I recently made blu-ray rips by simply remuxing the streams I want from the appropriate BDMV files into an MKV. No re-encoding/compression etc.
However, when I try to play these files on my WDTV live, the video playback stutters a lot. It’s almost impossible to watch. I don’t think it’s a network bandwidth issue (100mbps connection); or a problem with the NAS I connect the WDTV Live to, as it works fine with other devices (like a windows PC).
Is it down to the hardware of the player not being able to cope with the high bit-rates of an uncompressed BD rip?
I’ve noticed “header stripping” compression on some of the files, could this be slowing things down (I’m guessing the player has to allocate processing time to “un-compress” the data)?
Hi , I have just purchased a WDTV & love it , I have a 1080p TV & turned the settings in video to the highest settings & found that hi def movies stuttered so I lowered the refresh rate a little & the problem went away immediately , hope this helps
The reason I’m thinking the issue is with the player, is the fact that it only occurs with videos of a high bit rate (approx 20mbit/s and above).
Nope… the issue isn’t the player… it’s Microsoft. There’s a cap as to what bitrate can be sent over Samba (i.e. CIFS/“Network Shares”).
If the same file was on an attached local USB device, it would play fine. The bitrate exceeds what Samba is capable of sending.
Your 2 choices would be to re-encode it (perhaps with Handbrake) into a more compact stream, with no visual loss of quality, or to use attached USB drives instead of Network Shares.
The reason I’m thinking the issue is with the player, is the fact that it only occurs with videos of a high bit rate (approx 20mbit/s and above).
Nope… the issue isn’t the player… it’s Microsoft. There’s a cap as to what bitrate can be sent over Samba (i.e. CIFS/“Network Shares”).
If the same file was on an attached local USB device, it would play fine. The bitrate exceeds what Samba is capable of sending.
Your 2 choices would be to re-encode it (perhaps with Handbrake) into a more compact stream, with no visual loss of quality, or to use attached USB drives instead of Network Shares.
Not really. As in the thread I started yesterday, I’m seeing issues with playback from attached USB 2.0 devices.
Besides that, ‘Microsoft’ does not cap network share access - SAMBA is a standardized protocol. Furthermore, 20 mbps is 2.5 MBs, which you can verify is well below the 6+ MBps most users will experience in a read or write operation over a home network share. Its easy to comfirm as well - just connect a drive to the WD TV Live and read & write a large file and see how long it takes. Windows will even show you the transfer rate while its going.
Not really. As in the thread I started yesterday, I’m seeing issues with playback from attached USB 2.0 devices.
Besides that, ‘Microsoft’ does not cap network share access - SAMBA is a standardized protocol. Furthermore, 20 mbps is 2.5 MBs, which you can verify is well below the 6+ MBps most users will experience in a read or write operation over a home network share. Its easy to comfirm as well - just connect a drive to the WD TV Live and read & write a large file and see how long it takes. Windows will even show you the transfer rate while its going.
Well, look through some of the WDLXTV forums… pretty much anyone worldwide can’t get much more than about 20Mb/sec out of Samba, even wired… the same media over the same network plays fine with NFS or as DLNA, so it is not the network itself causing problems. Actually, even using a Server version of Windoze instead makes the cap disappear.
So, if the entire world sees a limit with Samba, regardless of network capabilities, and it only exists with non-Server versions of Windoze, I don’t see how anyone can not point the finger at Windoze’s built-in CIFS.
Yes, I can write from my PC to my WDTV at up to 7.5MB/s (60Mb/s), but that speed is simply not available for playback. Copying is more of a one-way process… playing the file is bi-directional… the WDTV needs to keep sending packets in return… after all, you can FF/REW a Network Share movie, but you can’t skip forwards during a file copy.
The block size used is tiny in this day and age, and there is a large amount of overhead. For file transfers, you end up with about 50% of your theoretical network speed (i.e. 50Mb/s, peaking around 60Mb/s on a 100Mbit line)… for playing a file over the network, you’re closer to 25% due to excess overhead and bi-directionality.
I can confirm I get the exact same issues when playing back these high bit rate files from a USB attached device (which is, again, more than capable of providing the required high read/write speeds). Why does it happen with USB in addition to Samba?
Also, isn’t it Samba that is used to access a network share from a Windows PC? Why then do I not get the same issue when playing these video files from a PC?
I will try it also over DLNA. However, does DLNA have any disadvantages over Samba? Is the media support just as comprahensive?
