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I can play DVD and BD files back perfectly ok via the XBMC install on my box.

MP4? No.

- Plays great for about 3 seconds and then starts to jerk. If it were a stream I'd say not enough bandwidth, but its from file.

This is probably something really simple like not having the right codecs installed but I'd really like to watch some of the TWIT TV netcasts.

Any help appreciated.

Just let me know what dumps/logs you need to see. This is the last step to having a fully functioning XBMC box and has been bugging me for months.

Cheers
A

Just post the xbmc debug log (don't forget to turn on debug logging).

hmm, turned debug log on - log file has no trace of playing the mp4 file (or indeed any other file format) in it. I restarted xbmc with debug on and I get lots of system initialisation stuff, but nothing about playing the file.

I also did a test and dragged the file across network to another linux machine (fedora 14) and it plays fine on that so its not the file being bad.

Did you actually play the file with debug logging turned on?

oh yes. (of course I did) ;-)

Can you post the log anyway?

here you go

you'll find log in
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B5rNAXI...j&hl=en_GB

I'll restrict access in a day or two

Thanks for persevering

BTW, I had to restart XBMC to get logging working. If I just change log setting then nothing gets written out. feature or bug?

edit: pastebin link http://pastebin.com/Ut3cYk6c

The log shows there's a problem with the audio device.

bobo1on1 Wrote:The log shows there's a problem with the audio device.

Any idea as to what?

It's not responding fast enough when adding data.

@bobo1on1 I appreciate the help you are trying to give but unfortunately your responses are not leading to an answer. What's not responding fast enough? Have you any ideas on how to resolve the issue?

Heres some additional information

XBMC plays dvd, bluray, flacc, ogg and mp3 files just fine.
The .mp4 files play on my other linux systems (fedora 13, fedora 14 and ubuntu 10.04 (Ubuntu Studio)
I have installed ubuntu-restricted-extras to get all codecs on the xbmc box

If I play the file using mplayer (via remote shell whilst xbmc is onscreen), I get audio:

here's the output

mplayer -vo vdpau -ao alsa special0063_h264b_640x368_500.mp4
MPlayer SVN-r1.0~rc3+svn20090426-4.4.3 © 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing special0063_h264b_640x368_500.mp4.
libavformat file format detected.
[lavf] Video stream found, -vid 0
[lavf] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO: [avc1] 640x368 24bpp 29.970 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
vo: couldn't open the X11 display ()!
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
FAAD: compressed input bitrate missing, assuming 128kbit/s!
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/8.33% (ratio: 16000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio))
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: 18.6 (18.6) of 319.7 (05:19.7) 1.2%
Exiting... (Quit)

I don't get video (nor do I expect it cus xbmc has the X11 session)

So that sort of suggests that XBMC is not playing properly.

Any thoughts?

If I set up mplayer as an external player for .mp4 by creating a playercorefactory.xml file in .xbmc/userdata I get the file to play

<playercorefactory>
<players>
<player name="MPlayer External" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="t$
<filename>/usr/bin/mplayer</filename>
<args>"{1}"</args>
<hidexbmc>true</hidexbmc>
</player>
</players>
<rules action="prepend">
<rule filetypes="mp4" player="MPlayer External"/>
</rules>
</playercorefactory>



So clearly the software is on the machine - XBMC just doesn't play .mp4 files correctly

(for anyone else with similar problems take a look at http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW...a_playback )

Is the audio playback in XBMC still ok? The log suggests that you should get audio cutouts or no audio at all.

Quote:Is the audio playback in XBMC still ok? The log suggests that you should get audio cutouts or no audio at all.

Quote:XBMC plays dvd, bluray, flacc, ogg and mp3 files just fine.

I'm listening to mixed bag of flac, ogg and mp3 recordings right now.

It looks like the internal mplayer used by XBMC is screwed as clearly an external mplayer instance works ok, hence my temporary fix

XBMC does not use mplayer.