Lots of Rebuffering - MythTv Player

popcorn

2007-10-01, 22:59 #1

Member since Sep 2007 · 3 posts
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Subject: Lots of Rebuffering

Mikkel - Great program!! I've been looking for this for quite some time now.

I am having a strange problem however - I get a "Rebuffering" message every 15 seconds or so, despite the fact that I am on a local 100Mbps network. All cards, switches, cabling support 100Mbps. Streaming using other programs (VLC for one) works flawlessly, even without resampling the stream. Even over a Samba connection using Windows Media Player my files seem to play fine.

Any idea why playback using MythTVPlayer would be having these problems? I appreciate any insight you might have.

Thanks once again for a great program.

Mikkel (Administrator) 2007-10-02, 10:15 #2

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Member since Oct 2006 · 222 posts · Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
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The player does require some more horsepower than VLC and media player, so this might be the problem;/. What system are you running on? My 1 Ghz p3 plays my 5 MBIT recordings, but it is on the edge.
If your system has enough horsepower, send me the log-file. Which version of the player are you using?

popcorn

2007-10-05, 21:53 #3

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I doubt horsepower is the issue; playback is on a AMD X2 3800+ dual core. Recordings are about 2.2GB/hr.

I have generated a log file of about 1 minute of playback and I will send it to you under seperate cover (email).

Thanks again.

stonith 2007-11-19, 09:51 #4

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Subject: I've SOLVED my buffering issue, tweak your config.xml settings

Quote by popcorn on 2007-10-01, 22:59:
Mikkel - Great program!! I've been looking for this for quite some time now.

I am having a strange problem however - I get a "Rebuffering" message every 15 seconds or so, despite the fact that I am on a local 100Mbps network. All cards, switches, cabling support 100Mbps. Streaming using other programs (VLC for one) works flawlessly, even without resampling the stream. Even over a Samba connection using Windows Media Player my files seem to play fine.

Any idea why playback using MythTVPlayer would be having these problems? I appreciate any insight you might have.

Thanks once again for a great program.

Hi Popcorn,

I too had some problems with lots of rebuffering messages. After initial investigation, it would be best to check the logs to also verify what is holding you back. These are my specs:

Athlon XP 2100+ (1.74Ghz)
1GB Ram
Hard Drive (no relevance)
Video Card I think is a GeForce Ti4200
100Mps network

My backend box is a little bit heftier, but that is not the bottleneck. I will still post the specs I remember
Intel Core 2 Duo (1.86Ghz)
2GB Ram
3Ware RAID Controller SATA
2 80GB Hitachi RAID1
3 320GB Hitache RAID5
1000Mbps network
Running a slew of programs from postfix, mysql, apache, routing, and everything else in the sky including MythTV.

Anyway, as I look in my log.txt I see this when I get the rebuffering:
11:05:13 AudioDecoder: Not enough audio in buffer . Setting beenInTrouble flag.
11:05:13 AudioDecoder: Not enough audio in buffer . Setting beenInTrouble flag.

With that being said, please confirm if you are having this issue too. Obviously, the logs spell out the problem plain as day. "Not enough audio in buffer." Makes sense, since audio takes a lot more work to deal with than the video portion. I ended up tweaking some settings in the config.xml and now I do not have any rebuffering issues at all.
config.xml:
   <Settings>
<VideoPacketBuffer>75</VideoPacketBuffer>
      <AudioPacketBuffer>120</AudioPacketBuffer>
      <VideoframeBuffer>5</VideoframeBuffer>
      <StreamBufferSize>1048576</StreamBufferSize>
      <StreamBufferBlockSize>65536</StreamBufferBlockSize>
      <StreamBufferEnabled>1</StreamBufferEnabled>
      <PreBufferingPercent>10</PreBufferingPercent>
      <ReBufferingPercent>40</ReBufferingPercent>
      <LiveTvEnabled>1</LiveTvEnabled>
      <LiveTvPreferredRecorder>-1</LiveTvPreferredRecorder>
<IncreaseProcessPriority>1</IncreaseProcessPriority>
      <SDLAdvancedVideoWindow>1</SDLAdvancedVideoWindow>
      </Settings>

Pay special attention to the numbers that I've used. I didn't go through to see which one actually helped alleviate the buffering issue that you and I had. I'm guessing it would be AudioPacketBuffer, StreamBufferBlockSize and/or IncreaseProcessPriority. Give that a shot.

Honestly with my crappy Windows XP computer, I'm still able to play just fine.

And I agree with Popcorn, you are doing a fantastic job with this program Mikkel. Keep up with the great work. I commend you.