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As I understand it in http live streaming the server should offer various bitrates and the player and server should negotiate the best available stream based on bandwidth. Is XBMC's airplay written to do this?

it has nothing to do with airplay. Its the xbmc videoplayer. And yes it selects the stream based on the available bandwidth setting in xbmc settings. (if not limited it will select the stream with the highest bitrate available).

Hi, is this issue supposed to be resolved now? I'm using raspbmc with nightly Xbmc 13.0-Alpha4 git:20130503 and when I stream via AirPlay from the Nfl game pass app on my iPad, the quality of both video and audio is quite poor.

Maybe i'm missing some setting? AirPlay with hd-quality is working from Youtube

(2013-04-13, 13:42)Memphiz Wrote: [ -> ]it has nothing to do with airplay. Its the xbmc videoplayer. And yes it selects the stream based on the available bandwidth setting in xbmc settings. (if not limited it will select the stream with the highest bitrate available).

I still seem to be having this issue, at least on windows, maybe its a windows thing, tried this last week, seemed to get some hd streams, i am airplaying now and it insists on airplaying SD version of videos.I am on my wifi network.

No bandwidth restrictions in settings, and using the latest nightlies.

Finally came across a video that xbmc airplayed in 1080p, it was wonderful, worked great, most however seem to be airplaying in SD even when they are available in HD, I am not sure how I can help diagnose this. It seems to be hit or miss with it mostly electing to play SD version of videos, and the odd time it will airplay the hd video.

What is AirPlay-ing to XBMC? An app?

Youtube app. Just random videos in HD, i verified they have hd versions. I would say about 10% of the videos i tried actually played in 720 or 1080p, almost everything would airplay in SD, I confirmed with the info button in confluence what the resolution was and it looked noticeably worse. For instance i just picked a random new movie the title was pacific rim hd. It is a trailer in hd, it airplayed at SD. Confluence just reported "SD" and it looked poor.

Airplay does seem to work alot better in the nightlies as well, more stable which is great, in Frodo 2 it seemed to get lost or confused eventually after heavy airplay use, until xbmc crashed, and its working very stable now in the latest nightlies, but I am still getting mostly SD video clips.

The only other issue is occasionally yet I notice every 3-5 videos i would airplay, the scrubbing on my phone would get stuck in a loop, i would have to hit pause then play again for it to finally play. Like it had trouble syncing or was unaware if xbmc was ready. The dial and scrubbing area in the phone would just move back and forth and show 00:00 then 00:01 then go back to 00:00 until i hit pause, then play.

I love using airplay so I am just hoping it might be possible these last few hurdles could be worked out.

Unless I blame my phone its a 3gs, as im holding off an upgrade until they come out with something this fall, but I dont think that should matter. I am using windows, but again I have came across some clips where it would even airplay in 1080p and worked flawlessly. I just have not been able to get it consistently to airplay the best quality as I my htpc is hardwired.

Thanks for the reply by the way.

Also curious when I exit a video with airplay enabled if the video is not completely finished, the video just pauses instead of exiting back to home screen or previous screen...so if i watch a video and hit back on my phone the video just pauses and stays stuck on screen. It would be nice if it exited back to the home screen or previous screen instead of staying paused on a video that im no longer airplaying.

Wondering if Memphiz is around he could comment, or someone else could try airplay and confirm quite often videos are getting airplayed in Standard def as well, at least through IOS youtube app. Or if its something on my end, although i dont know what. I had a few consecutive videos airplay in 720p again yesterday, but then I tried some others I know are in 720p and 1080p and it still sent it in SD poor quality.

I tried this again today and from my iPad running iOS 6.1 using the official YouTube app, AirPlaying to a Pivos XIOS running linux and XBMC v12.0, and HD streamed just fine. However, what's odd is that the offical YouTube app seems to lack a quality selection button that I see in 3rd party YouTube apps and on the Mobile Safari version of YouTube. I'm not sure if that's a factor or not.

Then I thought, why not try the iPhone too. Using the official YouTube app I got HD (again, no option to choose quality). On my 3rd party YouTube app, I did have a quality button, but it always sent an SD quality video (and identified on XBMC as being SD). What's even weirder is that if I turn HD off, the quality gets even worse.

