I’ve got the WDTV Live SMP and have noticed that I have been having a problem with playing larger movie files. For example last night I was trying to watch The Hobbit and it would stutter every once in awhile and it just ruins the experience. Currently I have my SMP wired into the network. I have seen people post mediainfo about the file so i’ll just throw this in there just in case someone asks.
General
Complete name : C:\Users\Cardwell\Videos\Media Streaming\The Hobbit- An Unexpected Journey\The Hobbit an Unexpected Journey.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 13.1 GiB
Duration : 2h 49mn
Overall bit rate : 11.1 Mbps
Writing application : mkvmerge v4.1.1 (‘Bouncin’ Back’) built on Jul 3 2010 22:54:08
Writing library : libebml v1.0.0 + libmatroska v1.0
Audio
ID : 2
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Mode : 16
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 2h 49mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 509 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 1.79 GiB (14%)
Title : English
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Do I need to convert this file or is there something else I need to be doing. If I need to convert it i’d like it to still have great quality though. Any help would be appreciated thank you!
Just for testing purposes I transferred the file over to an external hard drive and accessed the movie through local storage and watch a scene that it would stutter on everytime over network share and it played fine. Not sure where else to go. I’d rather not have to move all my movies over to an external HDD to watch them.
If the file plays fine from an external drive, then the file itself should be fine.
The most likely reason for your issue is due to an issue with your network setup. As you didn’t post anything about your network setup, except that it’s wired, it would be hard to give you a start point as to were to start trouble shooting.
Ok I’m willing to give any information that’s needed. I have an motorola surfboard modem SB6121–>Netgear WNDR3700 v3–>Which has one line that goes to my PC and another which goes to my WDTV Live SMP. What else do you want to know?
Well when I first set the system up I bought all new Cat6 cable, probably 25ft in length. It seems to only be the larger files though… is it too much to send over the cable? Is there a link you can point me to that will show me how to set up a static IP.As far as gigabit ethernet I have an eVGA 790i Ultra SLI that I’m pretty sure supports gigabit ethernet. I know the basics but getting into that kind of stuff boggles my mind haha
Cat6 would be my first approach but you’ve got that covered already. Just because you have a gigabit network adapter doesn’t mean you’re going at full speed. I’m pretty sure some netcards throttle down when they encounter troubles. Not sure how to diagnose that though. One other thing to try is toggle your access via Network Share or Media Server.
If your network was the problem, what would be important would be a file’s data bitrate. The file you showed is around 11 Mbps, which is frankly a pretty low bitrate. Full quality bluray rips can be 40 Mbps. If it isn’t your network, then it could be your server computer/OS. Having problems with larger files would definitely be a symptom one would see due to the server. In particular, it is exactly what one would see from a fragmented NTFS drive. I would strongly suggest that you defrag the drive/filesystem on the PC that you use to store your video files and see if that doesn’t help. You should also make sure that your machine isn’t infected with malware (using CPU cycles and/or running the disk).
The other thing I would do is download some of the jellyfish test files and use them to test your network bandwidth. All these files are relatively small, so filesystem fragmentation should be less of an issue, allowing you to get a better idea of your network throughput. I have no problem playing the 60 Mbps file on my SMP, via a wired connection from a Linux/Samba server. Linux filesystem do not suffer from performance problems due to fragmentation the way that NTFS does. The jellyfish files can be found here: http://yfish.us/
EDIT: let me add that I would also try testing your Ethernet cable as was already suggested. Just because you have “CAT6” cables doesn’t mean one couldn’t be defective/damaged. It seems unlikely both would be a problem, so if you can get one spare cable, try swapping out each of your current cables in turn.
I click on the files and nothing happens, so what’s the “trick”?
You are right. They aren’t working at this moment (should download). WIll have to try again tomorrow to see if problem is temporary or not. I didn’t try to download them when I posted the link since I already have them.
EDIT: tried again using Chromium instead of Firefox and they download just fine. Strange.
I’m particularly interested in this thread as I’m experiencing exactly the same issue reported by cardsmall, even if only with mkv videos with a higher bit rate ( > 30Mbps). The environment is similar (Qnap ts112 NAS → Netgear Gigabit Switch → Power Line 200 Mbit → Wd Tv Live Streaming) and watching the bandwidth usage as displayed by the NAS administration GUI, mkv stutter begins when the bit rate exceeds 30Mbps. I’ve already tried bypassing the Gigabit switch by connecting both the NAS and the Wd to the same Router, but the result is the same; next thing I’m going to do is test the network connectivity through the Power Line, even if the tool for the Power Line management shows an approximate speed of 110 Mbps.
This is just about exactly what I saw when I tried a powerline unit. Would begin to have problems with MKV files just above 30 Mbps. You don’t say how you are serving the files, but if you are using CIFS/SMB then you should try using NFS instead (your NAS undoubtedly supports that), as some people claim that NFS achieves higher throughput on low bandwidth connections. I personally haven’t tried both and also haven’t looked at the protocol details to see if one has less overhead, as when I was having issues with our upstairs SMP, I realized how I could run an Ethernet cable to it, so solved my problem by doing that. If NFS doesn’t fix things, and you can’t run Ethernet, you will have to either: (1) compress the files so they are < 30 Mbps; or (2) get an external drive, copy files to it, plug it into the SMP.
I’ve already tried NFS (I’m currently using SMB) but with similar results. I just can’t understand why a Powerline unit designed to support 200Mbps should fail to deliver content data with a bitrate > 30Mbps:cry:
A number like 200 Mbps is consistent with the way networking technologies are rated, which is maximum physical layer data rates. The problem is that with Wifi and power line technologies, these rates are much higher than application throughput rates, and various factors (noise, signal level, application protocol, etc.) can cause additional and significant drops in throughput. From what I quickly looked at, it appears that the very worst case for Homeplug AV is a single data stream between two clients, which is exactly what we are faced with streaming video from a server to an SMP. Here is a Tom’s Guide article I found that tested several 200 Mbps units: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Powerline-Networking-Test,review-1333-4.html
