Kodi Community Forum

Hello All,

I had been using boxee for a while on my Apple TV, after reading about it online. I thought it was pretty easy to use - didn't need all the social networking stuff, but it allowed me to play videos streaming off my mac with little fuss, and they looked great.

After reading a little more, and experiencing too many library issues, I decided to give xbmc a try, and I'm glad I did. The interface is much simpler - easier to use, and the library seems to be behaving / updating like it should. I also love the hud, and having it default to my TV shows folder upon launch. Now THIS is something my wife can use as well

I do have one issue. My videos, which are streaming from my Macbook over smb, all display a lot blockier than they did using boxee. That is, they look like they're more compressed. I know it must be something in xbmc, because they look fantastic on the mac, and just as smooth on boxee.

All of the video settings in xbmc are default, and the sources vary from handbrake mp4s (DVD rips), to downloaded avis in divx.

Please help, thanks for your time!

Welcome to the forums.

Please pastebin a log with debugging enabled.

Here's the log:

http://pastebin.com/m2a0ec2ba

This log consists of opening xbmc, selecting one of my videos from TV Shows, playing for about 4 minutes, then quitting.

All settings in xbmc are factory default for AppleTV. The only thing I did was set up an smb share.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

look at advancedsettings.xml and see if skiploopfilter is set to 8 or 48. 48 is too aggressive, change it to 8.

davilla Wrote:look at advancedsettings.xml and see if skiploopfilter is set to 8 or 48. 48 is too aggressive, change it to 8.

Setting it to 8 improved the quality to the level I was seeing in Boxee - thanks!

Question: what does this setting do, and why is it set to a bad level for AppleTV by default?

Also, would setting this lower affect the video in way that might make it skip a few frames here and there? While the video looked much beter - blockiness gone, it seemed like it was skipping a few here and there. I suppose that might have been because it was downloading it at the same time over the smb share. I've attached a new log from playing it again with the above setting at 8:

http://pastebin.com/m2cb7cb17

Thanks for your help!

webman2k Wrote:Setting it to 8 improved the quality to the level I was seeing in Boxee - thanks!

Question: what does this setting do, and why is it set to a bad level for AppleTV by default?

Also, would setting this lower affect the video in way that might make it skip a few frames here and there? While the video looked much beter - blockiness gone, it seemed like it was skipping a few here and there. I suppose that might have been because it was downloading it at the same time over the smb share. I've attached a new log from playing it again with the above setting at 8:

http://pastebin.com/m2cb7cb17

Thanks for your help!

The original Launcher set skiploopfilter to 48 but this was too aggressive for most videos, caused blockiness.

When debugging skipping, I always start with the video content on the local disk. If xbmc can handle it there but not from a smb share, you have a network issue, maybe xbmc caching, maybe atv network settings but something network related.

davilla Wrote:The original Launcher set skiploopfilter to 48 but this was too aggressive for most videos, caused blockiness.

When debugging skipping, I always start with the video content on the local disk. If xbmc can handle it there but not from a smb share, you have a network issue, maybe xbmc caching, maybe atv network settings but something network related.

thanks for the reply. I think the skipping I saw was due to buffering/streaming new content while it was playing. I watched a longer video last night and didn't notice it.

thanks so much for your help, and please continue to develop this for appletv - it adds tremendous value to the product.