OK...I recently had a drive failure. I got help here on the forums, was able to move the bad drive out of the array...copy the files from it...put them on another drive in the array, and rebuild the array and parity...running with one less drive.

 

Didn't seem to be any issue, but the last 3 video files that I've tried to watch on my Syabas PopBox have all exhibited the same behavior; the file will play for like 5 minutes...then hang...then like 1 minute later it'll "catch up" by fast-forwarding without sound, and then get itself back on-track. Play OK for like another 5 minutes, then do the same thing.

 

It really is almost like the file is split among different drives, when the player gets to a part where the file moves to another drive, that drive is spun down and the player has to wait on that part of the file...it caches, and then "catches up" once the drive spins up? I don't know if that makes sense or what is going on. For the record, I have a user share of Movies, and the directory in question is BD within Movies (\Movies\BD)...and my split level is 2, which I think means I'm telling unRAID to keep all the movie files within BD intact on the same drive?

 

I never had this trouble before, so I'm wondering if the bad drive and recovery is to blame? OTOH, these 3 video files I'd never played before; were they maybe ripped to the bad drive, and the file itself is to blame? Hard to pinpoint, and obviously I'm going to have to play around. I can play some files that have worked fine in the past; see if they do the same thing now. I do have another player; even though it'll take some doing, I guess I'll have to move my Dune from the HT (which is under renovation right now), and see if it does the same thing. As much as I'd like to blame this on the PopBox, I don't really think that's the case; it's never done this before.

 

Like I said...I know this is a hard one to pin-down, but any thoughts?

 

CD

General troubleshooting steps would involve first determining whether the problem is in the recording or the playback (eg. bad rip or not), then determining whether the problem is in the source machine (containing and providing the recording), or the network or bus path between you, or the playback machine itself.

 

Generally, determining whether it is a bad rip is as easy as playing back the same samples of it multiple times, and monitoring to see if the same issues occur at exactly the same times.  If you see the same issue at the same point in time, then the problem is in the recording.  If it seems always different, then the recording is fine, and you know you have playback problems.

 

To eliminate the source machine and the network path, copy the video to a local drive and replay.  If the issues are roughly the same, then you know it is a problem with your playback machine.  If playback is fine, then it is a problem with either the path or the source machine.  If possible, try playing back the same video on a different playback machine.  If you can get good playback on ANY other machine, then the source machine is fine.

 

For the network path, you can try hooking network cables directly, to eliminate various network devices and segments.  You can also try to verify the speeds of each network segment, between source and playback.  The path is only as fast as the slowest segment or device between them.

 

Hopefully, this will give you some ideas for initial troubleshooting.

 

Edit:  perhaps someone already has or could prepare a troubleshooting decision tree, might help many users.  The above is an over-simplification of the process.  For example, once you determine it is a playback issue on the playback machine, then you need a new troubleshooting tree involving formats, codecs, muxing, hardware capabilities, configuration choices, etc etc.