I'm using Frodo 12.2 with Aeon Nox 4.0.9 on Windows 7 Ultimate and streaming videos over my wired gigabit network from a NAS with plenty of power.
When I select a video (TV episode or Movie, SD or HD & any format) and hit enter, it takes takes up to 15 seconds before that video begins to play. Sometimes, the skin will show the spinning progress circle with a black screen, and sometimes it looks as if I did nothing remaining on the skin but becoming unresponsive until the video starts. When I switch to the Confluence or Neon skins, the videos start without any delay. It makes sense to me that this is a skin issue if it doesn't present itself in other skins. Does this sound correct? Any ideas on where to go with this?
This skin is really a piece of art and I love the customization options. It's nice and snappy and absolutely beautiful. Thanks so much for the hard work.
Does your NAS spin down it's drives? If so perhaps this is just the time it takes for them to spin back up and find/start the files. I am running UnRaid with 12 HDDs so usually most of the drives are spun down and it takes a bit before they start to play. I just figured this was the trade-off for energy savings and hard drive wear & tear, while having a vast selection of media.
It goes with the territory as you increase the size of your array...I have noticed the time is longer as more HDD's added and movies/tv shows...
yep the spinning up and down of discs is a pita
I get this sometime when select a video from "Skin Widget" and try play it, but If I play from the video list it plays straight away.
I used to have my NAS setup to spin down the discs, but XBMC would always tell me (on the first selection) that the file I selected is unavailable, so I turned that feature off. Also, if I switch back to the Confluence skin, the initial pause doesn't happen... Ever. I even tried the Neon skin with great success. Unfortunately, I really like this skin and I've trained my family with it, so I'd like to work the bugs out.
Any other ides?
Enable debug logging, start a video and then examine the
debug log (wiki) to see if there's any indication as to what may be causing the delay. Switch over to the Confluence skin and do the same thing. Compare the same events from the two logs (starting the same video) to see if there's anything different going on that may account for the delay when using one skin, but not for the other skin.
I'll do that tonight. Thanks.
OK... I was wrong. I need to test more thoroughly before I post next time. Let me clarify...
The problem is actually related to whether or not my HTPC is resuming from sleep. REGARDLESS of skin choice, when the HTPC resumes from sleep, it takes a long time to play that first video after I select it. If the HTPC was just rebooted, and XBMC was just started, the video plays immediately. I've got debug logs from both cases, but I honestly can't make sense of them. Should I bother to post them since this is technically not an AEON NOX problem anymore, or should I create a new XBMC Windows thread?
Thanks for the help.
No, don't repost. I'll move this thread.
Seems like the delay may be due to your HTPC attempting to reconnect to your network (after resuming) before it can access the file on the NAS. Are you using WiFi or Ethernet?
That's what I was thinking artrafael... Everything in my system is wired with gigabit Ethernet. I'm quite certain this problem was not around when I used Eden. Any ideas on where to go from here?
I solved the issue...
It's definitely a Windows issue. When Windows 7 wakes up from sleep, it will not automatically reconnect to the network until you open Explorer or a program prompts it for access to the network. As it turns out, XBMC's "update video library" command does a great job of this. Since I couldn't figure out how to make XBMC update it's library automatically when resuming from sleep, I wrote a simple little AutoHotKey script. It monitors the power state and when it recognizes that the PC has resumed from sleep, it runs the command to update the library. It takes a little while longer for it to run than normal since it has to wait for the network to connect, but when it's done, the videos all start smoothly. Technically, this is not really solving the issue, but rather working around the issue... but it worked for me!
Thanks everyone for the help.