[Scott R]

Jaceymeanz, a couple of things...

1) I'm anal-retentive and a stickler for spelling/grammar, so forgive me for this, but it's HandBrake not Handbreak (exiledone1 was also making this error and I meant to make note of it earlier). Again, forgive my anal-retentiveness.

2) I am not a HandBrake or XBMC developer. Your comment seemed to thank me for "making something" so I just wanted to make sure no one was mistaken on that. I'm just a user of the software, like you.

Now, you haven't made it clear what sort of file you've created, so it's difficult for me to answer entirely. Is this a 1080p file or just 720p? If you don't need 1080p, but you do want super-high-quality 720p, this is one of the areas where the out-of-the-box ATV2 *might* have a leg up on XBMC (I welcome an XBMC dev to jump in and set me straight on this)...the stock ATV2 has 8GB of storage space. If you attempt to play largish (e.g., 5.8GB in your case) file which, despite being fairly large, is otherwise compatible with the stock-ATV2, the ATV2 is designed to transfer as much of it as it thinks it needs into that 8GB of storage before it will start playing it. The downside here, from a usability perspective, is that it might mean that you have to wait 5 minutes before it will let you even *start* playing it. The good news is that as you're playing the movie (or, you can start to play it, then pause it, and the ATV2 will continue to transfer/download that movie into its 8GB buffer), you'll eventually find that you have the entirety of the movie stored in the buffer.

The bottom line is that it's designed to download/store the movie in the 8GB buffer so that even if you had a slow network, you could (assuming you were willing to wait for it to download most/all of the movie before you hit the Play button) be in a position where you could eventually start playing it and never worry about it stuttering/pausing/etc.

I mentioned previously that this native behavior might have a leg up on how XBMC works. That's because I *think* that XBMC is designed such that it wants to start playing a movie immediately, rather than trying to use any sort of AI to determine how fast your network is and how much of the movie it might need to transfer to the buffer before it lets you start to play it. The good part of this is that you can start playing a movie practically immediately. The bad news is that if your network isn't fast enough, the movie might pause at some point if the point at which you're in the movie meets the position that's been downloaded/transferred.

Does XBMC allow you to start playing a movie, hit pause, and then wait 30 minutes (while it continues to download the movie to the 8GB buffer) to mitigate this? I don't know for sure, but I don't think it does.

Getting back to your situation...are you hard-wired ethernet or are you using WiFi? FWIW, I've successfully played Blu-ray MKV rips that are over 20GB in size over hard-wired ethernet on my ATV2/XBMC. I'm not sure what a realistic limit is when dealing with 802.11n. If you're on 802.11g, I would certainly recommend upgrading your network. If you can do hard-wired gigabit, definitely do that (note: the leg to the ATV2 would only be 100Mbps since the ATV2's ethernet port is not gigabit).

[exiledone1]

Jaceymeanz, a couple of things...

1) I'm anal-retentive and a stickler for spelling/grammar, so forgive me for this, but it's HandBrake not Handbreak (exiledone1 was also making this error and I meant to make note of it earlier). Again, forgive my anal-retentiveness.

2) I am not a HandBrake or XBMC developer. Your comment seemed to thank me for "making something" so I just wanted to make sure no one was mistaken on that. I'm just a user of the software, like you.

Now, you haven't made it clear what sort of file you've created, so it's difficult for me to answer entirely. Is this a 1080p file or just 720p? If you don't need 1080p, but you do want super-high-quality 720p, this is one of the areas where the out-of-the-box ATV2 *might* have a leg up on XBMC (I welcome an XBMC dev to jump in and set me straight on this)...the stock ATV2 has 8GB of storage space. If you attempt to play largish (e.g., 5.8GB in your case) file which, despite being fairly large, is otherwise compatible with the stock-ATV2, the ATV2 is designed to transfer as much of it as it thinks it needs into that 8GB of storage before it will start playing it. The downside here, from a usability perspective, is that it might mean that you have to wait 5 minutes before it will let you even *start* playing it. The good news is that as you're playing the movie (or, you can start to play it, then pause it, and the ATV2 will continue to transfer/download that movie into its 8GB buffer), you'll eventually find that you have the entirety of the movie stored in the buffer.

The bottom line is that it's designed to download/store the movie in the 8GB buffer so that even if you had a slow network, you could (assuming you were willing to wait for it to download most/all of the movie before you hit the Play button) be in a position where you could eventually start playing it and never worry about it stuttering/pausing/etc.

