[Nathaniel]

Hi all!

First off, thanks for an amazing media center! Before I tried it, I seriously considered if I'd thrown away $700 for nothing.

Now to the issues. The first week or so everything worked perfectly. It played any video I threw at it with ease, and it's never crashed once. But, suddenly, it's started skipping and freezing at random times and places while watching videos. It only seems to affect Matroska embedded x264 videos, and not XViD or anything else.

The only thing I've changed is the skin, I'm now using xTV instead of the default. I haven't had the time to really try videos with the default skin, but is there even a chance that could be the cause?

The machine is a standard equipped Mac Mini 2.0Ghz C2D with 1GB RAM. I don't have many installed programs running, except for Quicksilver and some HDD-space-left applet in the Apple bar.

I'm holding out for 0.5, hoping it might fix things if it is indeed a problem with XBMC itself. But if it isn't, does anyone have any creative ideas or suggestions?

[bmfrosty]

Hi all!

First off, thanks for an amazing media center! Before I tried it, I seriously considered if I'd thrown away $700 for nothing.

Now to the issues. The first week or so everything worked perfectly. It played any video I threw at it with ease, and it's never crashed once. But, suddenly, it's started skipping and freezing at random times and places while watching videos. It only seems to affect Matroska embedded x264 videos, and not XViD or anything else.

The only thing I've changed is the skin, I'm now using xTV instead of the default. I haven't had the time to really try videos with the default skin, but is there even a chance that could be the cause?

The machine is a standard equipped Mac Mini 2.0Ghz C2D with 1GB RAM. I don't have many installed programs running, except for Quicksilver and some HDD-space-left applet in the Apple bar.

I'm holding out for 0.5, hoping it might fix things if it is indeed a problem with XBMC itself. But if it isn't, does anyone have any creative ideas or suggestions?

Press 'o' while playing back video to see what your CPU utilization is like. Also, what resolution are the videos that you're trying to watch?

[Nathaniel]

If you mean 'i', then my CPU rarely goes above 60% when watching 720p movies in x264 encoding. And, like I said, CPU isn't really the problem. The very same movies worked perfectly a week ago.

[bmfrosty]

Have you tried wiping XBMC's configuration in ~/Library/Application Data/XBMC, or at least renaming the directory so that XBMC can build it from scratch?

[Nathaniel]

Have you tried wiping XBMC's configuration in ~/Library/Application Data/XBMC, or at least renaming the directory so that XBMC can build it from scratch?

I haven't done that in the last few days, but I did just last week. I suppose I can try it again.

I'm going to switch back to the default skin as well, see if that makes a difference.

The skips seem to occur at about the same interval regardless if I watch an 8GB rip of a movie, or a 1GB TV episode, so whatever it is seems to be unrelated to CPU utilization.

[Nathaniel]

Ok, an update:

I've updated to 0.5, wiped my Application Data and tried both the default and xTV skin. Nothing worked. Highest CPU % I've witnessed yet is 77%.

The files I play are on an external firewire 400 drive, could that be an issue? If so, could tweaking the cache settings help? I tried upping the overall cache, but that didn't seem to have any effect.

This problem's not a show stopper, but it's quite annoying when I have to rewatch 30 seconds just because I missed one word of dialogue

[phunkysai]

I'm getting this on pretty much every movie and tv show I watch, including divx/xvid SD files. What I'm experiencing is "hiccups" - my movies and shows never freeze, but they periodically hiccup or do this weird slow motion thing for about 2 seconds, and then the vids play normally.

All my vids are on an external firewire drive, so i'm thinking this may be the issue (maybe the drive is getting too hot? there is no fan...), but I'm not sure how to test / fix.

It's only slightly annoying, but would be great to fix if anyone has suggestions...

[Nathaniel]

I'm getting this on pretty much every movie and tv show I watch, including divx/xvid SD files. What I'm experiencing is "hiccups" - my movies and shows never freeze, but they periodically hiccup or do this weird slow motion thing for about 2 seconds, and then the vids play normally.

All my vids are on an external firewire drive, so i'm thinking this may be the issue (maybe the drive is getting too hot? there is no fan...), but I'm not sure how to test / fix.

It's only slightly annoying, but would be great to fix if anyone has suggestions...

Yes, this is the exact same symptoms I'm getting. Hiccups or freezes a second at a time, before video and audio syncs back up and everything continues as normal.

I haven't installed any WD software, and there is a new firmware for MyBook Home that came out today that I'm going to try. I'll return with a status report.

[jeremymc7]

Yes, this is the exact same symptoms I'm getting. Hiccups or freezes a second at a time, before video and audio syncs back up and everything continues as normal.

I haven't installed any WD software, and there is a new firmware for MyBook Home that came out today that I'm going to try. I'll return with a status report.

Sounds similar to when I change audio tracks and the sound continues to play normal while the picture starts at double speed and continues to slow down until it syncs back with the audio in about 2-3 seconds.

[Nathaniel]

Ok, I've tried the new firmware for WD MyBook, but no improvements. Could anyone help me confirm whether this is a drive or an XBMC related issue?

[iordonez]

Ok, I've tried the new firmware for WD MyBook, but no improvements. Could anyone help me confirm whether this is a drive or an XBMC related issue?

Put the files on your local computer and see if they still skip (i'm betting they wont)

[phunkysai]

So far, the new beta (.5b2) appears to have fixed my stuttering/slow-down issues...

How about you?

[Nathaniel]

The latest beta didn't fix the problems, no, and I'll try playing a file locally to see if I still get the skipping tonight. I'll get back to you.

[phunkysai]

OK, I spoke too soon...I played some more files and it's still happening. Mine is even happening with standard def AVI files for movies as well as TV shows.

I copied some of the files to the mini and played straight off the mini, and they play just fine, which is pretty much what I expected anyway.

Now, is there anything I can do? I tried bumping up the XBMC cache to 512k, but that didn't work. Any other ideas?

[codeblue2k]

I wanted to resurrect this topic because i having this exact same issue that I cant seem to get it resolved. I have tried all different compilations of settings.