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ATV2 and XBMC bufferring
#46
elcaballo Wrote:XBMC currently (2/14/11 build) cannot play 720p h.264 or xvid files (over ~ 2-4 GB) on wired gigabit (or wireless g). Also, any 5.1 audio will make a very loud popping noise before starting the stream.

At this stage, the XBMC on the ATV2 is a std def only program. I'd recommend returning the ATV2 until the devs can optimize the program. It's still very early in the ATV2 development.

I'm running the latest 2/8 build from the Unofficial Builds thread and I can stream 720p h.264 videos over my 802.11g wifi connection (over Samba) with no problem. Additionally, I can stream 1080p h.264 video over a gigabit wired connection.

...not sure what the problem with your box is, but I wanted to post some feedback that it definitely can work.
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#47
elcaballo Wrote:At this stage, the XBMC on the ATV2 is a std def only program.

I watched 2 720p h264 movies and a 720p h264 TV show last night. All played flawlessly.

AppleTV2 running 4.2.1 tethered JB, xbmc 2/8 build, streaming movies from QNAP NAS SMB shares via Billion N+ at 2.4GHz.
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#48
I was so excited to get this going, a $100 xbmc box would have been perfect. I just learned how to ssh into the atv2 using Putty, which was much easier than cygwin. I installed the latest build 02/14/2011 and every movie I have stutters. All of my files are between 2-4 GB. I only have H.264 encoded video with AAC 5.1 sound residing on my NAS; I just can't go back to SD on a 100" screen.
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#49
Dan Gleibitz Wrote:I watched 2 720p h264 movies and a 720p h264 TV show last night. All played flawlessly.

AppleTV2 running 4.2.1 tethered JB, xbmc 2/8 build, streaming movies from QNAP NAS SMB shares via Billion N+ at 2.4GHz.

Should I be using SMB shares instead of upnp? is there an advantage? If so, this could be my problem.
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#50
I edited my post for clarification.

I use a widely available 8+ GB 720p DTS rip of Dark Knight as a reference file for XMBC. It makes it to about 2:30 before buffering. After about 4 minutes, XBMC crashes back to the Apple TV menu.

A 1080p 8+ GB NON-DTS rip of Ponyo will buffer every 30 seconds.

This is on a wired gigabit connection and both files are h.264.

Sorry, guys, I'm sure it will get there at some point. But right now it's just not viable for high-bitrate (8+ GB) movie files, which a lot of people have and which work fine with programs like PS3 Media Server, even over wireless G.
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#51
Roland Deschain Wrote:Should I be using SMB shares instead of upnp? is there an advantage? If so, this could be my problem.

Some people report problems with UPnP, some complain about SMB. Some don't have problems with either. UPnP doesn't work for me (crashes on scraping) but SMB does.

Have you tried turning off thumbnail generation (video options)? You're not trying to sync playback to display (video options)? Some people have had problems with one or other of these. Others find that their wifi router is the cause, often with Apple products. Read other peoples' problems/solutions. Experiment.

Good luck!
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#52
elcaballo Wrote:I edited my post for clarification.

I use a widely available 8+ GB 720p DTS rip of Dark Knight as a reference file for XBMC. It makes it to about 2:30 before buffering. After about 4 minutes, XBMC crashes back to the Apple TV menu.

A 1080p 8+ GB NON-DTS rip of Ponyo will buffer every 30 seconds.

This is on a wired gigabit connection and both files are h.264.

Sorry, guys, I'm sure it will get there at some point. But right now it's just not viable for high-bitrate (8+ GB) movie files, which a lot of people have and which work fine with programs like PS3 Media Server, even over wireless G.

Hellboy.2004.1080p.BluRay.x264, in a multiple rar set in fact. Some slight framedrops, no buffering at all. Running 10.0-5+ wired.
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#53
Get Him to the Greek 720p h.264 unzipped ~6.5 GB: buffers every 45 seconds.

