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AnonyOne · 2006-07-10, 12:29

hi.

in the last 2 builds (3/7 and 9/7) playback of any video file (divx, xvid, ogg) would stutter for the first 5-10 seconds and then continue to playback flawlessly.
this issue has appeared in all of our xboxs (9 of them) some of which are european (pal) and the others are american (ntsc).

please let me know if there is something i can post that would help isolate this issue.

thanks!
a.

AnonyOne · 2006-07-16, 00:31

... am I the only one experiencing this...?

I have now checked this issue on 8 different XBOXes with the last 2 builds and it is consistent : it will take about 5-10 seconds of stuttered video until normal playback will resume.
BTW - same thing happens when playback moves on to the next "CD" of the video.

Please advise...

A.

AnonyOne · 2006-07-17, 13:32

Well...

Switched over to the latest build (2006-07-16) and it still stutters like hell...

After some testing, it turns out that if I "empty" the Video DB the stuttering disappears completely. It only comes back after scanning about 50 movies into the DB. PLUS - the bigger the DB the longer the stutter...

To be on the safe side, I have tested this for consistency on 3 different machines.

PLEASE help...

kraqh3d · 2006-07-17, 15:34

Thanks for providing the info. Since it also occurs when the "next" file is played in a playlist (which is how the CD autoplay works in the background), and the length of the stutter seems dependant on the size of the database, it sounds to me like the code which looks up the info for the currently playing movie may be the cause.

If you can compile you're own version, you can verify this. (Or anyone else who wants to test this.) I'm still without a dev machine Sad

Here's what to do:

Open up GUIInfoManager.cpp. Look for CGUIInfoManager::SetCurrentMovie(). At the very top, just after the open curly braces, add "return;". You can leave everything else. Compile a new xbe.

This just causes this function to immediately abort as if no info existed. If the stutter goes away with this in place, then this is the culprit.

elupus · 2006-07-17, 18:33

i'm guessing something is locking a critical section during lookup, wich have to be used during rendering. and when database is getting large, bad things happen.

AnonyOne · 2006-07-17, 18:41

Hey Kraqh3d & Elupus,

First, thanks for the reply and suggestions.

Unfortunately, I do not have the skills nor the SW to compile my own build.
If it helps at all I can upload my DB for one of the developers who handles the DB.

Also - the behavious is persistent even when the video has only one part >>> therefore I am not sure if it has anything to do with the "next video" check.

10x

kraqh3d · 2006-07-17, 18:46

Yes because a lookup occurs whenever a video begins playback. When you hit play on a single video file, it does the lookup. And when you build a queue, and it moves to the next file, it does a lookup on the new file thats just begun playback.

AnonyOne · 2006-07-17, 23:44

Hmmmm... by the sound of it that is the exact problem!

Is there anything I can provide which would help isolating this problem?

snoxbox · 2006-07-18, 04:33

I and a few others also experienced this problem starting about 3 months ago. There was a thread related to it on the old forums. It seemed that once I added more than about 100 files to the video database this problem would occur. It's not just the stuttering thats a symptom, but during that stuttering period (5 - 10 secs) all controls are in-operable, so now I often get blasted by a loud video, and just have to wait 10 seconds to turn the volume down. It also makes using any view but files hang consistently (with 500+ movies, takes about 20 - 30 seconds to switch views).

kraqh3d · 2006-07-18, 14:57

The pause while changing views is directly proportional to the size of the database. Some optimiztions could be done in Movies to minimize it, but it will never entirely go away. The more pressing problem is the fact that the movie info lookup at the start of a movie is interfering with playback.

Rager · 2006-08-07, 10:56

Hi there

I have the same issue but it only happens on one of my xboxes. The other one which had a new HDD and has only had one version of XBMC works fine.

I have no idea why.

Thanks

Ryan

kraqh3d · 2006-08-07, 15:32

Its caused by the size of your database. The larger the database, the longer the query take to complete, the longer you get the stuttering.

AnonyOne · 2006-08-07, 18:10

Since it appears that this issue is not going to go away any time soon, may I re-suggest something I have brought up a couple of months ago:

If it would be possible to do IMDB scans that instead of feeding the info+thumb to the DB would actually create a MOVIE.TBN (thumb) and MOVIE.XML (movie info) for every file scanned.

This way, we can then place these files next to the movie files which means the thumb will show up (already works in current builds) and the MOVIE.XML will be read if we choose the movie info option.

This way would leave the DB rather thin with only the information on movies we actually viewed.

Let me put it differently :
XBMC's greatest advantage is it's ability to effectively manage and "use" the user's media library. Once this capability is severely handicaped as it is today with the slooooow DB, then XBMC is merely a rather expensive alternative to the various DVD/DivX players existing in the market.

As a really big fan of XBMC, and as someone with a reasonably large media library, I really do hope you take this matter into consideration as I am sure there are many users like myself who have stopped scanning their media into XBMC because the performance issues that it creats.

A.

elupus · 2006-08-07, 18:17

could somebody that has issues with this try something for me. in mplayer.conf comment out (or remove) the line softsleep=1. i intend to remove that in cvs as it serves little purpose and only causes higher cpu usage than needed when not playing extremly heavy videos

LaTropa64 · 2006-08-07, 21:15

elupus Wrote:could somebody that has issues with this try something for me. in mplayer.conf comment out (or remove) the line softsleep=1. i intend to remove that in cvs as it serves little purpose and only causes higher cpu usage than needed when not playing extremly heavy videos

I have 380 movies scanned in my database and there has been a 5 second delay at the beginning of movies where it will stutter and not give me any player controls. I took out softsleep=1 from system/players/mplayer/mplayer.conf and restarted the xbox with the same issue still present. Although it did seem like there was less of delay from when I click play on the movie thumbnail until the actual video came up... but only slightly less if there was. It still stuttered though and I didn't have any player controls for the first 5 seconds.