Choppy Playback on Network Shares

[johnnyproton]

Files on my SMB shares play very badly through VLC on Mac OSX Tiger. The same files play fine when copied to my desktop and played from there through VLC. They also play fine over the network using iTunes.

File types with this problem are:

- OGG
- MP3
- Divx
- AVI

Almost all of them. Interestingly enough, a massive VOB file plays fine.

[knifegirl]

The same thing happens to me on OS X, when playing files shared via NFS. I can play the same files through both iTunes and MPlayer. When I play them in VLC, the track will start out fine, then the audio drops out (though the clock on the player continues to run). Sometimes it returns for a few seconds, but usually does not return until the next track in a playlist.

[knifegirl]

The same thing happens to me on OS X, when playing files shared via NFS. I can play the same files through both iTunes and MPlayer. When I play them in VLC, the track will start out fine, then the audio drops out (though the clock on the player continues to run). Sometimes it returns for a few seconds, but usually does not return until the next track in a playlist.

Just discovered something else: The problem only happens after updating to QuickTime 7.0.1. On my second iBook, which still runs QuickTime 6.5.2, the problem does not occur.

[ktml]

Same here, xvid is the worst. The video freeze like every 10 secs, very annoying. Copying the file to mac os is one way to "solve" the problem. You can also go into Preference>Input/Codecs>Access modules>access_file, increase the "Caching value in ms" to something above 2000, restart vlc and try again. The set back is there is a delay everytime you pause and play the video, but that's acceptable for me.

I think I don't have the problem using Mplayer, so it should be something to do with vlc.

Hope this helps.

[The DJ]

Like i have said many times before, the problem comes from the fact that the network share repsonds VERY slowly to network reads (especially the way Apple implemented support for them). VLC does not do much buffering, and therefore the buffer easily goes empty. Mplayer and other programs usually read MB's of data at once, and are therefore less visibly affected by this. VLC only reads very small chunks.

[ktml]

I see. Thanks for clarifying DJ.

[knifegirl]

Same here, xvid is the worst. The video freeze like every 10 secs, very annoying. Copying the file to mac os is one way to "solve" the problem. You can also go into Preference>Input/Codecs>Access modules>access_file, increase the "Caching value in ms" to something above 2000, restart vlc and try again.

I increased that value to 2500 ms and it has helped quite a bit, though not completely.

This is not something that has ever happened to me before the past few weeks, and still does not happen on my older iBook. On the newer iBook, I'm not sure what, but something must have changed two weeks ago on the system to cause this to be such an issue. Oh well.

Thanks for the pointer, ktml, and the information, DJ.

[knifegirl]

Just thought I'd follow up on this. After the latest iTunes update (5.0.1), I no longer have this problem.