[rcrh]

xbmc v 11.0
xbmcbuntu
Revo 1600

This whole problem started while I was rebuilding my NAS but, the errors in the log don't seem to have anything to do with networking.

Anyway, here's what's happening. Any mkv with ac3 audio buffers almost continuously. Every two three minutes the video pauses to buffer. If I move the same file to a local drive or even to my win7 desktop with a CIFS share it plays fine.

The new server is a NAS4Free 9.x server and I'm accessing the files through a CIFS share.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.

Here's an extract from the log:

15:56:06 T:12376432 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: Opening: smb://HDA/TV/New/xxxxxxxx/xxxxxxx.xxxx.S04E11.mkv
15:56:06 T:12376432 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(player):ut MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
15:56:06 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Creating InputStream
15:56:06 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Creating Demuxer
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Opening video stream: 0 source: 256
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Creating video codec with codec id: 28
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: CDVDVideoCodecFFmpeg::Open() Creating VDPAU(1280x720, 28)
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: vdp_device = 0x00000001 vdp_st = 0x00000000
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: VDPAU Decoder capabilities:
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: name level macbs width height
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: ------------------------------------
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: MPEG1 0 8192 2048 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: MPEG2_SIMPLE 3 8192 2048 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: MPEG2_MAIN 3 8192 2048 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: H264_MAIN 41 8190 2032 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: H264_HIGH 41 8190 2032 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: VC1_SIMPLE 1 8190 2048 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: VC1_MAIN 2 8190 2048 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: VC1_ADVANCED 4 8190 2048 2048
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: ------------------------------------
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Mixer feature: VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_NOISE_REDUCTION
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Mixer feature: VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_SHARPNESS
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Mixer feature: VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Mixer feature: VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_DEINTERLACE_TEMPORAL_SPATIAL
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Mixer feature: VDP_VIDEO_MIXER_FEATURE_INVERSE_TELECINE
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: CDVDVideoCodecFFmpeg::Open() Using codec: H.264 / AVC / MPEG-4 AVC / MPEG-4 part 10 (VDPAU acceleration)
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Creating video thread
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Opening audio stream: 1 source: 256
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Finding audio codec for: 86019
15:56:10 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Creating audio thread
15:56:10 T:3068128112 NOTICE: running thread: CDVDPlayerAudio:rocess()
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: running thread: video_thread
15:56:10 T:3068128112 NOTICE: Creating audio device with codec id: 86019, channels: 2, sample rate: 48000, pass-through
15:56:10 T:3068128112 ERROR: PulseAudio: Failed to connect context
15:56:10 T:3068128112 ERROR: PulseAudio: Failed to create context
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: (VDPAU) screenWidth:0 vidWidth:1280 surfaceWidth:1280
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: (VDPAU) screenHeight:0 vidHeight:720 surfaceHeight:720
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: Creating 1280x720 pixmap
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: (VDPAU) Total Output Surfaces Available: 4 of a max (tmp: 4 const: 4)
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: (VDPAU) Creating the video mixer
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: fps: 23.976024, pwidth: 1280, pheight: 720, dwidth: 1280, dheight: 720
15:56:10 T:2928671600 NOTICE: Display resolution DESKTOP : 1920x1080 @ 60.00 - Full Screen (12)
15:56:10 T:12376432 NOTICE: Using GL_TEXTURE_2D
15:56:10 T:12376432 NOTICE: GL: Using VDPAU render method
15:56:10 T:12376432 NOTICE: GL: NPOT texture support detected
15:56:10 T:12376432 NOTICE: GL: Using GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object
15:56:14 T:2928671600 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
15:56:14 T:3068128112 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
15:56:14 T:3068128112 ERROR: GetDelay - snd_pcm_delay, alsa error: -32 - Broken pipe
15:56:35 T:2928671600 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
15:56:35 T:3068128112 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
15:56:35 T:3068128112 ERROR: GetDelay - snd_pcm_delay, alsa error: -32 - Broken pipe
15:57:18 T:2928671600 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(video)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
15:57:18 T:3068128112 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(audio)::Get - asked for new data packet, with nothing available
15:57:18 T:3068128112 ERROR: GetDelay - snd_pcm_delay, alsa error: -32 - Broken pipe
15:57:52 T:12376432 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::CloseFile()
15:57:53 T:12376432 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit()
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: closing audio stream
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Closing audio stream
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Waiting for audio thread to exit
15:57:53 T:3068128112 NOTICE: thread end: CDVDPlayerAudio::OnExit()
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Closing audio device
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Deleting audio codec
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: closing video stream
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: Closing video stream
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: waiting for video thread to exit
15:57:53 T:2928671600 NOTICE: thread end: video_thread
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: deleting video codec
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit() deleting demuxer
15:57:53 T:3076520816 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit() deleting input stream
15:57:53 T:12376432 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: finished waiting
15:57:53 T:12376432 NOTICE: (VDPAU) Close
15:57:54 T:12376432 NOTICE: (VDPAU) FiniVDPAUOutput
15:57:54 T:12376432 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::CloseFile()
15:57:54 T:12376432 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(player):ut MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
15:57:54 T:12376432 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
15:57:54 T:12376432 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: finished waiting

Thanks in advance.

[Plaguester]

You appear to be using a samba source within XBMC rather than mounting the share as CIFS on the machine itself. For best performance, the shared folder should be mounted and the XBMC source should just be a local file source pointed at the mounted share. See this post for instructions.

I was doing some tests over the last week and noticed that FTP outperforms CIFS (at least on the command line) by a large margin. I also noticed that since I switched to XBMCbuntu 11 from Ubuntu 10.10, my CIFS performance has dropped from near 40MB/s to 28MB/s. Definitely switching to FTP as it gets above 50MB/s.

To test the transfer speed after you get the mount set up:

Code:

$ dd if=/mountPoint/movies/some-large-video.mkv bs=8M of=/dev/null

It'll spit out the stats at the end.

[rcrh]

The trouble with this is that my server isn't a linux box. It's NAS4Free which is based on Freebsd. I think the concept is the same but I'm not sure about the application. I'm also hesitant to do this since I can play the same files off of the same share to my Roku (running Plex), my aTV (running XBMC), and my WDTV. I only have this problem with XBMC running under XBMCbuntu.

Any other thoughts out there?

[Plaguester]

It doesn't matter what the server is. As long as it's a samba share, you can mount the shared folder on the XBMC client machine with the guide in the link I posted (on a Windows machine, this is equivalent to "Map Network Drive"). NAS4Free also has FTP support should you want to use that instead. Once you decide, open up ~/.xbmc/userdata/sources.xml and replace "smb://user:password@serverIP/folder" with "ftp://user:password@serverIP/folder" for FTP or "/mountPoint/folder" for a local mount. Then you won't even have to rescrape your videos.

[rcrh]

Plaguester,

So I finally got around to following up on this and I can't believe the difference this made. Thank you so much.

I'm back to using SMB/CIFS mounts but I don't care cause I haven't seen a rebuffering message since I made the change.

Now I just need to figure out how to reproduce this trick on my ATV2 so I can clean up the occasional buffering there too.