[daddymac]

Hi Guys

First of all I have to say I am inlove with XBMC. I used to use Media Centre but when I had a look at XBMC I had to use it.

I had an earlier issue with Video's buffering over a SMB share. I eliminated this issue by replacing my Wireless G card with a Wireless N card.

However two issues are still occuring which for the life of me I cannot seem to figure out. I have searched on this forum and tried all the things suggested by my fellow forum members but it does not seem to be working.

Here is the first issue.

Mp3's are stuttering at the start of the tracks. When I select a song it plays the first second of it and then repeats and repeats and then after a couple of seconds starts playing normally. Also sometimes when i select a song it continues to play the previous song for 1 second before the repeating loop occurs.

Now its not a network problem because video and HD video plays fine with no stuttering and no audio stuttering. I would have thought that if video is fine that Mp3s would be a breeze to play.

Now the reason why I believe it is not a network issue is because I can play each mp3 perfectly through the share with winamp or media player.

So unless there is something I am doing wrong, i believe there is an issue with XBMC.

Now I have tried all the skins, and also the advice like editing advancedsettings and gui settings setting buffers to 1024 etc.

But surely a basic thing like playing an mp3 over a share should work. If this is a bug then its a pretty big bug in my opinion.

I'm pretty sure im not the only person in the world who is using XBMC with SMB and is wanting to play a basic thing like an mp3 without stuttering.

I have searched the forums and various other sites without any success.

Help would be appreciated.

The second issue is that I have an MCE remote and for some reason when i connect it to one of my PC's the MCE remote skips twice all the time. Now im still testing this out as the remote works fine on the PC with the shared media stored on it. But a bit confused about this as well.

If I am able to resolve these two issues then it will be just totally awesome.

Thanks for your time.

[Sterni]

Hi,

i have the same issue with mp3 playback via smb share. Some mp3´s are fine and some are stuttering.

Playback of movies does work fine, so i think the network is not the problem too.

Tried several different versions of xbmc it is always the same.

i will try to get a debug log with a stuttering mp3 maybee there are
helpfull infos in it.

thanks

[jhsrennie]

The second issue is that I have an MCE remote and for some reason when i connect it to one of my PC's the MCE remote skips twice all the time. Now im still testing this out as the remote works fine on the PC with the shared media stored on it. But a bit confused about this as well.

Turn on debug logging then press whatever button you're using on the remote to get the double skip, then close XBMC and put the xbmc.log on pastebin.com and post the link here. The log will tell us what info XBMC is receiving from the remote.

Re playing mp3s, I use XBMC almost entirely for playing mp3s, and I play them across the network from my server. i've never noticed any problems with skipping. That doesn't help with your problem, but at least it shows that it's not a fundamental problem in XBMC. A debug log showing you playing a mp3 might help.

JR

[silkman]

Hi all

Found this thread and decided to reply as first post. Please be gentle

I am having the same issue with some mp3 's skipping. The same mp3s skip ALWAYS, so I don't know what to do. WMP 12 plays them fine. I'm using Win7 x64 and I'm attaching a logfile where the song playing was skipping.

Thanks,

Silkman

********log start*******
<deleted>

[jhsrennie]

@silkman: before the lynch mobs get started I've deleted your posts containing the log. Please don't post logs in the forum as they're too long and just annoy people. Please post the logs on http://pastebin.com/ and post the link here.

A couple of quite notes: you need to enable logging then close XBMC. Start XBMC and attempt to play a problem file. That ensures debug logging is enabled right from the XBMC start. Also from a quick look at your post(s) it looks as if you're playing a WMA file. These are only half-heartedly supported because it's a closed format that Microsoft have never documented. The Open Source community has managed to reverse engineer most of the WMA spec, but WMA playback will never be perfect.

JR

[silkman]

Hi Rennie

Thanks for the reply. You are correct it was a wma, however I tried again with the album with which I discovered the problem and it is a 160kb cbr mp3. Still the problem remains, it sounds more like a change in pitch. The difference is notable in wmp12, it plays ok.

As you suggested I added the log into http://pastebin.com/JzUvNPL5

Your ideas are welcome.

Thanks
Silkman

[jhsrennie]

Hmm, the log shows you playing lots of mp3s, so it isn't clear which if any are giving the problem. Having said that, the log doesn't show any errors or warnings.

If you have a track that always gives the problem can you upload it somewhere where I can grab a copy to test?

Incidentally I note that you're using an old development build. Have you tried the v10.1 release version of XBMC?

JR

[silkman]

You have pm

[jhsrennie]

Ok I've tested the problem mp3(s) and I think the problem is faulty encoding in the mp3. I attempted to recode them using LAME to decode the tracks to WAV and LAME reported errors like "mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 52 bits!" and the errors seem to roughly correspond with where you get the speedups.

I tried playing the tracks with DVDPlayer and this reported discontinuities every time the track speeded up.

I can't explain how WMP is able to play the tracks, though some Googling suggests the problem is a known one and may have been fixed in current versions of mp3lib. I don't know how old the mp3 code used by XBMC is. Maybe our code is pre the fix.

JR

[silkman]

Thanks for taking the time to look this up for me... I'm glad that you managed to get the files. This is one of many albums (100+) I have created myself ages ago with Xing Audiocatalyst I think...* It could be that the file(s) have been corrupted, as I said they are from 2003, by moving them from pc to pc...

Of course I don't have access to my cds anymore...

The strangest thing is that wmp plays them fine, I tried with vlc today and skipping is there together with quick pauses.... I would have understood it if they were vbr but cbr?

* Checked some old backup set and I still have Audiocatalyst with file date in properties 23/7/1999 :o . I guess the moral of the story is that mp3's don't last forever (codec changes? file corruption?). The same is true for cd-r's from 10 years ago...

[jhsrennie]

Given that WMP can play the files, you might find a convertor that could resample the files without the speedups.

JR