Normally, the YouTube app and my 3rd party app appear identical. The 3rd party app is ProTube from Cydia, that allows things like blocking ads, downloading videos, and overriding the "no mobile" flag on videos.

I'll do more testing, but my guess is that it could even be incidential about it happening on the official YouTube app or not, and it could just be that YouTube in general is being flakely about which URL is being sent over AirPlay. I'll also try to test this against a native ATV2, to see if that also has the same issue.

I'll let you guys know what I find out.

*reading in the background until something to grasp comes up*

(2013-07-07, 21:28)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]I tried this again today and from my iPad running iOS 6.1 using the official YouTube app, AirPlaying to a Pivos XIOS running linux and XBMC v12.0, and HD streamed just fine. However, what's odd is that the offical YouTube app seems to lack a quality selection button that I see in 3rd party YouTube apps and on the Mobile Safari version of YouTube. I'm not sure if that's a factor or not.

Then I thought, why not try the iPhone too. Using the official YouTube app I got HD (again, no option to choose quality). On my 3rd party YouTube app, I did have a quality button, but it always sent an SD quality video (and identified on XBMC as being SD). What's even weirder is that if I turn HD off, the quality gets even worse.

Normally, the YouTube app and my 3rd party app appear identical. The 3rd party app is ProTube from Cydia, that allows things like blocking ads, downloading videos, and overriding the "no mobile" flag on videos.

I'll do more testing, but my guess is that it could even be incidential about it happening on the official YouTube app or not, and it could just be that YouTube in general is being flakely about which URL is being sent over AirPlay. I'll also try to test this against a native ATV2, to see if that also has the same issue.

I'll let you guys know what I find out.

Thanks for the help, i dont have an apple tv and was going to try to get my hands on one without paying 100 dollars just for testing but have had no luck. So if you could try to test on an atv2 that would be a great help! Would be interesting if the same video's airplayed to apple tv 2 in hd that are airplaying to xbmc in SD.

Just so i am clear it did airplay HD with youtube app but on the ipad? I am looking at an ipad mini. Is it possibly an iphone thing? Unless I am reading it correctly hd airplay'd with the youtube app fine on the ipad, but was airplaying SD on the iphone?


Whats quite strange though is I do run into videos that will airplay all the way up to 1080p, and its wonderful, the nightly versions are actually quite fantastic for airplay smoothness and reliability its just this issue that almost everything airplays in SD.

If i was more technically savvy with apple airplay stuff i could offer more help. If you search in the youtube app 50 facts about the united states by mentalfloss that is one video that will airplay in 1080p, but many others wont.I tried these all in safari on my phone as well and seem to get the same results as with the official youtube app.

(2013-07-07, 22:05)Memphiz Wrote: [ -> ]*reading in the background until something to grasp comes up*

Aye aye. I was just letting Ghostdivision know that he wasn't forgotten :)

I'll have logs and more in a bit. Though, I get the feeling it's going to be something like YouTube doing something stupid. Ever since their official app, YouTube has been a pain in the ass in general. I really hate their iOS app.

(2013-07-07, 23:19)Ghostdivision Wrote: [ -> ]Just so i am clear it did airplay HD with youtube app but on the ipad? I am looking at an ipad mini. Is it possibly an iphone thing? Unless I am reading it correctly hd airplay'd with the youtube app fine on the ipad, but was airplaying SD on the iphone?

It would do HD on both, but I suspect the lack of the "quality" button might be a factor. A 3rd party YouTube app had issues when though, and it didn't before, so it could also be YouTube messing with stuff on their end. These are all guesses at this point. I'll see what I can find out with some better staged tests.

Are these streams http live streaming (HLS)? If so, and if the clients are working properly, the stream should adapt according to network conditions, maybe the client is getting the best that it thinks it can get.

Well there are 2 cases i know off.

1. The client sends an Airplay Url to a movie and XBMC plays it (in that case the quality selection has been done by the client and XBMC can't do anything about it)
2. The client sends and Airplay URL to a m3u8 playlist containing all the available bandwidths/resolutions. In that case XBMC will select the most suitable based on bandwidth limitation (if none is configured it should select the highest quality).
3. HLS? No clue what the XBMC player is able to do here.

So what would be interesting is the URL from the log file which gets sent to XBMC in the case where only SD is shown. If it is an m3u8 - then XBMCs player has a problem finding the right stream url. If it is not - then its a client side problem maybe.