Choppy playback on Boxee but not XBMC

[scojack52]

I did a couple searches and could not find a similar thread. i'm hoping this is a quick fix.

I'm running boxee on a mac book pro (core 2 duo) 2GB memory, GbE connected to my 100Mb network (not wireless). I have my movies on a share drive in my main vista machine. Variety of files but majority are *.iso, but also have some HD material.

The playback through boxee on both the iso's and the HD material (although worse on HD) has become choppy. Sometimes it'll play in stretches then become choppy again. It seems the network bandwidth drops a bit during "choppiness" so i'm changing out a switch to make everything GbE but i know 100Mb should be fine for playback. Its to the point where its not really watchable.

So tonight installed XBMC to see if it'd give me the same problems. Not only did it not give me problem but i could also stream everything over wireless fine.

Maybe there's a buffer setting? I don't know, i've tried most of what i could think of but to no avail. I want to continue to use boxee and i'm hoping i've just overlooked something. Suggestions welcome

[scojack52]

wanted to post this just in case others run into it.

I started to get choppy video no matter where i streamed ivideo too (XBMC, Boxee, on OSX, Linux, or Windows). It was obvious the data wasn't showing up quick enough (network issue) the vq was dropping to 0%. But i was connected via GbE so i assume network bandwidth wasn't the issue.

Turns out on the vista machine w/ an Intel GbE chip (which serves up my video), there are Intel driver network power settings that tell the system to "slow" the link down when system is in standby or not in use to save power. Turing these features off did the trick. I figured telling the system not to go into standby would avoid these issues, but for some reason it didn't.

I'm now back to full speed streaming. Thought i'd share if anyone else had a vista box that was serving up content.

[Tallowby]

So tonight installed XBMC to see if it'd give me the same problems. Not only did it not give me problem but i could also stream everything over wireless fine.


I am running into the same issue with ATV 2.3 Choppy/Studdering playback thru Boxee yet same file runs great wirelessly on XBMC. Files are MP4 & m4v stored on a Time Capsule

Any ideas which could be using processor or wifi bandwidth within Boxee to cause this would be appreciated? Indexing? anything....

Thanks

[MattKowalski]

I'm having some odd choppy playback.

I am running a MBP 2.4ghz with 4gb ram. I have a 500GB Maxtor external firewire 800 harddrive connected. The media is stored there. I have a .mov file which is only 8.5mb and playing it in Boxee goes ok for a very short time (15 seconds) and then the audio and video gets really choppy and it is unwatchable. I can play the file using Quicktime without problem.

When this happens in Boxee the progress bar flashes and sometimes I can see it says /Loading.

Anyone experience this or have any ideas? Maybe the video files have something wrong with them. I did notice if I changed the video interlaced setting to weave it no longer gets choppy however at those points the video disappears and I usually see a green background with a lot of odd text (maybe video codec related info).

I copied the file to the local laptop drive and get the same behavior.

[marcel]

where this files converted from another format ...@MattKowalski could you send us the file to try..

[MattKowalski]

@marcel - I'm not sure about the origins of the file, I can't remember where I got it. Let me know where to send it so you can have a look.

[bradendellis]

I also have choppy playback. I have a Mac Mini with a 500 Gb Firewire drive the movies are so choppy it is un useable. I have tried Plex, it is just not the same. I have dumped the app and the app support in the library, then reinstalled, same problem. HELP!

[Tallowby]

There is a thread that covers this issue (Jump to las page)

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=3082&highlight=handbrake+boxee

To sum up there is a SMB issue with certain file types that hangs up, I believe the boxee team is working on a fix, but til then do the following:

(1) Delete your network SMB link(s) to your media from within Boxee.
(2) Mount the network drive from the finder on the mac mini.
(3) In boxee add the media via local / volumes

Thats it. Only drawback is the drive must be mounted on the mac to access the files.

I have a harder problem... mounting the NAS directly on the ATV is not as straight forward. If someone could post a how to that would be great. (Note the awkwardTV how to needs a few more steps for us noobs)

[maximusfacq]

So tonight installed XBMC to see if it'd give me the same problems. Not only did it not give me problem but i could also stream everything over wireless fine.

Maybe there's a buffer setting? I don't know, i've tried most of what i could think of but to no avail. I want to continue to use boxee and i'm hoping i've just overlooked something. Suggestions welcome

I am having the same issue as @scojack above. I'm new to Boxee. I picked up an AppleTV on Friday night, installed Boxee, XMBC, ssh, and the other goodies. I had already had a few avi and mp4 files on hand that I used to test the new setup with. Everything seemed to work fine playing back these files from an eSata drive I am using as a SMB share from my nice Core2Duo system (with WinXP Pro SP2) downstairs. I'm using a WirelessN WPA secured network.

As I said, all the existing files I had were fine. But, when I played back a couple of my own DVD rips with Boxee they were as choppy as hell. For curiosity's sake I hit the forums and found this thread and decided to test @scojack's workaround with the XMBC. All my new rips played perfectly fine with XMBC. I'm at a loss here as to why there is an issue. The only thing that I see different about the files that play fine with Boxee compared to the choppy ones on Boxee is the file size. The other mp4 and avi files I am playing with Boxee are ~700MB-1GB, where as the files that are failing are ~2-3GB files.

Any help would be appreciated as I would prefer Boxee to be my base of operations for all my media playback. It's been great so far, despite this little hiccup and a couple cases of mistaken identity with Boxee tagging some music albums incorrectly.

[mammlouk]

I know this is the mac area, but it was the best result in the search I made. I am having issues on my Neuros LINK (Ubuntu Powered HTPC).

Anyway, I am having the same problem, but my files are all on a SATA drive in a USB enclosure. Everything plays great in XBMC, Hulu is fine in browser, but all video playback is choppy in Boxee. Any pointers would be great!