Stuttering playback, buffering

Hey,
I’m trying to play a HD movie, but already after half a minute I get the “buffering” message, and the video is stuttering badly.
It’s a blue ray rip, 13gb mkv. OSMC says h264 1080p dtshd-hra surround.
My fritzbox 7490 says, the Vero has max possible 74 MBit which the box delivers.
I did the buffer “upgrade” via advanced settings…
Well, I’m a bit disappointed here.
Apart from that - what might be the problem, and how to solve it?
Cheers

If you can SSH to the box, please run the following

grab-logs -A 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mediainfo
mediainfo <name of video file>

The grab-logs -A command should return a URL, which we need to know. Please also copy/paste the full output from the mediainfo command.

Do I need to enable debugging first?
I’ll see if I can do this, might have to wait until tomorrow

How are you streaming? SMB or NFS? Are you connected via WiFi or Wired Ethernet?

What changes did you make?

Smb via fstab.
The file is located on my Synology NAS connected to the router via GBit LAN.
The Vero is connected via 2.4 GHz WiFi.

I think just upping the video buffer - need to look up the details.

I’d check with a wired connection first.

Increasing the buffer won’t resolve flakey WiFi connectivity.

It would be good to know what changes you made to buffering however

Sam

Can you copy the file to the local Vero 4K storage and try to play it? That would help see if it’s a file or a network problem.

Since you are using a 2.4G network, that could be the problem.

EDIT: I just noticed the size of the file, so copying local is not an option, unless you can use a USB drive, or just create a 2 minute sample to try.

Ok, step by step…
Good morning everyone. :slight_smile:
Sam, buffer related:
Buffermode 1, and memorysize 524880000
I can give wired a try (unfortunately that would not be a permanent option). Do I have to change the network settings for this? Because of the fixed IP?
Mediainfo and log is work in progress…

This is the mediainfo output:

General
Unique ID : 207335448782260321296936695348582009695 (0x9BFB5ADCF8F2FD0C8371E9A4D13DCB5F)
Complete name : antma.108-pate.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 13.1 GiB
Duration : 1h 57mn
Overall bit rate : 16.0 Mbps
Movie name : Pate
Encoded date : UTC 2015-11-23 04:13:12
Writing application : mkvmerge v3.4.0 (‘Rapunzel’) gebaut am May 15 2010 09:38:20
Writing library : libebml v0.8.0 + libmatroska v0.9.0

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 : 1h 57mn
Bit rate : 12.2 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 040 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 1.85:1
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) : 0.254
Stream size : 9.95 GiB (76%)
Title : 1080p Pate
Writing library : x264 core 146 r2538 121396c
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=4 / deblock=1:-3:-3 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=9 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.10:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=36 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=5 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=crf / mbtree=0 / crf=17.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=16 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : Yes

Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile : HRA / Core
Mode : 16
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 1h 57mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 2 046 Kbps / 1 509 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.67 GiB (13%)
Language : German
Default : Yes
Forced : Yes

Audio #2
ID : 3
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Mode : 16
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 1h 57mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 509 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.23 GiB (9%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

Text #1
ID : 4
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Title : forced
Language : German
Default : Yes
Forced : Yes

Text #2
ID : 5
Format : VobSub
Muxing mode : zlib
Codec ID : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info : The same subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : German
Default : No
Forced : No

Text #3
ID : 6
Format : VobSub
Muxing mode : zlib
Codec ID : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info : The same subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No

Menu
00:00:00.000 : en:00:00:00.000
00:02:08.837 : en:00:02:08.837
00:08:40.186 : en:00:08:40.186
00:15:24.841 : en:00:15:24.841
00:19:59.740 : en:00:19:59.740
00:27:50.210 : en:00:27:50.210
00:33:07.235 : en:00:33:07.235
00:38:53.957 : en:00:38:53.957
00:44:36.465 : en:00:44:36.465
00:49:22.459 : en:00:49:22.459
00:57:44.252 : en:00:57:44.252
01:00:48.812 : en:01:00:48.812
01:06:31.529 : en:01:06:31.529
01:23:21.288 : en:01:23:21.288
01:34:20.530 : en:01:34:20.530
01:47:34.239 : en:01:47:34.239

Your file requires an average throughout of 17Mbit I doubt your 74Mbit connection delivers that.
Suggest you measure the real constant throughput with iperf3

ok.
2 questions:
a) I wrote for the mediatext output, but it still looks strange in my post (I am using FF) - same for you ?
b) I would need a tutorial for iperf3 … :slight_smile:

→ a) ok, I only get some blue background with the code tags - I was expecting e scrollable window inside the post text

I rebooted the Vero, enabled debugging and all the logging options, started the movie, got stuttering after 10sec or so and the buffering message.

Here is the log URL: https://paste.osmc.tv/gedecepitu

Ok, I installed iper3 on my synology, and also on the vero.
But either way its not working - how do I do the test?

What is not working?
You need to start it on one device with iperf3 -s and on the other device with iperf3 -c <ip of server >

I did iperf3 - s on the Vero, and iperf3 - c IP on the nas, but got a error message

Which was?

I dont remember.
But I think it was because of me closing the Vero SSH session.
I retried with 2 sessions, and it worked.
Result: 44 MBit/sec with 53MB Data transferred.

The server doesn’t run as daemon so surely you need to keep the ssh session open.
I suggest you increase the duration to see stability over time

60 sec Test with 1sec result: average 44.8 MBit/sec, with 3 drops down to 37MBit/sec

That somehow corresponds to the max. 72MBit/sec my Fritzbox was announcing.

EDIT: 360sec test: 44 MBit/sec. But I loaded a webpage on my PC while watching the test, and the rate dropped to 34MBit/sec. So other devices seem to influence the throuput. But I thought the router can do more than that and should deliver the 44MBit all the time and serve the other devices as well?
And - I am still way above the needed 17Mbit needed by the movie?

From your log:

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr ac:83:f3:c1:92:6f  
          inet addr:192.168.2.38  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST DYNAMIC  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:186923 errors:0 dropped:316 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:93050 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:263854759 (251.6 MiB)  TX bytes:7807952 (7.4 MiB)

316 RX packets dropped is quite high.