[tomhappy]

For folks who have buffering problems with mkv & x264 files, you can try the following setup, it has removed my buffering problem.

Previous setup with buffering problem
ATV2 - Wifi or Wired
Media Sever - Wifi or Wired
Connection - SMB

New Setup
ATV2 - Wired
Media Sever - Wired
Connection - Ftp (FileZilla Free Ftp Server)

The problem was that for some reason, wifi or wired over SMB wasn't offering enough bandwidth, and hence XBMC would buffer. One movie in particular was needing 2.2Mbyte/sec, and that caused problems.

It could be SMB or Wifi, so you need to eliminate it one by one.

Things to note when debugging the issue.
* You can use Filezilla to monitor how much traffic xbmc is pulling from the file server.
* I would recommend that you do the wired + ftp setup first, see how everything works out, then maybe add wifi, if things still work, then remove ftp.
* Your mkv file streaming bandwidth is not constant, sometimes it's 800K sometimes, it's 2-3Mbyes/sec. Make sure your connection can handle it.

[tomhappy]

If it worked for you, please reply to the thread, if it didn't, do the same, so people can benefit from the info.

This is my first time posting, only did this because I spent days trying to figure out the issue, thought I might save some people some time

[blacklist]

I did a similar solution, but found a few more settings that seemed to improve things:

First, I used WebDAV and not FTP. Cleaner solution for me, and built right into windows7.
Instructions here: http://www.slickit.ca/2009/07/webdav-on-windows-7.html

Second, in advancedsettings.xml I use 2 setting related to samba and the network cache:

<network>
<cachemembuffersize>5242880</cachemembuffersize>
</network>

and

<samba>
<doscodepage></doscodepage>
<clienttimeout>10</clienttimeout>
<statfiles>false</statfiles>
</samba>

The samba isn't so important once you go to WebDAV, but with the current implementation you still have to use SMB for the fanart, etc. So, it can't hurt.

To improve UI speed...
<gui><algorithmdirtyregions>1</algorithmdirtyregions></gui>
<gui><nofliptimeout>100</nofliptimeout></gui>

Seems to work pretty well, although I'm interested in trying the new setting "3" that was just added, to see if it improves on the occasional hangs.

Then of course, you have you use:

<pathsubstitution>
<substitute>
<from>special://masterprofile/Thumbnails</from>
<to>smb://xbmc:[email protected]/DriveD/Thumbnails/</to>
</substitute>
</pathsubstitution>

If you want to use a central network location to keep all your thumbs, fanart, etc.

I think that's about the extent of my customizations, but all is well with my set up now. Wirelessly streaming 1080p content to two ATV2's on opposite ends of the house, while the centeral win7 machine does all the heavy lifting with sickbeard, sabnzbd, mysql and WebDAV.

There is some magic with mime types that has to be done with WebDAV which I posted elsewhere and will collect here when I find it.

[hafr]

I use wifi and experienced problems with smb, but after I switched to afp there's been no more problems.

[kedda]

i used webdav and ftp and my library wont scan in any directories with bdmv, video_ts but will scan in all files .mkv, .iso, .avi.

anyone else experience this ?

[g-off]

Have you got nice descriptive directory names or nfo files with them. Otherwise xbmc has no idea what they are.

PS - What has this to do with buffering problems?

[kedda]

yes i have nice descriptive names like Movie Name (Year). I have nfo files as well.

it has to do with buffering because, moving from smb to ftp solved my buffering problem and i was curious if anyone else had this issue.

[Jake Fantom]

I've been having buffering problems for months, mostly with MKV and ISO files. I thought it was the ATV2 and was contemplating some kind of switch to a hardwired system. I read the FAQ which suggested switching to AFP or FTP instead (I was using SMB). Bingo. I changed the file sharing protocol to AFP and all the problems went away. The switch was essentially painless. If you're on a Mac, using SMB, and having buffering problems with MKV and/or ISO files, I strongly recommend you try AFP. It worked like a charm.