[derabbink]

After I upgraded to Kodi 15 I noticed that video playback is often buggy (this still happens with the latest stable version; 15.2)

What is the issue?
The best way to describe the buggy behavior is this:

• During playback, video playback slows down while audio playback keeps going at the normal rate. This takes no more than a second
  
• Then, both audio and video skip ahead approximately 30 seconds. After the skip, video and audio are in sync again.
  
• Pressing the left arrow to seek 30sec into the past allows me to continue watching where I was, and the video/audio stream will then play back the skipped section smoothly.
  

This issue can happen with any file format, with any resolution, and with any video plugin.

What have I tried to fix it?
First I tried searching this forum, the wiki, and other resources, but to no avail

I did try to modify the caching behavior, but that did not change anything about the playback.
I modified ~/Library/Application Support/Kodi/userdata/advancedsettings.xml to read the following:

Code:

advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <buffermode>1</buffermode>
    <cachemembuffersize>1073741824</cachemembuffersize>
    <readbufferfactor>10</readbufferfactor>
  </network>
  <videoextensions>
    <add>.html</add>
  </videoextensions>
</advancedsettings>

About my setup
My system is OS X 10.15.5 (Yosemite) on a 2009 Mac Mini (2GHz Core2Duo, 8GB DDR3 1067MHz RAM).
My Kodi version is 15.2 2015-10-19-02e7013

How can I fix it?
I'm convinced that this is not a performance issue for the following reasons:

• The machine has plenty of memory. Also, as you can see, my caching settings are very generous
  
• The issue happens even on 240p youtube videos.
  
• The machine has enough computing power, as in VLC I can watch 1080p video all day without any issues.
  
• On Kodi 14 I had no such issues
  

If not changing the hardware, what else can I do to get the smooth video playback back that I'm used to from Kodi?

[Memphiz]

What are your settings in settings-video-playback? Also Post a debug log (wiki)

[derabbink]

After enabling the debug log, the issue happened again while watching `smb://minibar.m/raid_storage/entertainment/video5.mp4` In order to prevent the logs from filling up with irrelevant stuff, I pressed Cmd+Q at that point. Here's the log: http://pastebin.com/ii4VAjML

These are my video playback settings (http://imgur.com/3PGLkbS):

Preferred audio language: Original stream's language
Prefer default audio streams: yes
Play next video automatically: no
---
Skip steps: -10min, -5min, -3min, -60sec, -30sec, -10sec, 10sec, 30sec, 60sec. 3min, 5min, 10min
Skip delay: 750ms
---
Adjust display refresh rate: off
-pause during refresh rate change: n/a
Sync playback to display: yes
Minimise black bars: off
Display 4:3 video as: Normal
---
Activate teletext: on
-Scale teletext to 4:3: on
---
Playback mode of stereoscopic 3D videos: Ask me
Disable stereoscopic 3D mode when playback ended: on

[Memphiz]

what happens if you disable sync video to display (i mean related to your problem)

[derabbink]

After turning that feature off, I haven't had the issue again.

So what does this option do, other than cause playback issues on my computer?

[Memphiz]

fixes playback issues on others

[derabbink]

Lol, that's hilarious

Thanks for your help. I think we can consider this resolved.