2019-07-15, 23:56
Since I upgraded my Mac Mini from 2012 to Mojave I've been having odd seemingly random freezes in video from KODI android devices (Nvidia Shield and FireTV 4K) when accessing video from the server via SMB. It happened with 17.6 Krypton on the Shield (didn't try movies on the FireTV; I usually only watch TV Shows) and I updated to 18.3 Leia on both the Shield and FireTV set to only accept SMB3. I was watching The Big Sleep 1945 Unreleased version (made with Handbrake and stored as M4V) when it just froze 12 minutes in (obviously no complex soundtracks there or anything).
The first few times this happened, it turned out the Mac was trying to put the hard drives I was using to sleep (Power Control "Put Hard Drives to sleep when possible") which never caused any issues in El Capitan that I was using before. Those interruptions were happening like clockwork every 20 minutes so I knew there was something odd about it. I didn't discover this immediately, however. I first tried NFS instead next. That caused the whole computer to go to sleep eventually (seems "Caffeine" app I use to keep the Mac from sleeping if I'm using NFS as the sleep tokens don't work for NFS like SMB) no longer does anything in Mojave (so I changed it to "Amphetamine" that does the same thing and more). After that, it seemed random. I watched an entire Harry Potter movie with no issues and then the next one froze like an hour and a half into it (it usually freezes for several seconds and then plays "catchup"). I think it did it with NFS and SMB as well.
I then upgraded KODI to 18.3 on all devices and set up the system so if I boot into Boot Camp, Windows 10 can serve SMB3 (KODI can't tell the difference). I had to get "MacDrive" to read my HFS+ media drives, though . I also got an ear infection four days ago and my hearing is muffled in one ear so I've been avoiding watching movies. But I figured The Big Sleep is in mono so what the heck. I know it played fine before in the past. I couldn't find anything odd on the server when I looked. I saw one media drive was sleeping, but it was the one not being used.
Next, I plan to try turning off hardware acceleration on the FireTV and see if that helps any, although I don't know why it would when it played fine before. I have no idea what else might cause an issue other than something in the OS upgrade. I did upgrade the main hard drive from a dual 5400 RPM RAID 0 configuration to a 2TB SSD instead, but the movies aren't stored on that drive, but external USB 3 drives. I'll need to try watching movies from Windows 10 and see if there's any issues from there using the same hardware. I haven't had a TV Show freeze, yet, though (just watched some Buck Rogers Blu-Ray HD episodes and they're almost 50 minutes each).
If anyone else using a Mac as a server has had issues with the OS newer than El Capitan, I'd be interested to hear about it since isolating the cause seems difficult with so many variables in play across multiple devices, KODI versions and even SMB1 versus SMB3. I'm not having any other issues with Mojave at this point, so I hate to go back to El Capitan. I have read some have had some SMB issues with it, though but they sounded different (problems connecting, etc.) than this, but were apparently introduced in this version I have now so perhaps the next update will fix whatever it is for all I know. I'll have to see if there's any issues in Windows 10, but since this seems sporadic (might not even happen but every third movie or so) it could take some time.
The first few times this happened, it turned out the Mac was trying to put the hard drives I was using to sleep (Power Control "Put Hard Drives to sleep when possible") which never caused any issues in El Capitan that I was using before. Those interruptions were happening like clockwork every 20 minutes so I knew there was something odd about it. I didn't discover this immediately, however. I first tried NFS instead next. That caused the whole computer to go to sleep eventually (seems "Caffeine" app I use to keep the Mac from sleeping if I'm using NFS as the sleep tokens don't work for NFS like SMB) no longer does anything in Mojave (so I changed it to "Amphetamine" that does the same thing and more). After that, it seemed random. I watched an entire Harry Potter movie with no issues and then the next one froze like an hour and a half into it (it usually freezes for several seconds and then plays "catchup"). I think it did it with NFS and SMB as well.
I then upgraded KODI to 18.3 on all devices and set up the system so if I boot into Boot Camp, Windows 10 can serve SMB3 (KODI can't tell the difference). I had to get "MacDrive" to read my HFS+ media drives, though . I also got an ear infection four days ago and my hearing is muffled in one ear so I've been avoiding watching movies. But I figured The Big Sleep is in mono so what the heck. I know it played fine before in the past. I couldn't find anything odd on the server when I looked. I saw one media drive was sleeping, but it was the one not being used.
Next, I plan to try turning off hardware acceleration on the FireTV and see if that helps any, although I don't know why it would when it played fine before. I have no idea what else might cause an issue other than something in the OS upgrade. I did upgrade the main hard drive from a dual 5400 RPM RAID 0 configuration to a 2TB SSD instead, but the movies aren't stored on that drive, but external USB 3 drives. I'll need to try watching movies from Windows 10 and see if there's any issues from there using the same hardware. I haven't had a TV Show freeze, yet, though (just watched some Buck Rogers Blu-Ray HD episodes and they're almost 50 minutes each).
If anyone else using a Mac as a server has had issues with the OS newer than El Capitan, I'd be interested to hear about it since isolating the cause seems difficult with so many variables in play across multiple devices, KODI versions and even SMB1 versus SMB3. I'm not having any other issues with Mojave at this point, so I hate to go back to El Capitan. I have read some have had some SMB issues with it, though but they sounded different (problems connecting, etc.) than this, but were apparently introduced in this version I have now so perhaps the next update will fix whatever it is for all I know. I'll have to see if there's any issues in Windows 10, but since this seems sporadic (might not even happen but every third movie or so) it could take some time.
