Most of the time the seek performance is reasonable and it is not a major gripe. Just compared to seeking on Windows using Lav Filters it is not as smooth, especially when bitstreaming. Even on Windows the audio has to catch up but it is far quicker than on Vero 4k which sometimes can take up to 10 seconds. I am aware that a seeking of an unfinished download file will not work, I am only referring to fully complete video files.
On the same note the fast forward is not very smooth as well, not sure if this is the same problem, sometimes it hangs the image when fast forwarding and you can’t tell where it is up to.
Are there any plans to improve this or is it a limitation of the OS?
I don’t know that fast forward has ever been all that good in Kodi on any device or platform. Using skip steps should work well as long as your source can keep up. Ten seconds seems a lot longer than what I would expect. Have you run any speed tests to see what your connection between your file source and your Vero looks like? I’m assuming the issue you describe does not happen with a drive plugged directly in does it?
I would hate to call it an issue, as it does work. It is just slow at times. I generally only play 1080p content and up with bitstreaming.
I can paste in a media info of a series that I always try to skip the intro of. I end up fast forwarding because skipping always tends to miss the start of the series and if i skip too much back and forth then it can just freeze up. Fast forward works but sometimes it freezes up as well and then I can’t see where it is at so have to guess, but it usually plays fine after fast forwarding.
The slowest for the audio to catch up is the larger the video and audio files are it seems. Like the 4k films seek the slowest.
That is a fair point. I am comparing apples to oranges with my windows comparison. As on windows I was using SATA3 attached disks and on vero I am using gigabit NFS NAS attached disks. The NAS has SAS pci-e card so the disks are not the bottleneck in my opinion. As I can get the same speed copying to and front it as if it was in my Windows PC.
I once installed xmbc on my windows PC to test it, few years ago. Even then I noticed the seek performance was not as good as direct show with lav filters.
Also I can access the same NAS from windows and test it there and the seek performance is as it used to be with direct attached disks. My Custom NAS is pretty fast.
The speed of your NAS is only one piece of the puzzle. The speed to the Vero is going to be less, then there is going to be some level of overhead from the transport protocol and how that is attached. You also have a cache that can be quite large depending on the content your playing. When you seek that cache has to get dumped and rebuilt each time you seek. On top of that if you are using bitstream and not using a matching frame rate there can be additional delays to account for the offset.
With all that being said, if you talking about a literal ten seconds that seem quite excessive. If it was me I think I would start with iperf and if that looked good move to a dd media transfer test. If that looked good then start looking at lowering my cache size to a minimum level that works without buffering. Of course also making sure I was running optimal values on my video settings.
Surely though if I go on to my Windows 10 PC and access the NAS right now and compare the seek performance using lav filters of 4k + bitstreaming to the vero 4k seek performance that is a suitable like for like comparison. Which rules out bottlenecks related to my network or NAS performance?
I don’t have a Vero yet, but I have an OLD Win 10 PC with a Ivy Bridge i5 and a bunch of shucked WD hard drives (so nothing special) and a shared db. There is no file in my library played in Kodi via my PC (wifi), RPi 3, 3b+, or RPi4 (LE or Raspbian) (all hardwired) that takes more than a few ms to seek and start outputting sound via bitstream. If I am streaming from Plex it takes 1-2 seconds at most from there. Ten seconds does not seem normal to me.
connecting the vero 4k+ with a cable instead of wireless makes a huge difference for me, you could try that. If it solves it, then you know its a wifi issue.
I am on full gigabit, with my NAS on 200mbyte read.
The best way to explain the difference. On Windows I can right now play from the same NAS over the same network and it skips instantly the same videos. This is what I am comparing it to. I noticed the same thing when I tried out XBMC on windows many years ago, the skip was slow.
It is not a big enough deal for me not to use Vero. It would just be good if I could skip the intro to tv show for example without having issues with it freezing up.