I mentioned previously that this native behavior might have a leg up on how XBMC works. That's because I *think* that XBMC is designed such that it wants to start playing a movie immediately, rather than trying to use any sort of AI to determine how fast your network is and how much of the movie it might need to transfer to the buffer before it lets you start to play it. The good part of this is that you can start playing a movie practically immediately. The bad news is that if your network isn't fast enough, the movie might pause at some point if the point at which you're in the movie meets the position that's been downloaded/transferred.

Does XBMC allow you to start playing a movie, hit pause, and then wait 30 minutes (while it continues to download the movie to the 8GB buffer) to mitigate this? I don't know for sure, but I don't think it does.

Getting back to your situation...are you hard-wired ethernet or are you using WiFi? FWIW, I've successfully played Blu-ray MKV rips that are over 20GB in size over hard-wired ethernet on my ATV2/XBMC. I'm not sure what a realistic limit is when dealing with 802.11n. If you're on 802.11g, I would certainly recommend upgrading your network. If you can do hard-wired gigabit, definitely do that (note: the leg to the ATV2 would only be 100Mbps since the ATV2's ethernet port is not gigabit).

Lol, Sorry Scott. I'm writing on my ipad 2 and I have auto correct on. It makes spelling a problem sometimes lol.

Btw, Since the ATV 2 outputs everything to 720p is there any problem with me just changing the apple tv 2 preset to 720p instead? or is it still better to keep it at 1080p. The only things I plan to play on are my PC, Ipad 2 or ATV 2 or XBMC on my ATV 2?

Oh....if I changed the Constant Quality to 16 do I also need to change the Avg Bitrate to 8000kbps or do I just do one or the other?

Thanks

[Scott R]

Btw, Since the ATV 2 outputs everything to 720p is there any problem with me just changing the apple tv 2 preset to 720p instead? or is it still better to keep it at 1080p. The only things I plan to play on are my PC, Ipad 2 or ATV 2 or XBMC on my ATV 2?

Are you using a nightly build of HandBrake? If so (and I personally would recommend going ahead and doing that), then the default behavior for the ATV2 preset should be to downscale the resolution of a 1080p source to 720p anyway. The ATV2 preset should, by default, have the resolution set to 1280, not 1920.

Oh....if I changed the Constant Quality to 16 do I also need to change the Avg Bitrate to 8000kbps or do I just do one or the other?

If you're using the default ATV2 preset, you shouldn't need to mess with the Avg Bitrate. Just decrease the Constant Quality value if you want to improve PQ. I should note, however, that most of the HandBrake devs are quite outspoken in stating that anything lower (better) than the default value of 20 is a waste (of disk space - as the lower the value, the larger the filesize). IMO, it depends on the size of the display you're going to watch it on and also depends on the source file. If you have a very large screen or front projector, a lower CQ/RF setting makes sense. And, in the case of certain movies/scense (like the early dark cave scenes in Iron Man), the lower/better setting will reduce macroblocking. But you may not be so picky and/or your displays might be smaller, in which case you may prefer to have a smaller filesize and just stick with the default CQ/RF setting of 20.

[ProphetVX]

Lol, Sorry Scott. I'm writing on my ipad 2 and I have auto correct on. It makes spelling a problem sometimes lol.

Btw, Since the ATV 2 outputs everything to 720p is there any problem with me just changing the apple tv 2 preset to 720p instead? or is it still better to keep it at 1080p. The only things I plan to play on are my PC, Ipad 2 or ATV 2 or XBMC on my ATV 2?

Oh....if I changed the Constant Quality to 16 do I also need to change the Avg Bitrate to 8000kbps or do I just do one or the other?

Thanks

Depends on whether you plan on playing 1080p content or not... For most, 720p is fine (I have a 60 inch 3D TV and only have my 3D rips in 1080p), at the end of the day, you're better having a a lower resolution clip with a higher bitrate than a higher resolution with lower bitrate. ie if you have a 1080p rip and a 720p rip with a bitrate of 5000kbps each, the 720p rip will look better.

Constant Quality controls the bitrate, so no you only need one value set. For 1080p I usually have it set around 15 and 720p around 18-22 depending on the source content.

[jaceymeanz]

Jaceymeanz, a couple of things...

1) I'm anal-retentive and a stickler for spelling/grammar, so forgive me for this, but it's HandBrake not Handbreak (exiledone1 was also making this error and I meant to make note of it earlier). Again, forgive my anal-retentiveness.