I've been going through all of my videos and it seems like the cutoff size is about 6 GB, although I have had a couple random buffers with ~4 GB files. These are all 720p h.264 files that play perfectly in PS3 Media Server.

This is with a gigabit hub, cat6 cables, 2 ghz single core/ 2 GB RAM fileserver with about 5% CPU utilization running Windows 7 Professional 64. The sources are SMB.

EDIT: PS3 Media Server seems to be feeding The Dark Knight to ATV2/XBMC at lossless quality just fine. XBMC just can't do it on its own.
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#54
I've been able to play 4GB 720p h.264 files through SMB over a wired connection just fine. And I am using the latest official build.
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#55
elcaballo Wrote:This is with a gigabit hub, cat6 cables, 2 ghz single core/ 2 GB RAM fileserver with about 5% CPU utilization running Windows 7 Professional 64. The sources are SMB.
If you really are using a gigabit hub, that could be part of your problem. A hub shares the total bandwidth among all connected devices which means your network would start to slow down with each device you add. However, I highly doubt you're actually running a hub -- it's probably a switch.

That being said, there's got to be something else that's causing your issue. As a number of other people here have reported, XBMC on the ATV(2) is definitely capable of streaming HD content.
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#56
The buffering is driving me insane. Some movies buffer some don't. This is over wired. Anything thats not sent tot he hardware decoder simply buffers like mental.
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#57
Same here i can't watch any HD trailer for any movie, they buffer, only SD trailers work fine, if using Yahoo or HD-trailers.net...

Regards,
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#58
I'm even streaming 1080p x264 contents via WiFi (n-draft) into my sleeping room without any problems. Server is a underpowered Synology DS209j (SMB Share). I just receive buffering issues when the Syno is doing something else (like FTP copy or other heavy-cpu stuff), it only has a 266mhz ppc cpu w 64mb of ram. But if the Syno only is serving the stream, everything is wonderful.
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#59
joshua.lyon Wrote:If you really are using a gigabit hub, that could be part of your problem. A hub shares the total bandwidth among all connected devices which means your network would start to slow down with each device you add. However, I highly doubt you're actually running a hub -- it's probably a switch.

That being said, there's got to be something else that's causing your issue. As a number of other people here have reported, XBMC on the ATV(2) is definitely capable of streaming HD content.

You're right. It's a D-Link DGS-2205 switch, had a five star rating on Newegg so I don't think that is the problem. The fileserver has been rock solid in every other way and all it is doing is serving files to the ATV2. Like I said, there is only 0-5% CPU utilization.

And what I'm saying is not that the ATV2 can't do HD at all. It streams my 2< GB HD TV files with no problems. I'm saying that with any high-bitrate HD file (typically a movie) larger than 4.5 GB, it buffers like crazy, which makes it useless for movies. I bought the ATV2 so that I didn't have to deal with PS3 Media Server but XBMC just can't keep up with larger files.

And all this is with 2/14/11 and a greenpoison JB.

Again, I'm sure the devs will get there eventually. I'll just have to check back in a few months once the program has been optimized.
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#60
@elcaballo

I have a couple of things to add :
1. On the initial version of XBMC from January (the first release ever), I had no problems playing files up to 8GB on over wired windows SMB share (but ATV2 was on wireless N)
2. On the new version of XBMC, per the Feb 14th/15th release, and using the greenpois0n JB, I have the same issues as you do - buffereing for the same exact files on wired SMB. I tried installing a UPnP server(twesity / ps3 media server) and the buffering is awful! Exact same setup, but significant buffering on the same files that playerd relatively smooth before.

I am going to try a complete wired only test later in the evening to see if that makes it better and will post my observations then. Just so we are on the same page, streaming over wireless ATV2 is totally useless.. I dont believe it is XBMC's fault.. it is just the filesize / bitrate that is not sustainable on wireless N.

Hope this adds to the perspective / discussion.
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