Stuttering blu-ray streams after update to 5.0-rc8a

[grassynoel]

My first post to the forum, my apologies in advance if wrong section or for missing info.

 

I've been running Unraid for a couple of years starting at 4.7 up through 5.0-beta14, which has been stable for my TimeMachine backups, iTunes library storage, and notably for serving blu-ray .iso images for playback on Dune player.

 

In the interest of staying up-to-date, today I updated to 5.0-rc8a, and experienced stuttering video playback of blu-ray .iso streams that were previously fine.  Tried power cycling my (gigabit) switch, and then my router.  Still no joy.  Dune player showed file reading at 11MB/s.

 

Downgrading back to 5.0-beta14 fixed the issue, still reading 11MB/s but playing back perfectly again.

 

Has anybody else experienced similar issue?  I have no compelling reason to be at ver. RC8, but would like to be able to update when/if the need arises.

 

Thanks in advance for any tips or insight.

 

-Noel

[BLKMGK]

Had you upgraded the samba version on rc8? Might be worth a shot and is detailed in the announcement post, you'll want to do that to use rc8 anyway.

[Mopar_Mudder]

I don't have stuttering but have noticed since going from 4.7 to the latest version 5 that it takes way longer for a BluRay folder to start to play. I launch Total Media Theater using Media Browser and my BluRay's are stored as folders. Nothing has changed except for Unraid. I would say that the time has gone from something like 10sec to 30sec for a play back to start. Only thing I can thing of is if V5 is slower to spin up and start to read a file.

 

Parity check time from V4.7 to 5.0 are within 30 sec of each other, so speed their seems to be equal.

[opentoe]

My first post to the forum, my apologies in advance if wrong section or for missing info.

 

I've been running Unraid for a couple of years starting at 4.7 up through 5.0-beta14, which has been stable for my TimeMachine backups, iTunes library storage, and notably for serving blu-ray .iso images for playback on Dune player.

 

In the interest of staying up-to-date, today I updated to 5.0-rc8a, and experienced stuttering video playback of blu-ray .iso streams that were previously fine.  Tried power cycling my (gigabit) switch, and then my router.  Still no joy.  Dune player showed file reading at 11MB/s.

 

Downgrading back to 5.0-beta14 fixed the issue, still reading 11MB/s but playing back perfectly again.

 

Has anybody else experienced similar issue?  I have no compelling reason to be at ver. RC8, but would like to be able to update when/if the need arises.

 

Thanks in advance for any tips or insight.

 

-Noel

 

I was forced to use NFS. SMB is known to be slow and NFS is known to be quicker. I can play BR content via my network with no issues.

[Mopar_Mudder]

Wanted to report back a similar problem now also. I had always pointed my movie software directly to the Disk and not to a share. Now that I am getting to have more disk I wanted to point it to the share just to make things easier. Tried playin a BluRay last night and had stuttering issues. Because I had people over I couldn't really try and trouble shoot it and just through the disc in a played it.

 

My TV Series have always been pointed at a share and they have never been an issue, but they are DVD so are smaller file size.

[S80_UK]

My TV Series have always been pointed at a share and they have never been an issue, but they are DVD so are smaller file size.

Don't forget that the size difference equates to a huge bit-rate difference.  Stuttering when playing blu-ray rips over a network could be for any number of reasons - the server (hardware or software), the network (cables, router, switches, wifi), the player itself.  Each element has to be right for glitch free playback.

 

If wi-fi is used for part of the link (perhaps to the player) then blu-ray streaming will likely not be reliable.  It works for some, but so many have issues with it that I would never recommend it as a solution.

 

Personally, I use unRAID 5.0RC8a, with standard SMB shares, but over wired gigabit network.  I use the Openelec flavour of XBMC running on a dual-core Atom with ION graphics using VDPAU acceleration.  I have zero issues playing blu-ray rips.  Indeed, with XBMC I can even play them at 2x speed with no frames dropped (and the XMBC info display shows the bit rate getting up to the 60Mbit/sec region).

[Mopar_Mudder]

My TV Series have always been pointed at a share and they have never been an issue, but they are DVD so are smaller file size.

Don't forget that the size difference equates to a huge bit-rate difference.  Stuttering when playing blu-ray rips over a network could be for any number of reasons - the server (hardware or software), the network (cables, router, switches, wifi), the player itself.  Each element has to be right for glitch free playback.

 

If wi-fi is used for part of the link (perhaps to the player) then blu-ray streaming will likely not be reliable.  It works for some, but so many have issues with it that I would never recommend it as a solution.

