Bad video performance on Pi 3

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

Hi there.

I’m having similar problems like the guy in this thread. But from the beginnig:

I’ve been using RaspBMC and now OSMC for quite some time. I had it installed on a Raspberry Pi 1 Model B and watched films and series from my homeserver which is running on FreeNAS. Data share is working via CIFS.

The database also lies on the server. I’m scraping from my mac, the Pi only does the playback.

On my Pi 1 everything (HD playback, surround sound) worked fine, but the menu was very slow. So i switched to a Pi3. Fresh Install, set up all the settings and the advancedsettings.xml, an on first sight everything seems fine.

Unfortunately, when i start watching a series or filme, every 20 seconds or so, the playback stops. After another 10 seconds or so, it resumes.

First i thought, it was some power problem, because the red LED was blinking. Aftwr changing to another cable, the power seems OK and a benachmark (4 threads “yes > dev/null”) didn’t bring the LED to blinking. Power supply is an Apply USB power supply with 12 W.

Then i found the option wirh the hardware acceleration in the settings (MMAL and OMXplayer) and tested all possible settings, without effect.

My TV gives me the possibility of some kind of technical overly from OSMC (see screenshot), showing information about Video and Audio codecs, the CPUs and, i think, the buffering (second to last lone, after the “B”). The Buffer seems to start around 60%, then goes down to zero, the playback stops until its back to 99% and so on. Could this be my problem?

Whats funny is that the Pi 1 doesn’t show this behavior on the same network cable. Network goes as gigabit LAN into a switch ba Cisco.

I hope you can help me.

Greets from Germany,
Max

image.jpeg2592×1936 1.31 MB

2

It would be good if we could find out more about the file you are having issues playing and to get a better understanding of the problem you are experiencing we need more information from you. Please see the mediainfo and logs section in How to submit a useful support request - General - OSMC .

3

I’m having problems with ALL my files. Mostly h.264 1080p.

For example:

Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 1
File size : 804 MiB
Duration : 23mn 0s
Overall bit rate : 4 886 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2008-12-18 15:41:56
Writing application : mkvmerge v2.4.1 (‘Use Me’) built on Dec 5 2008 18:30:05
Writing library : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 23mn 0s
Bit rate : 4 500 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.204
Stream size : 725 MiB (90%)
Title : King of Queens - Season 2 Episode 3
Writing library : x264 core 65 r1051M 549cc55
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:-3:-3 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy_rd=0.8:0.1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=28 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=12,8 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=6 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=4500 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:0.70
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

Audio
ID : 2
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Mode : 16
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 23mn 0s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 384 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Frame rate : 93.750 fps (512 spf)
Bit depth : 24 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 63.2 MiB (8%)
Title : English
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No

I will post the log from osmc in a few minutes

4

logs man, we need to see the logs

To get a better understanding of the problem you are experiencing we need more information from you. Please see How to submit a useful support request - General - OSMC for advice on how to help us.

5

As I wrote above: I will post the log from osmc in a few minutes

So how I understood the process you just need this link:

http://paste.osmc.io/gesarepote

Right?

6

Can you try putting a problematic video on a usb drive/stick and plug it directly in to the rpi3 and play it.

let us know what happens.

7

So from the stick its working perfectly well.

So the reason for my problem is the network? But with the Pi1 its working perfectly, only the performance in the menus is absolutely poor.

8

Can you try running some speed tests with iperf?

9

From the Pi via ssh? Or from my mac?

Edit: ok, just tried it from my mac and seems fairly complicated.

But: from my mac i get around 60MB/s downloadspeed from my server, so the network speed should not be the problem.

10

Run iperf in server mode on your Pi3 and run test from your FreeNAS

11

Iperf says:

Interval 0.0 - 10.0 sec
Transfer 112 MBytes
Bandwidth 94.2 Mbits/s

12

Do you mean Apple USB charger? I don’t think these are quite adequate

Sam

13

It’s one of the big ones which were shipped with the first ipads and are now only sold separately. And 12 W should be enough, should’nt they?

As I understood it, the Pi3 turns off its red light when the power drops. I had this issue in the beginning, bur by switching to another cable it seemed to be working fine. Red light is alwax on, even when pushing all 4 CPUs to 100% load.

Edit: alternatively, I can use my PS4, my Onkyo reciever or a MacBook Pro for powering it.

14

None of these, including the iPad charger are sufficient.

The iPad can drop well below <5V under load.

Read more at Frequently Asked Questions - Raspberry Pi - OSMC.

15

OK, I will try with another power supply tomorrow morning. Thanks so far at everyone.

16

Can I also use a power supply with a coaxial power connector and power the Pi over the GPIO-Ports? That would make it a lot easyer, because I’m living in a somewhat small city and don’t think I can get a good USB Power Supply here…

17

Couldn’t it be somehow related to my problems with copy/transfer speeds which I’m experiencing with my RPi3? I’m suspecting the USB resp. USB driver…

18

Please don’t thread jack! This is a video playback issue. Yours is reported as a file transfer issue.

19

Sorry, didn’t mean to thread jack. Just wondering, that he clearly has stream/data transfer issues as well…

20

So, no power supply here. Everything max. 2 A or 12V.

I will order the original Pi power supply, will take until wednesday or thursday. Will follow up