Wrote: [ -> ]This one is a little overpriced, but looks like XBMC comes loaded with all the bells and whistles.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M03ULH2/ref=...0B5HPPHH31

This one literally has same specs as above but a fraction of the price, and not as strong of a CPU. I'm leary as it's cheaper than any of the WDTV, Roku, or AFTV.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JYCE1PU/ref=...5R0R&psc=1


I hope I'm not doing anything wrong by posting generic Amazon links. I am not advertising that is where you get it, I'm just doing it for product XBMC comparison as far as specs go.

That shouldn't happen and I would first try to figure out what's really going on. However, if you do get a new android box..

First link is over priced. The second one isn't bad, but I think you'll get more out of this: http://www.geekbuying.com/item/MXQ-Amlog...33402.html

I got the stick version of that for $30 on sale a while back, and it works pretty dang good.

I am suffering through the same issues with my new Fire TV (purchased around Christmas time). My wife is ready to throw it out the window. Netflix streams 100% fine so it's not my wifi which is getting over 30 MB downstream. I was able to watch a couple of shows via Kodi but now I'm suffering through 5 minutes of show and then buffer/cache issues. It's painful.

FWIW, I had the same problem with mine.

Initial setup played great. Then I installed Add-ons... Watchdog turned out to be my problem add-on. Uninstalled and all worked great. Works better without any cache settings defined.

I have only one plug in installed and that's the plexbmc plug in. It did all my scraping basically..

I have exactly the same issue with SMB and NFS. What's odd is that streaming over FTP is working pretty fine for me. I use a freenas server to host my files, network is wired. An iPerf test i run against my freenas says 96,x MBit.

So we have different sources where files are stored, SMB and NFS as protocol, XBMC 13.x, Kodi 14.x, SPMC, all with issues.