 

Personally, I use unRAID 5.0RC8a, with standard SMB shares, but over wired gigabit network.  I use the Openelec flavour of XBMC running on a dual-core Atom with ION graphics using VDPAU acceleration.  I have zero issues playing blu-ray rips.  Indeed, with XBMC I can even play them at 2x speed with no frames dropped (and the XMBC info display shows the bit rate getting up to the 60Mbit/sec region).

 

Like I said I haven't had time to check any further, it could be the rip itself, I will have to investigate some more. I have been running for a few year point at the Disk, only last night do I change it to point at the share so it just seems to point at that. I also am running a GIG wired network and have been able to play one BluRay while ripping another to the server at the same time, so I don't see it being a network issue. I will have to test out some more in a couple of days.

[Jon]

I just upgraded my hardware (everything but drives) and was forced to move to 5.0RC8a due to the new Intel NIC not having drivers in 4.7.  I am now experiencing stuttering also, although my syslog is perfectly clean after 12 hours of operation.  It appears to only be occurring with higher bitrate MKV files.  I have not had any stuttering issues since 4.7 fixed the issue with disks spinning up a couple of years ago.

 

I just did the samba update to 3.6.8, so I'm hoping that will resolve it.

[RokleM]

I have the same issue on 5.0RC8a, didn't have it previously.

 

I can manually copy off files at 100+ finishing in minutes, but for some reason streaming to XBMC or media player is an issue on the larger files or higher bitrates.

 

Changed audio settings in xbmc, disabled green ethernet, and upgraded samba... running fine now.

[Jon]

Upgrading samba to 3.6.8 had no effect at all.  Still makes watching anything HD impossible.

 

I may try reverting to an earlier RC or beta and see if it's any better.

 

Think I found my issue and it is not related to unRAID.  I found that Green Ethernet became re-enabled on my affected client, so I disabled that.  I also rerouted my upstairs trunk through another switch instead of using a patch connector.

[mejutty]

I am on Rc8 and I have no issues with blu-ray isos and stuttering to either ntv550 or dune when the array is not doing anything else.  If I happen to be watching a movie and sickbeard gives sab a tv show to dl then it may stutter during the copy of the tv show to disk.  this has been all but fixed by me moving my apps to a cache drive and caching the tv share so all the writing to the array happens early in the morning.

[GFOviedo]

That's strange, I've never had any stuttering issues with streaming to my Dune D1 and PCH-A210.  Every time I upgraded never an issues.  I don't really do BD ISO.  I mainly do BD folder structure to keep chapters.  I've got two BD ISO's and they play fine.

[loadme]

sounds fairly similar, to what I experienced. Although locally it worked, but remote access on the unraid server showed this behavior with unraid 5.0 rc8a (and worked fine under 4.7)

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=23669.0

[downloadski]

I saw this stuttering or whatever the English name is as well yesterday. Rebooted the server, the switch and the dune, but it did not improve..

 

I finallly downgraded to 5.0rc6  and i could view that movie after 40 minutes of midery

[GFOviedo]

Mine started to stutter last week out of nowhere.  I check unMenu and for reason or another my server was conducting a parity check, which isn't normal since I've got the plugin for monthly parity check at the beginning of the month at midnight, but it was in the middle of the month in the evening.

 

I stopped the parity check, and the movie started playing find.  When I was using 5.0b12 and lower I could run parity check and stream movies without stuttering, but now it can't do that.

 

I'm in the process of building another server, and using my unraid server for back up only.  I'm going to give FlexRaid a try.

[downloadski]

Today again stuttering. 5.0-rc8a

And going back to 5.0rc6test and still there.

 

To get a movie playable i start copying to a disk on my pc to mount on the player, and with 40 MB/sec copy to the PC, that the movie will playback ok now. (nothing changed in the server in the meanwhile)

 

Perhaps the PC or Unraid will go to a sleep mode or something on my PC ?

It is on the E3-1265L based pc.

[Zuhkov]

Just out of curiosity, have you tried using NFS instead of Samba? I have mixed results with Samba, though I've tweaked things so things work more often than not, but I've never had anything but smooth sailing with blu-ray streaming over NFS.

[downloadski]

Samba, and the 5.0rc8a with the newer version also.

 

Sometimes good playback sometimes not, it drives me mad.

[Mopar_Mudder]

Will NFS work with Windows, I know nothing about NFS

 

I have only ever had one problem with stuttering, has been fine since.

 

But I do have issues with writing files to shares. I can write a couple of small files that go fast and easy, and then the next one it will sit their for like 30-60 seconds calculating the time before it start writing the file, just like it can't find the disk. I have tried spinning up all disks ahead of time and it didn't help.

 

Also how can you tell what verion of Samba you have and if you should update it?