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Playback Issues
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11701		 Page 3 of 5
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Mon Dec 12, 2011 10:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Just watched the new "Conan" in the theater with the A200. I added Conan to the server the weekend I added several other movies when the issue started. The movie was playing great then hit the 1 hour mark and the same issue started happening! I skimmed back a few seconds and of course the movie played fine after that.

I think can officially rule out this being a player problem now.

Also I noticed a few frames freezing in Conan but there wasn't any audio dropped just the video frame would freeze for a split second. I'm thinking that could of been something wrong with the actual BD disc or rip?

I just did a firmware update on the A200. The last firmware update was back in May I think it said so I was overdue. Not sure if this could be an issue causing movies not to playback correctly?

Tomorrow I am going to watch a movie that I ripped over a year ago and see if I get this playback issue with an older movie.
Author:  Comp1962 [ Mon Dec 12, 2011 11:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Anytime I have an issue I am concerned with pertaining to my servers I will monitor what the server is actually doing at the time. Its been quite sometime since I have used an EX470 for streaming my content. You can make an RDP connection to the server and pull up the task manager while you viewing a movie this will help you isolate RAM and Processor loads occuring on the server. Demigrator is one heavy hitter that can bog things down but QSM is another and if the server is indexing it too can put a load not so much the processor but the System Drive. If your using indexing you can if you want select an unmanaged drive to hold the index files this will take some load off the system Drive.

The other thing that comes to mind but I do not think it appies to your setup is any transcoding that would have to be done on the server side. In your cased I do believe the PCH devices do all the transcoding for you so all the server would need to do is provide access to the file.

Network connectivity however ad dbone1026 has pointed to can cause issues in which you have describled. These issues can occur anywhere between your server and the device your using to access the content. I would be curious what would happen if you were to directly connect one of your PCH devices to the server and see if you see the same issues. Since you have Blu-Rays I would test it with those since those movies are huge in file size. Doing this should help point you in the right direction. The other thing you can also do is test the stream on a client to see what happens there.

As for hard drives you could look at the condition of them with HomeServerSmart. However hard drives are funny things they can be in perfectly good working order one day and fail the next but using the ADD-IN HomeServerSmart will help you to determine the health of your drives and if they have a clean bill of health then I would say the issues you are seeing are not hard drive related.

dbone1026 has more experience than I with PCH devices because I know he has them and I do not. I use a WDTV Live to stream to my living room TV and its always worked well for me but I will be honest and say I stream my content to the computer I use in the bedroom or online using an Android Phone, Android Tablet and whatever computer I might be using but also my family is streaming content off my server. Now an EX470 can do this but streaming content online using an EX470 is abit much for the hardware to handle but streaming with in the home it should work fine. I do have an EX470 still running in the house but its purpose is primarily to hold Client Backups.

Anyway there are only a few things that you can do to rule out issues. Some you have already done under the great guidance of dbone1026 and in the mess I wrote above there are a couple things to look at to help you figure things out.
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:04 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Thanks Comp1962,

I was also thinking about connecting the server directly to the PCH and seeing what happens. I have a feeling this might be an issue with my ethernet switch. I don't want to mess with any of the connections just yet. Tonight I'm going to try and watch a movie that I ripped over a year ago and see if I still get the problem or if this is only happening with new movies.

I am adding 2 new movies today to my server so I will watch those today and tomorrow and see what happens with playback.

If I'm still getting playback issues then I will start looking into the Switch and see if thats the problem.
Author:  dbone1026 [ Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Chrisx86 wrote:
Thanks Comp1962,

I was also thinking about connecting the server directly to the PCH and seeing what happens. I have a feeling this might be an issue with my ethernet switch. I don't want to mess with any of the connections just yet. Tonight I'm going to try and watch a movie that I ripped over a year ago and see if I still get the problem or if this is only happening with new movies.

I am adding 2 new movies today to my server so I will watch those today and tomorrow and see what happens with playback.

If I'm still getting playback issues then I will start looking into the Switch and see if thats the problem.


I would definitely be interested to see if you get the same issue with older movies, since we know they shouldn't be on the newer (Advanced format?) drives
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
dbone1026 wrote:
Chrisx86 wrote:
Thanks Comp1962,

I was also thinking about connecting the server directly to the PCH and seeing what happens. I have a feeling this might be an issue with my ethernet switch. I don't want to mess with any of the connections just yet. Tonight I'm going to try and watch a movie that I ripped over a year ago and see if I still get the problem or if this is only happening with new movies.

I am adding 2 new movies today to my server so I will watch those today and tomorrow and see what happens with playback.

If I'm still getting playback issues then I will start looking into the Switch and see if thats the problem.


I would definitely be interested to see if you get the same issue with older movies, since we know they shouldn't be on the newer (Advanced format?) drives




I just watched 2 Blu Ray movies that I ripped at least over a year ago. I watched these two in the living room on my PCH A110. Played both the movies back to back and not one single issue.

Now I am getting ready to go watch 2 movies in the theater on the A200. The first movie will be a movie I ripped a year ago and the second movie will be one I added to the server this past week. I will let you know what happens.
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
UPDATE!

Just got done watching 2 movies in the theater with the A200. The first movie I watched was a movie I had ripped over a year ago. And of course the movie played back flawlessly with not one issue!