2) I am not a HandBrake or XBMC developer. Your comment seemed to thank me for "making something" so I just wanted to make sure no one was mistaken on that. I'm just a user of the software, like you.

Now, you haven't made it clear what sort of file you've created, so it's difficult for me to answer entirely. Is this a 1080p file or just 720p? If you don't need 1080p, but you do want super-high-quality 720p, this is one of the areas where the out-of-the-box ATV2 *might* have a leg up on XBMC (I welcome an XBMC dev to jump in and set me straight on this)...the stock ATV2 has 8GB of storage space. If you attempt to play largish (e.g., 5.8GB in your case) file which, despite being fairly large, is otherwise compatible with the stock-ATV2, the ATV2 is designed to transfer as much of it as it thinks it needs into that 8GB of storage before it will start playing it. The downside here, from a usability perspective, is that it might mean that you have to wait 5 minutes before it will let you even *start* playing it. The good news is that as you're playing the movie (or, you can start to play it, then pause it, and the ATV2 will continue to transfer/download that movie into its 8GB buffer), you'll eventually find that you have the entirety of the movie stored in the buffer.

The bottom line is that it's designed to download/store the movie in the 8GB buffer so that even if you had a slow network, you could (assuming you were willing to wait for it to download most/all of the movie before you hit the Play button) be in a position where you could eventually start playing it and never worry about it stuttering/pausing/etc.

I mentioned previously that this native behavior might have a leg up on how XBMC works. That's because I *think* that XBMC is designed such that it wants to start playing a movie immediately, rather than trying to use any sort of AI to determine how fast your network is and how much of the movie it might need to transfer to the buffer before it lets you start to play it. The good part of this is that you can start playing a movie practically immediately. The bad news is that if your network isn't fast enough, the movie might pause at some point if the point at which you're in the movie meets the position that's been downloaded/transferred.

Does XBMC allow you to start playing a movie, hit pause, and then wait 30 minutes (while it continues to download the movie to the 8GB buffer) to mitigate this? I don't know for sure, but I don't think it does.

Getting back to your situation...are you hard-wired ethernet or are you using WiFi? FWIW, I've successfully played Blu-ray MKV rips that are over 20GB in size over hard-wired ethernet on my ATV2/XBMC. I'm not sure what a realistic limit is when dealing with 802.11n. If you're on 802.11g, I would certainly recommend upgrading your network. If you can do hard-wired gigabit, definitely do that (note: the leg to the ATV2 would only be 100Mbps since the ATV2's ethernet port is not gigabit).

Thanks very much for the reply Scott!

Sorry about the miscommunication before - no I didn't mean to thank you, I was referring to the entire development community.

The type of file I am converting from is a 720p x264 MKV, using the out of the box AppleTV2 present in Handbrake.

I completely understand where you are coming from and that feature within XBMC (loading the movie into the buffer onto the device) would be VERY beneficial for my setup!

I would love to upgrade to cable and probably will do shortly, however there is something a bit more elegant about getting the whole setup to run smoothly on a 802.11n network!

My first post on this forum so I don't want to start it off being a bad one! However, I really appreciate your input and I really would love to hear the other dev's opinions on your suggestion about loading the movie into the buffer above and if XBMC does this at all..

Thanks - please forgive me for incorrect grammar/spelling as I am at work currently..

[exiledone1]

Are you using a nightly build of HandBrake? If so (and I personally would recommend going ahead and doing that), then the default behavior for the ATV2 preset should be to downscale the resolution of a 1080p source to 720p anyway. The ATV2 preset should, by default, have the resolution set to 1280, not 1920.

If you're using the default ATV2 preset, you shouldn't need to mess with the Avg Bitrate. Just decrease the Constant Quality value if you want to improve PQ. I should note, however, that most of the HandBrake devs are quite outspoken in stating that anything lower (better) than the default value of 20 is a waste (of disk space - as the lower the value, the larger the filesize). IMO, it depends on the size of the display you're going to watch it on and also depends on the source file. If you have a very large screen or front projector, a lower CQ/RF setting makes sense. And, in the case of certain movies/scense (like the early dark cave scenes in Iron Man), the lower/better setting will reduce macroblocking. But you may not be so picky and/or your displays might be smaller, in which case you may prefer to have a smaller filesize and just stick with the default CQ/RF setting of 20.

UPDATE: Okay I think I have confused myself here. I keep saying change the settings from 1080 to 720, but I'm mixing up those numbers with the width and the height in the picture tab I believe. I was thinking for some odd reason that I should change the width number to 1080 or 720p, but that isn't what you guys meant obvious.

