VOB buffering on playback

[Skywatch]

HI,

Having put some VOBs on the NTFS USB HDD I get a lot of long pauses with 'buffering' during playback.

Is there anything I can do to eliminate this?

Thanks

Skywatch
See my profile for set up!

[rikardo1979]

how you connect your drive? also try to unplug LAN when you use USB drive as usb ports and lan shares HW.
Also,my best advise - get rid of the useless VOB,ISO,MPEG2 an convert to something much better and more common like mkv

[Skywatch]

THanks for the reply Rikardo.

I was hoping to avoid having to recode things to run on the pi, but it's looking like that won't be possible. It just takes a while to recode 200 Dvd's.....

Cheers

Skywatch

[IriDium]

I'd try removing the Ethernet and give that a go. I personally haven't had a problem with VOB files (I assume they are the std ones from a DVD rip.) I always hated the VOB files as you couldn't watch a full movie without pauses as it switched to the next VOB files.
To get around this, I just ripped them to an ISO file and they seem to play correctly. But I haven't managed to get it to work properly with menus and such, so I just rip the main feature.

Check to see what is causing the problem with "Top" and see if the Rpi is in a high wait state. Also try watching the same VOB files via SMB or such and see if you get the same issues.

[IriDium]

I've just tried this on Aplha5 with Ethernet connected and played a "standard" DVD vob format. Playing VTS_01_1.VOB didn't cause any issues.

However, there were a number of ffmpeg errors but all in all it played without buffering issues.

I can only assume it could be an problem with the way they were "ripped" from DVD.

Post the output from xbmc.log via pastebin when the "buffering occurs"

[Skywatch]

Thanks for the help and testing it out IriDium. :-)

REmoving the network didn't work and would not be practial. This because the slow network performance of the pi means using it as a NAS is not possible and I am looking at a separate NAS solition now. This, of course, means that the network would have to be connected.

My Pi is at the 'Medium' overclock setting, what is yours at?

I'll see if I can get a log and post it so that you can see what's happening. It's about every minute and the buffering starts low and goes up to 100% before play resumes. Then it happens again, and again.

Thanks

Skywatch

[IriDium]

My Pi is at standard xbian for Aplha5 (840cpu and 333 ) from memory.

When I do watch movies, I do it over the network with a 200Mbps "homeplug" and that includes 1080p AC3. So network is not an issue.

I do remember sometime ago, I did have problems playing movies from a HDD and the fault was with the HUB. I use a Belkin 7 way HUB and using the top connector caused problems but using the bottom ones was OK. So maybe check your HUB or use one if you are not.

[mk01]

(2nd Jul, 2013 07:32 PM)Skywatch Wrote:  I'll see if I can get a log and post it so that you can see what's happening. It's about every minute and the buffering starts low and goes up to 100% before play resumes. Then it happens again, and again.

Thanks

Skywatch

just for testing copy the files to rpi on sdcard and try from there

[IriDium]

If possible can you try and play the same files over the network and see if you experience the same problem.

1) What version of xbian are you using?
2) Type of HDD - USB2/3 (I may have noticed a problem with USB3 drives)
3) How do select the files -> via INF, VOB (secondary) or VOB (Main movie)
4) Can you decode to ISO using only the Main Menu and try that. Xbian will play ISO
Run TOP or install nmon and see where the delay is CPU or WAIT state. Run vmstat 5 and tail -f .xbmc/temp/xbmc.log |grep -i errors and see if there any errors or lack of memory.

I've run ISO over the network and via USB without any problems. So has your installation anything different?

[Skywatch]

Bingo! - I got it!

It worked fine on a network stream over SMB so I looked again at the USB side of things...

Seems that the powered USB hub was the issue to not only this, but also the slow network transfer I was getting. I tried another powered hub (different model) and still the problem was there.

However, if connected the HDD to the pi directly the VOB's play fine with no buffering at all and network transfers to the pi's USB HDD have gone from 50-100KB/s to 3MB/s.

THanks to all of you for the help on this one, it's very much appreciated! :-)

Skywatch

[IriDium]

Glad you got it sorted and we could help you out - the RPi does seem to have an issue with USB.

This seems to be very similar to the problem I had.

I wouldn't recommend using the RPi USB port, as it can only power around 100ma which may not be enough for more than a couple of USB connected devices.

Have you tried the latest release Beta 1.1. There have been many improvements in this area.

For information only: What hubs did you try>

[Skywatch]

Hi

The pi is only powering a usb mouse, the HDD has it's own power supply so no real drain on the pi's ports.

I tried to upgrade to 1b1 but xbian-config tells me I have the latest version (when I am still really on 1a5).

Finally, what would you recommend for movie storage to play on the pi? A usb HDD connected to the pi or a NAS?

The hubs were both cheap and nasty ones (one from the 99p store and one from poundland). Both were modified for powered operation, the first with no power back to the pi and the second one with 5v connected (ground connected on both). So avoid these if at all possible.

I do wonder if this had something to do with a weird network issue I had last week.

Anyway, just watched a whole movie and it was faultless!

Skywatch :-)

[mk01]

(4th Jul, 2013 06:51 AM)Skywatch Wrote:  I tried to upgrade to 1b1 but xbian-config tells me I have the latest version (when I am still really on 1a5).

If I remember correctly, the UPGRADE (not update) process was a little broke for xbian-update in 1a5 - but never tried.

Or if it not broken, double check your apt sources. It all depends on those and Koenn took all 1.0(1) packages down from official apt.xbian.org when the issue with low memory on 256mb models was recognized.

so ...