HAd my WD Live for a couple of weeks and I’m still in the process of ripping all my DVDs. I’m using a MKV container with h264 codec and AC3 audio. I’ve had a few movies play fine all the way through but recently all files whether they are MKV movies or avi are freezing. The only way to get out of the freeze is to hit stop and then resume but it always freezes again not too long afterwards. I’m using the latest firmware and I i’m playing over ethernet from TWONKY on a QNAP NAS.
If this continues then the WD Live is unusable and will have to go back. I know its capable of playing flawlessly cos Its managed it before. Anybody experienced this and managed to fix it?
Edit: I power cycled the device and now it randomly starts fast forwarding by itself! Is this likely to be a firmware issue or a broken device?
Well i narrowed it down to the NAS, it didnt make any difference whether I played from a media server or network share but as soon as I played from a USB the problem went away. I rebooted the NAS and all is well, I hope I dont have to that everytime cos the NAS reboot cycle takes ages!!
I downgraded the firmware as well as a potential solution but I still had files freeze on me (both MKV and AVI). I have left the firware at 1.01.24 for now until they fix the issues in 1.02.21.
never had this kind of problem. Maybe the files are encoded wrong, I dont know. Since I have the WD live the only problem that a really found is AAC sound that drops.
I suppose its possible they’re encoded wrong. I’m using Handbrake to encode the VIDEO_TS folder extracted from a DVD using DVDfab. I’m encoding with h264 and AAC audio. Anamorphic set to loose. I dont think its anything to with encoding though because files I have not encoded also freeze, .AVI files etc. The freeze will last for about a minute or so and then the file will fast forward to catch up.
Its getting close to the cut off for when I can send this back to amazon for an exchange or refund. The really odd thing is that when I first had it (a couple of weeks now) it worked ok???
If anybody has any last suggestions before I send it back I would be most grateful.
I suppose its possible they’re encoded wrong. I’m using Handbrake to encode the VIDEO_TS folder extracted from a DVD using DVDfab. I’m encoding with h264 and AAC audio. Anamorphic set to loose. I dont think its anything to with encoding though because files I have not encoded also freeze, .AVI files etc. The freeze will last for about a minute or so and then the file will fast forward to catch up.
Its getting close to the cut off for when I can send this back to amazon for an exchange or refund. The really odd thing is that when I first had it (a couple of weeks now) it worked ok???
If anybody has any last suggestions before I send it back I would be most grateful.
Cheers
If you do any firmware up or downgrades then it is advisable to:
reset the unit via the side button with the unit on.
reset to factory defaults (internal menu)
unplug the power and leave it unplugged for some minutes (not seconds)
Its best to do all 3 in a row before using it again.
tried all of the above and back on the newest firmware. Same problem except now when it freezes it locks up and just goes back to the video selection menu.
I recently ripped a bunch of DVD’s using DVDfab, and then used handbrake to encode them using h264/AC3 and mkv containers and I’m seeing the same issues with files freezing while being played in VLC. They always freeze in the same spot, which seems to be where the chapter breaks are. I’ve duplicated the issues on 3 different PC’s so I think you can discount your file server or your WD Live device as the culprit.
Did you use the latest Handbrake snapshot (not .94 release)?
There were many issues with blu-rays that were addressed in later snapshots, and I’d make sure I tried at least one of them to see if it fixes any of your problems.
Ahhh…so i finally figured out the problem and all is well, it wasnt the encoding, it wasnt the NAS, the problem was me! I’d setup my network with static IPs for everthing and accidentally gave the WDTV live and the Wii the same IP!
Now that they no longer are trying to share the same address on the network all my files play flawlessly. Thanks for all the advice and suggestions.
