[mat____]

When I select a file to play, there's a second or two of pause (with spinner indicatior) before the file starts. All the media is stored on a NAS (QNAP 410) connected to a Mac via gigabit ethernet.

The library is configured to sourrce it's media using SMB paths, I'm wondering if I may get slightly better performance if I used a source of /Volumes/Video instead and mounted the network share there. And if so, would SMB or AFP be better?

Windows translation: Is better to map a network drive and point sources towards (for example) z:\video rather than using SMB paths.

I tried a test by making a new source and putting a file in it, and it did 'seem' faster but it's not a great test because it wasnt using the library.

Or, is there a better protocol than SMB? XBMC and the NAS support many options.

[jschoen]

I think most people have reported better performance using NFS to share files. From my understanding NFS does not have the overhead that SMB does, so it is somewhat quicker. I am assuming you are on a MAC, in which case you may want to try AFP also. Although if you do have Windows machines I am not sure how well it will work with them.

[jhsrennie]

In Windows I advise avoiding mapped drives. This is because Windows disconnects mapped drives when they haven't been used for a while. In theory Windows reconnects the drive as soon as an app tries to use it, but the reconnection typically takes a few seconds and in various circumstances it doesn't reconnect at all. using smb://etc paths avoids this as it makes a fresh SMB connection each time. In Windows a new SMB connection is generally pretty fast; under a second.

None of which applies to OSX of course, well unless OSX also disconnects SMB mappings after a period of non-use.

NFS seems to be better over high latency or low speed networks. Over a GHz LAN you wouldn't expect to see any difference between SMB and NFS. It might be worth a try though.

JR