The VideoLAN Forums

When using VLC 2.30 on either an iPad 2 (iOS 6.0) or iPad Air (iOS 8.1) to watch mp4's hosted from a local Synology Server running Media Player or Serviio streaming services via UPNP, VLC almost never makes it through an entire 40 minute show without freezing multiple times (for several seconds) sometimes accompanied with blocky distorted video. Usually, I can "wait it out" and VLC will resume but sometimes it will lock up and never return. If you switch out the app then bring it back, sometimes it'll crash (other times the switching can get it to resume). Usually, it starts out fine, then 10 minutes or so into the program, you get the first freeze which lasts for several seconds. It'll pick up and maybe 3-5 minutes later you get the next one lasting even longer. But, after resuming from that, the frequency of the freezing goes up exponentially until you get to the point where you end up switching to a different player. I would rather use VLC because of the gesture support it has but if I can't actually watch the picture...

I'm fairly certain it is not my internet connection (20Mbps uplink, 150Mbps down) because I have been streaming videos from that same Synology server to my iPad 2 for several years flawlessly using other player apps and I have not noticed any issues with overall streaming or general connectivity when streaming 10+gb sized movies to various TV's. Only VLC mobile seems to have an issue playing video content (computer version streams fine).

I've tried looking for graphics settings that might be related to buffering or rendering but I haven't seen anything on the mobile app that seems relevant.

I do have it configured to send bug reports and I'm sure when it crashes you get those (it crashes a lot, especially when you first switch over to the app, depending on which screen you last left it on), but I'm not sure if you get any of the freezing data so I decided to report this issue here. If anyone out there using the Local Network feature has experienced this and have a possible workaround, do leave a comment and if you have any ideas, send them my way, please. Thanks.

Try to increase the network caching. There is a setting for that

The network cache setting, I'm positive I tried it once before but I went ahead and re-tested adjusting it, first to HIGH LATENCY, thinking that this setting is for when you think your network is laggy, but that didn't make a difference. For grins, I set it to low latency and, again, it started failing at about the same spot in the video as the high setting (about 8 minutes into the movie). I attempted this with both the Media Player software and Serviio 1.4.1.2. Serviio started freezing within 4 minutes.

Does anyone know if the iOS version of VLC employs H.264/MPEG4 hardware acceleration?

Ok, I'll recheck the network caching option. This should not happen.

@hw access: not yet, but very soon.