Then I watched the second movie which I added to the server this past week. Bet you can't guess what happened! 14 minutes into the movie I got the same playback issue. So once again I skimmed back a few seconds and then the movie played perfect after that. ](*,)

If this is a drive,server etc.. problem why does the issue only happen one time during the movie and once I skim back a few seconds the movie plays perfectly fine after that. And why is this only happening with movies I've recently loaded in the server.

If this was a hard drive problem with the new drives wouldn't I be getting this playback issue continuously through each movie. It happens once and after that the movie plays perfect.

Hope to see your guys response in the morning.
Author:  blackcows [ Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Have you solved your problem? I too have similar issues and am acutally at the point that I will most likely just move my video from my MSS to a NAS and use the MSS as a backup client only. My problems. much like yours, come and go. I have 3 players in the house that all have issues so I find it hard to believe that it is a player issue. Everything seems to point to the MSS.
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Mon Dec 26, 2011 7:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
UPDATE



I watch a couple movies last week and had playback issues with a couple of them. I tried disconnecting the switches in the house and putting the cat cables in different ports on the switch. I then went and watched a movie and it played fine. Next day i watched another movie and the issue was back.

2 movies were watched in the living room sunday morning and both played fine. Also last night I watched Columbiana in the theater and it played perfect.

Again older rips are not having one single issue with playback!

its weird cause its only happening with recent movies I have added in the server. 1 year ago I had the same playback issue that was cause by the WHS Drive Extender Demigrator. Once I found out the demigrator was causing playback issue I scheduled it to only run in the middle of the night so it wouldn't interrupt me when watching movies. After I turned the demigrator off the probelm stopped immediately. A year later it has not started again.

My mother is over watching the movie "Rabbit Hole" in the living room and right now she called me downstairs. The playback issue started happening while she was watching the movie. I skimmed back a few seconds and the movie playing fine again. Rabbit Hole was another recent movie I've added to the server in the past month.


I'm assuming it is either the server or a switch. I'm starting to lean more towards the server..

I need some help guys! I'm not sure where to go from here.. I've done so much trouble shooting in testing different movies and watching the same ones at different locations.

This started happening when I installed my last two 2tb drives. I don't think those are the issue or I would be getting playback issues during the whole movie... This is the exact same issue I was having a year ago.. Damian figured out that it was the demigrator causing this.. So what else could be causing this in the server?
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Mon Dec 26, 2011 7:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
blackcows wrote:
Have you solved your problem? I too have similar issues and am acutally at the point that I will most likely just move my video from my MSS to a NAS and use the MSS as a backup client only. My problems. much like yours, come and go. I have 3 players in the house that all have issues so I find it hard to believe that it is a player issue. Everything seems to point to the MSS.



Nope still having the problem in both locations. I am getting very frustrated now.. Its been weeks and haven't been able to figure what the problem is. I am considering going with an UnRaid server if this doesn't get solved soon.
Author:  blackcows [ Mon Dec 26, 2011 7:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Chrisx86 wrote:
blackcows wrote:
Have you solved your problem? I too have similar issues and am acutally at the point that I will most likely just move my video from my MSS to a NAS and use the MSS as a backup client only. My problems. much like yours, come and go. I have 3 players in the house that all have issues so I find it hard to believe that it is a player issue. Everything seems to point to the MSS.



Nope still having the problem in both locations. I am getting very frustrated now.. Its been weeks and haven't been able to figure what the problem is. I am considering going with an UnRaid server if this doesn't get solved soon.



I'm looking for something different also....seems like far too many people have issues trying to make the MSS a movie server. Seems like MSS is a hobby and I am looking for a plug and play solution.

Mike
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Mon Dec 26, 2011 8:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
[Nope still having the problem in both locations. I am getting very frustrated now.. Its been weeks and haven't been able to figure what the problem is. I am considering going with an UnRaid server if this doesn't get solved soon.[/quote]


I'm looking for something different also....seems like far too many people have issues trying to make the MSS a movie server. Seems like MSS is a hobby and I am looking for a plug and play solution.

Mike[/quote]

For the most part mss has been a solid system for me. This past month is the most trouble I've been having. Hopefully I can get this problem solved. If not it might be time to start my UnRaid build. If you haven't looked into UnRaid I suggest you do.. Very affordable and easy to build!
Author:  Cougar [ Tue Dec 27, 2011 1:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Can you run perfmon on your server, or at the very least Task Manager and see any processes that are utilising a load of cpu? If it's the server side we should see a spike that correlates to the stuttering you get.
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:48 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Cougar wrote:
Can you run perfmon on your server, or at the very least Task Manager and see any processes that are utilising a load of cpu? If it's the server side we should see a spike that correlates to the stuttering you get.


Not sure what perfmon is but I ran task manager.. Not sure what to look for though.. The CPU Usage jumps around from 2,4,48,60% and so on.
Author:  Cougar [ Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
In task manager click the Process tab, then click the CPU column to sort it so that the process consuming the most cpu is at the top. It will also show the value of each rather than the overall value and the process name.
Author:  Chrisx86 [ Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Playback Issues
Cougar wrote:
In task manager click the Process tab, then click the CPU column to sort it so that the process consuming the most cpu is at the top. It will also show the value of each rather than the overall value and the process name.


ok I did that and heres a pic so you can get a better look.

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