MP randomly stops media playback as though file has ended (1 Viewer)

Matthew Houston

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I have a rather large media collection, between Movies, Episodes and recordings, whenever I try to watch a non-recorded file (either through Moving Pictures or My TV) the playback will randomly stop.

Usually about 10 minutes in but anywhere from 10 minutes in to 3/4 of the way through. It doesn't error out or anything, just drops me straight back to the menu as though playback has stopped. If I go back to the media list, the file in question will be marked as 'watched' as though I had finished the file, regardless of how far it got when it stopped. The same behaviour doesn't occur when watching shows recorded with MP.

It's strange because it happens to a 1080P high bitrate BluRay rip of The Hobbit, or a crappy old Xvid of the wire, doesn't seem to matter what format it is, or the size of the file.

My setup is:

  • Media is hosted on Server 2012 R2 share on a parity array (Storage Spaces)
  • Front end is hosted on the same network segment running MP 1.09.0 on Windows 8.1 U1
While the server does host the TV server and tuners (I realise 2012R2 is not a supported platform), I don't ever really have any problem with live TV and recorded TV, only existing media.

I have no other network issues at all. Funny thing is, I have upgraded basically every aspect of my network and media setup and I still experience the same issue. Not to mention going through several iterations of MP.

IO testing on the storage drive shows no issues, the read speeds are well up there (over 200MB/s on last quick test).

Things I have upgraded over the last 6 months:

  1. Media Storage- Moved from storing media on my gaming PC (WD Green drives, hardware Raid 5) to a dedicated media server (FX-8350, 16GB RAM, 4 * 4 TB WD Red drives in W2012 storage spaces parity)
  2. Front end - Moved from an old i5 Asus laptop to a dedicated media PC (Haswell i3, 8GB 1600 RAM, 128GB SSD - I have two of these with only one hooked up so far)
  3. Replaced by busted old network with an enterprise level switch and replaced all cables (Dell 2800 series)
  4. Tested by removing all other network equipment and running just the server and frontend
I don't think at this point it can be network or hardware related, all my gear is decently specced and should be more than capable.

It's been happening so long now that unfortunately I've been a bit lax trying to nail down any pattern, but over the many many months I have been scratching my head thinking it was my side of things.

I'll attach all the logs I have over the last two or so months, I tried to grab some whenever I was home and it happened.

Thanks anyone who doesn't mind having a look, I really am stumped at this!
 
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emphatic

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    I've had this from time to time since I moved all my media to NAS storage, but it's mostly happening in Moving Pictures or MP TV-Series, not in My Videos. I'd love to see it fixed too...

    Emph
     

    Owlsroost

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    I'll attach all the logs I have over the last two or so months, I tried to grab some whenever I was home and it happened.
    Thanks anyone who doesn't mind having a look, I really am stumped at this!

    No clue from the logs that I can see - it just looks like something has told MP player to stop (which could be caused by LAV splitter detecting what it thinks is the end-of-file e.g. it can't read any more data from the file).

    Note that there is also this in movingpictures.log at the same time as playback stopped :
    Code:
    28-Nov-2014 22:06:46  Info [       MovieImporter]: Stopped watching 'Y:\' (Network) - Reason: Too many changes at once in directory:Y:\.

    .....which might suggest that things are happening in Y:\ at that time, but I know nothing abut how MovingPictures works, so that might be a normal/common log message.
     

    Matthew Houston

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    Note that there is also this in movingpictures.log at the same time as playback stopped :
    Code:
    28-Nov-2014 22:06:46  Info [       MovieImporter]: Stopped watching 'Y:\' (Network) - Reason: Too many changes at once in directory:Y:\.

    .....which might suggest that things are happening in Y:\ at that time, but I know nothing abut how MovingPictures works, so that might be a normal/common log message.

    I did see that also a while ago while looking through the logs. It seems to happen fairly frequently and not always in relation to the playback issues.

    I do have quite a few (maybe a hundred or so) movies that can't find a match and I haven't manually rectified yet, they are always hanging around and I never quite seem to get around to fixing it. I might also clean up the media there so it's all 100% kosher and maybe take some load off the importer.

    It's the weekend now so for tonight and tomorrow I'll keep a hard eye on it and try and get some more defined logs, it happens fairly consistently so it should be an issue, I'll try and grab them immediately after a stop.

    Thanks for taking a look![DOUBLEPOST=1418362362][/DOUBLEPOST]Ok so I literally just got home, switched on the TV / Media PC, popped open MyTV and selected an Eastbound and Down episode. It stopped within about 4-5 minutes.

    I've had a quick perusal of the logs but again I'm a bit stumped.

    Nothing in the main MediaPortal log seems to indicate an issue, like Owl said above it looks like it legitimately thinks it's the end of the file!

    The MPTV logs don't really show anything either unfortunately. All though it does seem to start a scan / import and the playback immediately stops?
     
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    emphatic

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    @Matthew Houston Can you confirm that this only happens in the 3rd party plugins and not in MyVideos? If you enable MyVideos and add the paths for your TV-Series, you could do a "cold start" of the same episode and see if it happens again or not. Last Christmas, when most of the TV Shows we usually watch was on hiatus, me and the girlfriend began watching movies and I had the same stuff happen at least once a movie (watching in Moving Pictures). However, my kids can watch 3 movies on one day without a hitch (MyVideos) and the source is the same (NAS storage). The watch status is changed to "watched" and there's no resume point in the database either.

    Are you transferring data onto the source drive while this happens (torrent up/down or any other network traffic)?
    Emph
     

    Matthew Houston

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    Back guys, flat stick over the weekend, Christmas and all that!

    Anecdotal evidence says it is only third party but I'll re-add My Videos to the menu and use that for a little while just to confirm it. I actually wasn't sure if I should post in the general thread or the plugin thread.

    There is always data being written to that array, yes, though the recorded TV is going to another array. I have several array's in that server but it doesn't seem to be related to load. While testing I ran a disk IO tester so that the disk load was right up there and also iPerf at the same time so the network was saturated. I was able to watch media no problems.

    I'll have a crack at the built in My Videos and report back tonight.
     

    Matthew Houston

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    So a few confirmations over the last week.

    I had an unrelated issue with MP that caused me to reinstall the client completely.

    So I did a fresh install of 1.9.0, I didn't install any plugins, the only configuration changes I made were:
    • Enabled the MCE remote
    • Connected to the main TV server
    • Added my 'Movies' mapped drive as a video location
    • Added my 'TV Series' mapped drive as a video location
    So I've tested playback through the standard video playback, unfortunately had the same issue, at a seemingly random point in the video playback. I didn't have a chance to grab the logs but I'll have a look when I get home.
     

    Matthew Houston

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    This just happened again but looks like I forgot to enable watchdog. I checked the logs but for some reason they didn't go back more than a few minutes. I've enabled it now so should be able to provide some more soon.

    Steps today:

    1. Turn on TV / HTPC
    2. Open 'Videos'
    3. Browse to 'Movies'
    4. Start movie from last night, I stopped it with only about 10 minutes left so just wanted to get the last bit this arvo
    5. Within about 5 minutes, playback stops and drops back to menu.

    Like I said, I've enabled Watchdog now so should get some more logs tonight.
     

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