[katzinator]

I recently updated my stable OpenELEC 5.0.8 build to the latest stable 6.0.3 (Kodi Isengard) release and found that I'm experiencing very poor playback with omxplayer. Movies which played back flawlessly before are now stuttering and freezing like crazy. I even tried MMAL acceleration, which had slightly different performance, but still ultimately unwatchable due to stuttering/freezing.

I even tried the latest stable LibreElec 7.0 - which contains Kodi 16.1, but had the same results.

The below log is a sample playback of a session where I attempt to watch an h264 movie on said LibreElec 7.0:

http://pastebin.com/STtjrwef

This is all with an overclocked Raspberry Pi 2. The video file in question is streamed from my NAS, but gets a good 9-10 MB/sec transfer rate, so I don't believe the network connection is the culprit.

If there is anything else I can provide that would be useful, please let me know and I'd be more than happy to help.

[popcornmix]

From the log it looks like a network issue.
Can you try playing the same file locally (e.g. copy to sdcard or usb stick connected to pi).

[katzinator]

From the log it looks like a network issue.
Can you try playing the same file locally (e.g. copy to sdcard or usb stick connected to pi).

Thank you for taking a look at this.

I tried copying a file to the local SD card and, sure enough, the problem doesn't exist when playing from SD. It definitely seems network-related at this point. The odd thing is that when I copied said movie, the transfer rate between the NAS and RPi averaged around 7MB/sec, which is more than fast enough to stream a 10GB film.

I also tried experimenting with upping the cache settings by creating an advancedsettings.xml:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <buffermode>0</buffermode>
    <cachemembuffersize>90000000</cachemembuffersize>
    <readbufferfactor>2</readbufferfactor>
  </network>
</advancedsettings>

...but it made absolutely no difference.

Sure enough, as soon as I roll back to Kodi 14.1 (OpenElec 5.0.8), playback is flawless again. One thing worth noting is that the pausing is significantly less frequent with lower bitrate movies, but still occurs. It definitely appears like some core network/caching functionality has changed since Kodi 14, causing this regression.

Is there anything else you might recommend I try? As always, I sincerely appreciate your assistance with this.

[Milhouse]

Try:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <buffermode>1</buffermode>
    <cachemembuffersize>90000000</cachemembuffersize>
    <readbufferfactor>10</readbufferfactor>
  </network>
</advancedsettings>

as your settings in post #3 would only have cached internet-based streams and not those from your NAS.

[katzinator]

Try:

Code:

<advancedsettings>
  <network>
    <buffermode>1</buffermode>
    <cachemembuffersize>90000000</cachemembuffersize>
    <readbufferfactor>10</readbufferfactor>
  </network>
</advancedsettings>

as your settings in post #3 would only have cached internet-based streams and not those from your NAS.

Good catch, I should have read the wiki more closely.

These settings indeed resolve the freezing and appears to restore playback to its previously levels of performance. In fact, I can simply set buffermode to "1" and omit the other two settings entirely to have flawless performance.

I'm afraid I don't know the history of this network caching functionality, but was the default value recently changed or something? I personally don't mind setting this value myself, but I think it may prove to be problematic for other users with RPis streaming via NAS (with what I consider to be an acceptable network connection speed).