So let's see if I'm getting this right. The preset of the ATV 2 for Handbrake has a width of 1280 and a Height of 528 which equals 720p correct?

So if that is the case than what numbers needs to go there in the Width and Height to make it 1080 (just in case I ever wanted to go that route)? Would it be 1920? Is that what you meant??

Obviously I more then likely would not use 1080p at all. I have a 42 inch flat screen plasma which my ATV 2 is hooked up to with XBMC and a Ipad 2 with XBMC. The ATV 2 downgrades anyway to 720p so what is the point of coding in 1080. I think the picture quality of 720p looks great anyway. So if I never plan to use 1080p just keep it at 1280 correct

So if I want to keep my picture quality great at 720p I just need to use the preset which is 1280 x 528 and just lower the Constant Quality to 16 or whatever. What do I need to change the Width to and the height to make 1080p Or is the ATV 2 present of 1280 x 528 equal the 1080p?

Do I finally got it? Lol...one of these nights. Getting a quick education here. Sorry for repeating myself, but I guess I'm just trying to grasp everything here in one night. Forgive the noob and thank you for all the help from everyone tonight. It really does mean a lot to me.

FINAL THOUGHT: I was just doing some research outside of XBMC Forum and came across something that says 1280 x 720 equals 720p. So if this is the case then why is the handbrake preset for ATV 2 set for a width of 1280 and a height 528 That isn't HD then right

Also, it doesn't appear that I can change the height number of 528 to 720 at all using the preset?I thought 720p was considered high definition??

[ProphetVX]

1080p = 1920 width, 1080 height
720 = 1280 width, 720 height

1280 x 528 or 544 you're re-encoding a video that is in cinemascope format, ie designed for cinema screens and why you'll see black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when viewing on a regular hdtv. You shouldn't be playing with aspect ratios but with that said if you do want to go with custom settings use 1920 for the width for '1080p' and 1280 for '720p' with the 'Keep aspect ratio' checkbox checked and it'll calculate the correct height for the video.

You really are venturing into settings you shouldn't be playing with... Select the ATV2 preset, set audio to AC3 passthru, set constant quality to around 18-22 and press encode. If you don't understand how it all works, don't change it. Start understanding it piece by piece then start toying around with the settings.

[jaceymeanz]

Hi all,

I have been testing a 5.80GB M4V file - I changed a bunch of wireless network settings (e.g. channels, Beacon Interval, Fragmentation Threshold, RTS Threshold) and have seen a HUGE difference with the playback through wireless...

However - I am still getting a few buffering issues.

I don't believe this is a bandwidth issue anymore - the movie plays without any issues whatsoever for about ~20minutes, then during scenes that have alot of action (blowing up etc) buffering seems to occur.

Log file; http://pastebin.com/PHZ29Lvq

In the log I did notice this;

Code:

21:32:35 T:177041408   DEBUG: CDVDPlayerAudio:: Discontinuity - was:4061419294.040147, should be:4061280019.665146, error:-139274.375000
21:32:35 T:166440960   DEBUG: CDVDPlayer::SetCaching - caching state 0
21:33:48 T:177041408 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:33:54 T:177041408 WARNING: Previous line repeats 1 times.
21:33:54 T:177041408   DEBUG: CDVDPlayerAudio:: Discontinuity - was:4140530764.706813, should be:4140520193.990925, error:-10570.715888
21:33:59 T:177041408 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:16 T:163753984 WARNING: Previous line repeats 16 times.
21:34:16 T:163753984 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:18 T:177041408 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:18 T:163753984 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:18 T:177041408 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:19 T:163753984 WARNING: Previous line repeats 6 times.
21:34:19 T:163753984 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:19 T:177041408 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:20 T:163753984 WARNING: Previous line repeats 5 times.
21:34:20 T:163753984 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:20 T:177041408 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
21:34:22 T:166440960 WARNING: Previous line repeats 7 times.
21:34:22 T:166440960   DEBUG: CDVDPlayer::SetCaching - caching state 1
21:34:22 T:166440960   DEBUG: CDVDPlayer::HandleMessages - player started 2
21:34:22 T:166440960   DEBUG: CDVDPlayer::HandleMessages - player started 1

Does this relate to reference frames? or is this still to do with fetching data through SMB? I am now playing another file as we speak (720p, M4v) without any issues whatsoever.. I think it had one hiccup and now is playing without any buffering issues..

[pecinko]

Hm...

