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quarnster / boxeebox-xbmc

Aiming to get xbmc up and running on the boxee box
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Playback not as smooth as original Boxee+ #155

Closed mlangenberg closed 9 years ago

mlangenberg commented 9 years ago

Version: xbmc13.2_final.boxeebox.1.0.2_63cdfda Running from NFS mount. Video is played from SMB share.

When watching a 1080p .mkv (11GB h264/mpeg4) movie I noticed the occasional buffering and frame skipping. When I boot back to Boxee+ playback is smooth.

Is XBMC doing some background processing? Do other people recognize this?

quasar1 commented 9 years ago

I don't have any issues on any of the builds playing similar sized 1080p .mkv's h264 (kodi run from my NAS NFS share). (shares are NFS).

You could try a newer build: https://github.com/quasar1/boxeebox-xbmc/releases/download/v1.8-alpha_Helix/KODI_14.0-RC3-Git-2014-12-09-47f601d.rar

-boxee specific changes by quarnster: Experimental elastic video codec buffer batching. This allows queueing up buffers to ~75% of total queue possible, and should be much better at feeding the hardware pipe with data at a rate close to what it is capable of processing.

In other words: if it detects it's feeding the hw too slow it'll try to feed it more data and if it detects it's feeding it too fast it'll start feeding it data at a slower rate.

Edit: Note: SMB uses more resources (CPU) than NFS, xbmc/kodi uses more resources than the vanilla Boxee GUI. So you could try NFS for your shares..

mlangenberg commented 9 years ago

Thanks, let me try that newer build.

With Boxee I saw bad performance with NFS. This is related to my NAS and Netgear switch being on Gbit, while the Boxee only has an 100Mbit interface. Switching from NFS to SMB solved a lot of buffering issues for me.

Edit: with XBMC the NFS performance is better. Will now try with Kodi.

mlangenberg commented 9 years ago

The experimental elastic video codec buffer batching. Worked really well. I think the performance is better than Boxee's stock F/W. Tested this with NFS.

So I will close this issue. The playback issues can be resolved by switching to NFS and/or Kodi RC3.

Though there still are a few issues that hold me back from switching to Kodi completely.

quasar1 commented 9 years ago

Re: The experimental elastic video codec buffer batching. Yes it works very well. Notably when viewing HD video streams, or heavy data streams via internet. It seems to spool up the buffer quicker than relying on Kodi/XBMC method.

Re: Seeking in a video is problematic. Yes, has been since the start for all. The way it's done at the moment is through the Kodi/XBMC software. Whats needed is custom coding designed from the ground up for the Boxee hardware (Intel SMD). What I have noticed is if you have '0' audio offset the seek process is more 'responsive', the greater the audio offset the less 'responsive' it is.

For me the few issues aren't a deal breaker, indeed it would be better if those issues were resolved. I just appreciate what we have now and how it's grown despite all odds.

mlangenberg commented 9 years ago

Absolutely. It is fantastic to see support for a widely used media player on a platform that has been completely abandoned by its owners.

quasar1 commented 9 years ago

I'm currently trying to resolve broken subtitle playback (CPU spike and screen break up when the subtitles start) and found where the Kodi devs changed the default subtitle offset in July from + -10s to + -60s. AdvancedSettings.cpp (m_videoSubsDelayRange = 60)

I'll see if i can adjust the default setting to better suit the Boxee in the next build. I don't think its something that can be perfectly set but I think there is some room for improvement.