Kodi Community Forum

Watching a film tonight and it sort of works with the occasional pause and catch up every fifth minute or so. (720p)

What I want to know is am alone?

Um getting worse as the film progresses, every minute or so now. network running at around 40MB/s

Great when it works!

Remember to include a) xbmc version b) which os (native atv or linux) and c) using crystalhd ? when asking questions about the appletv. Otherwise, no one but you has a clue to make a comparison.

All my 720p content plays fine on OS 3.0.2 SVN 28256 wireless N network
I just got a 7200 rpm USB drive that I will test with 1080p in the next days

AppleTV OS 3.0.2
XBMC svn 28256
Crystal HD Driver r26
Content is accessed from a Samba share (linux server) via a 100MBit wired network.

All of my files (1080p/720p) play perfectly. Haven't seen any stuttering issues since updating to Crystal HD r26 a month or so ago.

AppleTV OS 2.4
XBMC svn 28256
Crystal HD Driver r26
Content accessed from a Samba share on a lowly atom based based (msi wind) with a 2TB Usb drive via wireless N.

Mostly excellent performance on 720p but occasionally I'll get massive stuttering. Usually rebooting the wireless router (DLINK-DIR-655) and wireless bridge (DLINK-DAP-1522) fixes this. Sometimes if I just exit the movie and play an SD movie for a second or 2 and go back to the HD movie that fixes things as well.

Also, putting my wireless network on Ch. 11 (from auto) helped immensely as I live in NYC and can see dozens of networks from my block.

thnmnt Wrote:AppleTV OS 2.4
XBMC svn 28256
Crystal HD Driver r26
Content accessed from a Samba share on a lowly atom based based (msi wind) with a 2TB Usb drive via wireless N.

Mostly excellent performance on 720p but occasionally I'll get massive stuttering. Usually rebooting the wireless router (DLINK-DIR-655) and wireless bridge (DLINK-DAP-1522) fixes this. Sometimes if I just exit the movie and play an SD movie for a second or 2 and go back to the HD movie that fixes things as well.

Also, putting my wireless network on Ch. 11 (from auto) helped immensely as I live in NYC and can see dozens of networks from my block.

You might want to consider switching to 5ghz if all of your other devices support it. Those two do, and you'll see much less interference. There are 23 completely independent channels on the 5ghz band, where the 2.4ghz band has 3.

ATV OS 3.0.1
XBMC svn 28256 (Mar 1st)
Crystal HD Driver r26
Launcher 3.2.4
Content accessed from a Samba share (Atom based Windows server) of 1TB via 1Gb wired network. During the playback network bandwidth usage on the server side never exceeds 2% even for 1080p movies.

Able to play 720p and 1080p H.264 encoded content in different containers (MP4, MKV, M2TS, AVI) with AC3 DD and DTS multi-channel pass-through sound. Most of the content plays quite all right though some behavioral patterns are noticed:

1. Both 720 and 1080: at the movie start playback stutters for a few seconds as like some buffers are being loaded and then becomes stable. This can be correlated with higher CPU load in the on-screen debug log.

2. Both 720 and 1080: during the playback it stutters quite regularly every few minutes for a few seconds as like some buffers have been emptied and reloaded. 1080 movies experience heavier stattering. Usually correlated with the higher CPU load in the on-screen debug log.

3. Both 720 and 1080: sometimes playback chokes completely and to restore it I have to restart the movie. During the restart the pattern #1 usually happens regardless of starting from the beginning or from the last position.

4. Using the debug on-screen logging I can see that 720p movies play with about 40-55% of CPU load and stable FPS with Crystal HD (without Crystal HD CPU load is 75-99% and FPS drops). 1080 movies with Crystal HD register 70-90% CPU load with stable FPS (without Crystal HD it's 100% CPU and FPS below 10).

5. In Settings/Video/Playback/Rendering if Crystal HD is selected the stuttering effect is noticeably worse then when Auto detect is selected.

6. In average after every 24 hours XBMC stops seeing the Crystal HD device (library is loaded but the device can not open in the log) at the startup. In order to fix the ATV full reboot required.

That's all so far: only testing for a couple of weeks after installing the Crystal HD into ATV. If somebody are concerned with specific problems that can be reproduced please let me know and I'll try to reproduce and report.

I want to know whats different to my set up than anyone elses. I will try adding movies locally although do not consider this a long term solution.

I will include logs on the next movie. But in essence the above post sums up my situation perfectly.

What network have you got?

If anyone can build, try this simple patch, it ups the thread priority of the video player thread.

Index: xbmc/cores/dvdplayer/DVDPlayerVideo.cpp
===================================================================
--- xbmc/cores/dvdplayer/DVDPlayerVideo.cpp (revision 29201)
+++ xbmc/cores/dvdplayer/DVDPlayerVideo.cpp (working copy)
@@ -281,6 +281,25 @@
{
CLog::Log(LOGNOTICE, "running thread: video_thread");

+#ifdef __APPLE__
+ // we've now created the thread and started it
+ // now set the priority of the thread to the nominated priority and make the thread fixed
+ int32_t result;
+ thread_extended_policy_data_t theFixedPolicy;
+
+ // make thread fixed, set to TRUE for a non-fixed thread
+ theFixedPolicy.timeshare = FALSE;
+ result = thread_policy_set(pthread_mach_thread_np(GetCurrentThreadId()), THREAD_EXTENDED_POLICY,
+ (thread_policy_t)&theFixedPolicy, THREAD_EXTENDED_POLICY_COUNT);
+
+ int policy;
+ struct sched_param param;
+ result = pthread_getschedparam(GetCurrentThreadId(), &policy, &param );
+ // change from default SCHED_OTHER to SCHED_RR
+ policy = SCHED_RR;
+ result = pthread_setschedparam(GetCurrentThreadId(), policy, &param );
+#endif
+
DVDVideoPicture picture;
CDVDVideoPPFFmpeg mDeinterlace(g_advancedSettings.m_videoPPFFmpegType);
CPulldownCorrection pulldown;

Interceptor, gigiabit ethernet throughout. The only wirless device is my laptop which has nothing to do with XBMC.

Throughput speeds for copys average 40MB/s slowest I have seen is 20MB/s

The NAS is a QNAP TS410 which also averages 40MB/s

I really do not think its the network, my mini downstairs doing main AV duties runs flawlessy pulling on the same sources.

Which atv OS are you on?
I tried a proper 1080p [email protected] (5 reference frames @24 fps) and the first 5 minutes were fine with no stutters
the file is on a 7200 rpm USB drive
previously 720p from network had some buffeting issue not happening since 3.0.2
I will play the whole movie to tonight and let you know what happens
1080p level higher than 4.1 don't play as the amount of refences frames creates buffer under runs

dan1son Wrote:You might want to consider switching to 5ghz if all of your other devices support it. Those two do, and you'll see much less interference. There are 23 completely independent channels on the 5ghz band, where the 2.4ghz band has 3.

I would do this if possible. However, while the DAP-1522 supports the 5 ghz band, the DIR-655 does not.

I have tried an animation movie which is the hardest thing to digest encoded properly at 1080p [email protected]
There are loads of dropped frames around 300 for 10 minutes
They occur especially when there are large solid blocks being moved on the screen
The movie remains watchable but not ideal
In summary the files play but not to a satisfactory quality standard
As said earlier no issues to report with 720p in any constellation other than the usual memory leak reboot scenario