[ADDON: SVTPlay] Stream playback freezes

[halkbi]

Warning, first post ahead

I just recently softmodded my old Xbox. I've used XBMC4Xbox for quite a while simply as a media player, which of course works like a charm. I didn't really understand the possibilities of turning my old CRT-TV into sort of a Smart-TV until a couple of days ago. Installed a bunch of plug ins and was amazed to see that such an old console could stream video flawlessly. At least thats what I thought when i did the quick testing.

Upon closer inspection I found that streams would freeze every 3-5 minutes. At first I thought XBMC had crashed, but after ten seconds or so playback resumed, skipping forward by the same ammount of time. I've found that I can hit start when the freezes happen to bring up the transport bar, however none of the controls do anything until playback has resumed. I've found that hitting pause during these freezes sometimes crashes the stream and throws me back to the stream browser within the plug in.

I'm not sure exactly what happens during these hiccups. I'm not getting any indication of buffering. I've tried raising the MPlayer video cache size without success and I've also tried whufclee's buffering solution which didn't do anything about the problem either.

These freezes happens when streaming various channels via XBMC Online TV as well as when using nilzen's STV Play plug in. The XBMC YouTube plug in doesn't show the same behaviour. Playback pauses occasionally there as well, but no freezes occur and playback resumes from where it was paused.

I'm running the latest version of XBMC4Xbox and bandwidth shouldn't be an issue since I'm on 100/100mbit/s. I'm only playing standard definition streams (of course).

I'd be really happy if anyone could explain what's going on and tell me how to fix it. I googled my ass off without finding anyone experiencing the same problems.

Best regards,
/Halkbi

[halkbi]

Update: It seems like YouTube has actually benefitted from whufclee's buffering solution. Other plug ins are still unaffected by it though. Does XBMC4Xbox show give any indication when buffering or could that be what I'm experiencing with XBMC Online TV?

[spicemuseum]

http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/forum/viewt ... p?f=6&t=65

[halkbi]

Log file of last session with two video streams showing the behaviour mentioned above. Also played a YouTube video which worked flawless: http://www.xbmclogs.com/pqa5ba2wm

[spicemuseum]

That's not a debug log, you have not enabled debugging. Can you enable debugging and then take another log.

In any case, it's worth noting that:
1. You're not using MPlayer, you're using DVDPlayer.
2. You have advanced settings which set cachemembuffersize to 0. Someone with direct knowledge of the latest source code can correct if wrong, but according to the wiki http://www.xbmc4xbox.org.uk/wiki/UserDa ... ttings.xml that setting does not exist in XBMC4XBOX.

[fxmech]

Cachemembuffer in xbmc4xbox, it does exist.

[spicemuseum]

Yep, just checked the source code, cachemembuffersize is there, but of course your advanced settings sets it to 0 (zero) which means instead of using RAM to buffer video, it is caching it to a file on hard disc.

[halkbi]

Here's a new log after I enabled debugging: http://www.xbmclogs.com/paoi6npq3

I also maxed out the DVDPlayer cache settings which seems to have helped a bit. I am no longer experiencing the freezing, but skipping still occurs (although less often then before.) I have yet to try these seetings without my advanced settings. The log is from after maxing out the cache. Thanks for your input!

[spicemuseum]

I have yet to try these seetings without my advanced settings.

Go ahead and do that, I'm not sure whether the advanced setting will take precedence until removed.

[Dom DXecutioner]

Taking a look at the debug log i noticed it's using MP4 container w/ H264:Vide0 & AAC2.0: audio codecs; this can be problematic with XMBC, this is especially true if the video uses high bit rate... xbmc will either freeze trying to catch up or run out memory and crash; however, I did tested the SVTPlay Addon and it worked flawlessly - for the videos that were available, anyway...

In the initial test with the default settings, xbmc would freeze w/ no playback whatsoever; I finally got it to work by doing the following:

• entered the video settings; on playback, enabled DVDPlayer full codec support; though this may not be necessary (try it)
• at the addons screen, focused on the aforementioned addon and brought up the context menu (hit Title on DVD remove or the white button on the controller
• on advanced settings, enabled Set bandwidth manually
• changed bandwidth to 900
• save changes

I then played a video from the popular section, which was 58 mins; I played it - though didn't understand a damn thing - for about 10 mins w/ no issues...

Also, for future reference; when asking for assistance, try to add the addon in question to the subject's title for clarity; I've changed the title for your convenience.

Try it and see what happens...

Regards,

Dom DXecutioner
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