Speaking from my tests and experience - use default preset ATV 2 and don't alter it.

You should check:

- audio output if you're not happy with dolby pro logic or you want to have both dolby pro logic and ac3
- subtitles , if you use them

Leave everything else as it is and enjoy. I have 40" TV & I'm sitting at 3,5m distance.

[Ned Scott]

1) Edit your recent post that has the movie's .AVI filename and xxx that out. The filename almost looks like something you downloaded off the interwebs rather than bought on disc and ripped on your own, and I'm sure that's not the case! That could be a legal concern for the XBMC.org owners and we don't want to inflict that on them (though the discussion of Icefilms seems to be fine on these forums, which puzzles me a bit).

I'm no lawyer, but I think safeharbor laws protect XBMC.org/Foundation from any direct illegal activity done by users. However, just saying and discussing pirated movies isn't illegal. Downloading them is, but the discussion isn't an additional infraction. At worst, in some extreme situation, a movie studio might subpoena the site for IP info, but XBMC would not be in trouble because people talked about it here.

For example, if I told someone I set some house on fire over gmail, Google would not be in trouble.

But again, I'm no lawyer, and in no way is this specific post anything more than my own personal opinion (in other words, in this post I am not speaking for Team XBMC, the site, or the XBMC foundation). My own personal opinion is to not sweat it ;)

[jaceymeanz]

Hi Ned -

Thanks for the reply, fact is I did buy this movie and rip it. I just wanted to ensure I followed the rules when posting...

Now I have re-encoded the M4V using an RP of 25.. it works perfectly now... I guess 18 - 20 was just a bit too much.

The filesize is now around 2.90GB, I think through my wireless-N network I can handle upto 3.30GB before buffering starts to occur.

Really appreciate everyone's input!

[Scott R]

I'm no lawyer, but I think safeharbor laws protect XBMC.org/Foundation from any direct illegal activity done by users. However, just saying and discussing pirated movies isn't illegal. Downloading them is, but the discussion isn't an additional infraction. At worst, in some extreme situation, a movie studio might subpoena the site for IP info, but XBMC would not be in trouble because people talked about it here.

I'm in agreement with you. I was just jumping in because it seems like most websites have a more hardline perspective on this and I didn't want to risk the thread getting closed because of it.

Now I have re-encoded the M4V using an RP of 25.. it works perfectly now... I guess 18 - 20 was just a bit too much.

The filesize is now around 2.90GB, I think through my wireless-N network I can handle upto 3.30GB before buffering starts to occur.

I'm surprised that the filesize is that big with a CQ/RF setting of 25. Did you bump up the resolution to 1920? I would also expect PQ to suffer quite a bit at that level. And if I understand correctly, I think you're dealing with an already-compressed source file. I believe that when I've converted a Blu-ray rip .MKV source file (which is usually 18-26GB) using the ATV2 built-in preset (RF20, resolution: 1280), I usually get a file under 3GB. If I was to increase the RF level, the filesize would get even smaller.

[jaceymeanz]

I'm in agreement with you. I was just jumping in because it seems like most websites have a more hardline perspective on this and I didn't want to risk the thread getting closed because of it.

I'm surprised that the filesize is that big with a CQ/RF setting of 25. Did you bump up the resolution to 1920? I would also expect PQ to suffer quite a bit at that level. And if I understand correctly, I think you're dealing with an already-compressed source file. I believe that when I've converted a Blu-ray rip .MKV source file (which is usually 18-26GB) using the ATV2 built-in preset (RF20, resolution: 1280), I usually get a file under 3GB. If I was to increase the RF level, the filesize would get even smaller.

Ah yes, your probably quite right.. but what was the length of your film? Would that come into the equation at all. At RF at 20, and source file at 6.50GB duration 2 hours 35 minutes, the M4V came out at 5.80GB, setting it to 25 pushed it to 2.90GB.

[johandutoit2000]

Very detailed discussions here, but I think it does not address the original problem. Perhaps if someone could clarify.

I also purchased the ATV2 thinking it would be able to handle the HD Icefilms content through XBMC. It stutters. How would it make sense to use any conversion software? Icefilms is for streaming content. There is no opportunity to convert.

Does anyone know how to get rid of the stuttering playback for the Icefilms streaming content? I already have the latest nightly build and Icefilms versions.

[Benjopa]

IMHO it depend from videocodec used. The stream form icefilm perhaps use codec that our AppleTV cant handle, because the HW acceleration is only for h264 and x264 codec.