[davilla]

291M if that goes over 300M, oomkiller will reach out and cause the dreaded Level 3 Out of Memory

[canadave]

It's not a bit-rate issue. It's a memory usage issue.

For the ignorant among us (such as myself), what aspects of a video file affect memory usage during playback, such as in this case? Pure file size? Capital letters in the title?

Is there any way to take a video file that is a mem usage hog and turn it into a mem usage harmless piglet without a drastic reduction in quality?

[Memphiz]

Mhh you could try disable all network servers in XBMC settings (speaking of airplay at the very first). This will unload the corresponding libs and so frees a bit of memory).

The magic 300M limit somehow remembers me on Apollo 13, where they need to figure out in which order they activate the devices for not hitting the magic 20A current

[canadave]

The magic 300M limit somehow remembers me on Apollo 13, where they need to figure out in which order they activate the devices for not hitting the magic 20A current

Would uninstalling some of the nitoTV extraneous stuff help as well? Like, the BTStack, etc?

[Sarlic]

It's not a bit-rate issue. It's a memory usage issue.

My bad - I wasn't sure if the bitrate of the file would affect how much memory is required to play.

Maetrik, so you're running a much older iOS on ATV -- wonder if it's worth downgrading? -- all I have installed is XBMC and Updatebegone with the latest non-iOS 5 version of iOS, not even NitoTV.

I'm running WHS 2011 media server, with the new Netgear WNDR 4500 gigabit router, wired to one ATV, wireless to another.

Memphiz, so I can disable some additional stuff in XBMC settings to maybe clear out some more memory?

Sorry for all the questions!

[Maetrik]

I dont know if its worth downgrading, i've just never seen additional values in upgrading oh, and i xckd my settings, i dont have airplay or any other network features/webinterfaces enabled. but as davilla said, if 300 is the 'magic' number, then its been really close to crash. dont know if heavy skins affect this, but if you're using a heavyweight skin, try to use a lighter one (i use confluence)

[Sarlic]

I just use the default (Confluence) as well.

Damnit, so frustrating! Seems like I must be barely going over the memory cap!

I'll wait and see if the gurus have any other things to try out to cut down the usage.

[Jester]

291M if that goes over 300M, oomkiller will reach out and cause the dreaded Level 3 Out of Memory

I'm no dev, but have a linux background, isn't oomadj -> OOM_DISABLE an option ?

[Sarlic]

What's the result of disabling that? Does it just play through and eventually melt the box? :-)

Are any of you running tethered iOS 5 jailbreak to see how the memory is handled? I've read that iOS 5 has some kind of new memory management system with it -- not sure if that would have any affect, if at all on ATV? (And for the umpteenth time, as a non-developer, this could be a completely useless/incorrect observation as it relates to XBMC.)

[Jester]

I'm no dev, but have a linux background, isn't oomadj -> OOM_DISABLE an option ?

To answer to my own question (I think), I'm not a apple dev person, no clue about iOS

so, normally in linux you can "bypass" our dear friend oomkiller by doing

echo -17 > /proc/$PID/oom_adj
where $PID is the PID of the AppleTV process

or using sysctl

vm.overcommit_memory = 2
vm.overcommit_ratio = 50

both don't seem to be an option.

[davilla]

For the ignorant among us (such as myself), what aspects of a video file affect memory usage during playback, such as in this case? Pure file size? Capital letters in the title?

Is there any way to take a video file that is a mem usage hog and turn it into a mem usage harmless piglet without a drastic reduction in quality?

H264 level/profile will effect mem usage, indirectly that's the number of reference frames. This particular video has 2. The other things are audio. This particular video is a 7 channel DTS-xxx.

[canadave]

H264 level/profile will effect mem usage, indirectly that's the number of reference frames. This particular video has 2. The other things are audio. This particular video is a 7 channel DTS-xxx.

Oh, okay, thanks. Good to know. And yeah, I can see how a 7-channel DTS audio stream might be problematic

[davilla]

To answer to my own question (I think), I'm not a apple dev person, no clue about iOS

so, normally in linux you can "bypass" our dear friend oomkiller by doing

echo -17 > /proc/$PID/oom_adj
where $PID is the PID of the AppleTV process

or using sysctl

vm.overcommit_memory = 2
vm.overcommit_ratio = 50

both don't seem to be an option.

com.apple.SystemConfiguration.MemoryMonitor
/System/Library/SystemConfiguration/MemoryMonitor

For the brave: google for "com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist iphone"

[Sarlic]

Oh, okay, thanks. Good to know. And yeah, I can see how a 7-channel DTS audio stream might be problematic

Am I over-reaching there? :-)

Although the same thing is happening to me on much older flicks that don't have 7-channel DTS available (like The Terminato.)

So is dumbing down my files the only thing I can really do here? Or staying put with the Cydia version (which currently has scraping issues and I don't think works with MySQL.)

[canadave]

So is dumbing down my files the only thing I can really do here? Or staying put with the Cydia version (which currently has scraping issues and I don't think works with MySQL.)

Did you try the suggestion I gave you in the PM?