[active8]

Hello,

I have the latest version of XBMC Installed via the FireCore Maintenance menu on my Apple TV 2, however I am experiencing buffering issues playing 720p MKV files - mostly 1.6gb in size (tv shows).

These tend to buffer every 2-3 minutes and buffer for approx 30-40 seconds.

These files are playing perfectly on the FireCore Media Player - no buffering apart from the pre-buffer at the beginning of each file/episode.

FireCore setup is using AFP from my Synology NAS however XBMC has had problems from the NAS using both AFP and NFS protocols.

Is there anyone that can help?

Thanks

[ironmanco]

I had similar buffering issues and finally gave up trying to figure out why. I wiped the ATV clean, removed XMBC completely and re-loaded and jailbroke the ATV2. Guess what...no more buffering issues.

This is an ATV that has probably upgraded 40 or 50 times from earlier loads (including dailys).

[Marck]

Could you post a mediainfo log.

There is a chance that it's a h.263 compressed file, which is not hardware supported by the ATV2. I experienced a similar thing, and converted h.263 to h.264 and the problem was solved.

[active8]

Is this common with most HD tv rips?

[Marck]

I think most mkv's are h.264.

But this h.263 file I have, also has a high bitrate. And for the ATV, it was just to much, since h.263 is not supported by the GPU.

http://support.apple.com/kb/sp598

[active8]

I'm just concerned why it works with FireCore's media player and not in xbmc

[Ned Scott]

FireCore's player is designed from the ground up to specifically work on the ATV2. It also has less overhead GUI wise. XBMC is more heavy GUI wise, and is designed to work on multiple platforms.

If you're using stable XBMC v11 then you're also using an older version of the ffmpeg "core", while FireCore is using a newer version. XBMC updated the ffmpeg "core" for v12, which has already shown very nice improvement on some video types, but isn't totally stable yet (You can try it with nightly (wiki) or monthly builds (wiki) if you'd like. Just be sure to back up your settings first).

[active8]

How do you download or update these to appletv?

[Ned Scott]

See iOS FAQ (wiki)