[pieterv1]

Hello forummers! I only got my RBPI4 two weeks ago so I'm all very new to this. I am running a 4GB model with LibreELEC in Noobs connected to a little gigabit switch. My main goal is to watch movies from the public SMB share of my NAS, which is connected to the same switch so I can leave my laptop connected in my studio.

My NAS isn't the fastest out there, but I'm measuring read/write speeds around 80/40mb/s when I connect my Macbook to the same switch with an ethernet cable.

I thought that should be plenty for 15 to 20gig 2,5h movie files, but from time to time Kodi simply can't play these without buffering every 2 to 10 minutes. With VLC in Raspbian, the files play without any hiccups.  

I have already added the advancedsettings.xml file in the "Userdata" folder through SMB, with no succes. Here's how it looks:

xml:
<advancedsettings>

<network>

<buffermode> 1 </buffermode>



<readbufferfactor> 10 </readbufferfactor> <!-- Comment: Default is 4.0 -->



<!-- (comment) Set buffersize to 750mb // Default is 20971520 bytes or 20 MB -->

<cachemembuffersize> 786432000 </cachemembuffersize> 



</network>

</advancedsettings>

[Klojum]

IMHO, when you already need such buffer settings in your setup for a local NAS, then something is wrong elsewhere in your network connection. Or some internal SMB bug in Kodi is still active. Try NFS instead of SMB. You may have to enter the connection details manually in the sources.xml file, as NFS browsing can have its own quirk. NFS throughput is fine.

Alternatively, you could try creating system SMB connections (outside of Kodi), and see if that way is better.

<buffermode> 1 </buffermode>

It's best to avoid spaces when entering values between tags.

My NAS isn't the fastest out there, but I'm measuring read/write speeds around 80/40mb/s

You have to be specific: MB, Mb , mb ... can all mean different things. 80/40 Mb/s => 10/6 MB/s, which is not awfully fast compared to proper gigabit speeds. Which NAS is it? Does it have a proper gigabit connection? The wrong UTP cable may give you only a 100Mb/s connection... Double-check that, just in case.

I am running a 4GB model with LibreELEC in Noobs

If you use NOOBS only for LibreELEC, i recommend installing solely LibreELEC onto the SDcard.

[pieterv1]

Hi Klojum, yes the NAS speed is in megabytes using the blackmagic diskspeed test for a 5gb file. It is a Seagate 2Bay with 2x 2TB which I was able to pick up new for 175€ almost 3 years ago. 
Of course it does have a gigabit connection and I can confirm on the switch that I'm using a gigabit cable.

I'm using Noobs to switch between Lakka and Kodi.

It seems like the Seagate supports NFS so I'm going to give that a try! Thank you for your suggestion

[pieterv1]

No more issues through NFS! Are there any drawbacks on keeping my advanced settings file? Or can I just keep it since I do have the extra headroom with the 4GB ram?

[Klojum]

Are there any drawbacks on keeping my advanced settings file?

If things also work without it, I'd remove the buffer settings.
A good-working local network shouldn't need them.

[Milhouse]

Some issues have been found recently with file caching in Kodi 19 when using Samba shares (see PR17042) and it's not entirely likely at this time that the fixes will be backported to Kodi 18.x, in which case using NFS in place of Samba is the best solution with Kodi 18.x.

Currently there are no official or community test builds of LibreELEC with Kodi 19 for RPi4 (there will be such releases in future, once all the software pieces are in place etc.)