Network Streaming

**brandonhon** · January 27th, 2009, 07:33 PM

i have a desktop that i use as a samba server as well to share files throughout my wireless network. the other day i decided to put all of my movies on it access them through my appletv via boxee. i have noticed that boxee does not buffer the videos well enough to play them without stuttering horribly. is there a way to increase the buffer %?

i backup all of my dvds with handbrake on my mac using the preset appletv. when i sync the movies to atv i have no problems playing them locally. the stuttering only happens when streaming.

**Kiggold** · January 27th, 2009, 08:55 PM

search around and youll get your answer...

but since im nice, ill tell you

wireless-G isnt gonna really cut it for boxee, you need 100/1000Mbps wired ethernet or wireless-N

**skorch** · January 28th, 2009, 04:38 AM

I'm using Wireless-G and I've managed to stream video without a problem.

I found that the problem primarily lies in the way SMB shares stream the data to boxee. I did things the "hard way" and started using NFS-based shares. If your network source doesn't support NFS, you can try the same steps, but use AFP instead. I used to use AFP on my Macbook before I got my ATV and I was using AFP shares and didn't have a problem.

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=4726

If you're comfortable using a unix shell, it's all quite easy to do.

If you're not comfortable with that, try encoding a video with Handbrake using the "Optimize for Web" flag enabled. That worked for me before I did the above.

Hope that helps.

**brandonhon** · January 28th, 2009, 08:52 AM

search around and youll get your answer...

but since im nice, ill tell you

wireless-G isnt gonna really cut it for boxee, you need 100/1000Mbps wired ethernet or wireless-N

man, you are a big help. here is an idea, don't post a reply unless you have an actual answer. as for wifi, you could have 802.11b and still stream video.

---

thanks for the reply skorch. i don't know of any limitations on smb streaming. there used to be a 2gb limit for file size. thanks for the advice though, i will give the afp thing a try.

anyone else have any ideas?

**jeckle** · January 28th, 2009, 11:47 PM

I agree your network would run fine wireless, mine does so with g. Im sure wired lan would be more reliable. But in most cases if your using wireless its for a reason. Are you using an external drive?

**imksn** · January 29th, 2009, 12:27 AM

Originally Posted by brandonhon

man, you are a big help. here is an idea, don't post a reply unless you have an actual answer. as for wifi, you could have 802.11b and still stream video.

---

thanks for the reply skorch. i don't know of any limitations on smb streaming. there used to be a 2gb limit for file size. thanks for the advice though, i will give the afp thing a try.

anyone else have any ideas?

Lot of ideas here:

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=3082

**Apek** · January 29th, 2009, 03:15 AM

Increase the size if you LAN buffer to something like 8MB.

**brandonhon** · January 29th, 2009, 10:12 AM

Is the LAN buffer a setting in boxee? If so that is what I was looking for. Where would I find it?

**brandonhon** · January 30th, 2009, 06:54 PM

ok, so i am finally getting somewhere with this and i think my findings might help some of you with the same trouble.

first, you are able to tweak samba's send/receive buffers using the following parameters under you global settings in your smb.conf:

Code:

socket options = SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

the two parameters are SO_RCVBUF/SNDBUF. i currently have mine set to 8mb or 8192 like above. this should work for most configurations. if you would like to refine your buffers, visit this site and look for socket options:

http://www.math.temple.edu/computing/samba.html

secondly you will also have to change your buffer/cache size in boxee. to do this you will have to use a terminal or putty in windows. in boxee this is found in the guisettings.xml file under:

Code:

/mnt/Scratch/Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/

to get there open up your terminal or putty and type in the following:

Code:

ssh frontrow@atvIPaddress
cd /mnt/Scratch/Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/

ok, now you are in the right directory. open up guisettings.xml using nano or other text editor and scroll down until you see this:

Code:

<cachevideo>
    <dvdrom>2048</dvdrom>
    <internet>4096</internet>
    <lan>2048</lan>
</cachevideo>

now change <lan>2048<lan> to <lan>8192<lan>. now save the changes reboot your atv and restart your samba server. now with any luck you will be able to stream your movies from you samba share with no stuttering.

just to let you know i do get a stutter about 2 mins into a movie but that is the only time it does it now. i can live with one stutter for now. i hope this helps.

**cuttlefish** · February 2nd, 2009, 09:05 PM

Hi, I've had similar problems with the boxee for os x. I was going to post a reply here, but since I'm not using an apple tv I thought I'd use the other forum. Here is the link, tho. The story is that even with an increase in the cache the problems remained. FTP seems to have helped a little, but not enough to make me actually want to use boxee to watch the tv episodes I've ripped on to my NAS.