Cant Playback over Wifi (1 Viewer)

jacc1234

Portal Pro
April 11, 2008
167
7
I am having issues with playback of HD movies over WiFi. I can play them without issue in MPC-HC but MP just stutters and then eventually stops. I am running Wireless N and currently max out at around 30Mb(Actual Transfer Rate). Most of the movies are around 6-10Mb so I should have enough throughput. Does anyone have any experience with this? I am just SOL or is there some way to tweak the way it streams over WIFI.

Thanks!

I am watching a 720P movie in MPC currently and watching the throughput over my router (WNR3700) and its averaging around 5-6Mb, which should be easy for it. It can easily do 20Mb so I really don't understand why it wont play in MP.
 

RoChess

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  • March 10, 2006
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    I am having issues with playback of HD movies over WiFi. I can play them without issue in MPC-HC but MP just stutters and then eventually stops. I am running Wireless N and currently max out at around 30Mb(Actual Transfer Rate). Most of the movies are around 6-10Mb so I should have enough throughput. Does anyone have any experience with this? I am just SOL or is there some way to tweak the way it streams over WIFI.

    Thanks!

    If you are only getting 30Mbps out of WiFi.N then you got serious problems as you theoretically should be able to get 300Mbps. You should do some channel hopping and see if there are any available with less noise. Try channel 1, 3, 6, 9 and 11 in that order and make sure if you use omni directional antennas that they are on the same horizontal playfield, or at least have router/AP antenna at a higher point. If you have serious noise, you could try other region channels, such as European 12-15, but that might not be legal in your country, so check your local laws.

    But streaming HighDef over wireless is more about speed, it's about continuous speed. Interruptions no matter how short they are can lead to stuttering if the data transferred via buffer is not enough to keep playback going. This is especially an issue when a lot of B-frames are used, because much more data needs to be transferred then frame differences.

    Your 6-10Mbps is an average, but that could mean that on a 30 seconds HighDef trailer it is 10 seconds of 5Mbps, 5 seconds of 35Mbps at an intense action scene and another 15 seconds of 5Mbps. Average comes down to 10Mb then, but there will be stuttering at the scene that requires a burst of 35Mbps.

    You should be able to get 108Mbps out of WiFi.N even under bad situations. In some cases it will require buying some dBa boosting antennas if there are a lot of walls and such, but usually with channel selection and antenna positioning you can reach it.

    Otherwise run a 100/1000Mbps wired connection, or stick to Standard Definition :cool:
     

    jacc1234

    Portal Pro
    April 11, 2008
    167
    7
    Ok I would like to clarify a few things. First off 300Mb is the theoretical max speed. If you look at comprehensive benchmarks of N Routers from somewhere like smallnetbuilder even the best routers like the one I have ;) usually max out at around 80Mb of actual throughput.

    The rate I specified are not the connection rate which displays 150 to 200Mb but the actual rate I see when testing large file transfers. It corresponds to around 4-5MB/s which is ample for most of the movies I have. The one I am watching now is as I said averaging about 6Mb which is .75 MB/s.

    This leaves me with a ton of headroom and shouldn't be an issue, I have been watching it for 45min without a single hitch or stutter.

    I will probably end up running my CAT6 this weekend but there is no reason this shouldn't work in MP as this is not really a network issue. The only thing I can figure is that there is some kind of substantial overhead involved with playing these files in MP but if I watch the throughput during playback its not different then when being played in MPC.

    Check out this link for more info about the actual speeds seen on N routers:
    http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_wireless/Itemid,200
     

    RoChess

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    Ok I would like to clarify a few things. First off 300Mb is the theoretical max speed. If you look at comprehensive benchmarks of N Routers from somewhere like smallnetbuilder even the best routers like the one I have ;) usually max out at around 80Mb of actual throughput.

    The rate I specified are not the connection rate which displays 150 to 200Mb but the actual rate I see when testing large file transfers. It corresponds to around 4-5MB/s which is ample for most of the movies I have. The one I am watching now is as I said averaging about 6Mb which is .75 MB/s.

    This leaves me with a ton of headroom and shouldn't be an issue, I have been watching it for 45min without a single hitch or stutter.

    I will probably end up running my CAT6 this weekend but there is no reason this shouldn't work in MP as this is not really a network issue. The only thing I can figure is that there is some kind of substantial overhead involved with playing these files in MP but if I watch the throughput during playback its not different then when being played in MPC.

    Check out this link for more info about the actual speeds seen on N routers:
    Wireless / Wi-Fi Performance Comparison Charts - [Open Air] 2.4 GHz Downlink Average Throughput - SmallNetBuilder

    I've streamed 16.8GB MKV file with a duration of 1h24m with 25Mbps 1080p H.264 and 2976Kbps DTS-MA fine over WiFi.N in MediaPortal without a problem. Infact little less extreme files (1080p and 720p) play fine over WiFi.G as in 54Mbps wireless speeds. So the fact they don't work for you made me think the problem for you lied with network. But could be many other things as well, I've tweaked a lot on my OS and MediaPortal.

    I use MPC-HC myself a lot as well, to test things out, because in the end MediaPortal setup uses the exact same codecs (standalone filters of MPC). So I guess you run something different. Try updating your system otherwise with the MPC-HC v1.4.2499.0 Standalone filters otherwise, because I noticed improvements in MediaPortal on my end.

    PS: I've worked with about 17 different N routers, owned 2 different ones myself, and a constant 18MB/s (that is 144Mbps) has never been a problem. So I don't know what you call 'best', but if 80Mbps is the best you got our of yours I rather stick with the cheap Asian crappy ones I use. I'm actually back on a 54Mbps router myself right now, because I needed dd-wrt, so my Netgear WiFi.N is sitting in the corner.

    Plan to get this one soon to solve problem and get dd-wrt with WiFi.N -- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833162031
     

    jacc1234

    Portal Pro
    April 11, 2008
    167
    7
    You must have a great setup because you are blowing away any benchmark I have ever seen, especially with the cheap asian routers. I am running DD-WRT on my N router now and am thinking about doing some more tests with stock to make sure its not an issue with that.

    I looked at that exact router, and was torn between it and the one I got. I ended up going with a dual band to give the 5Ghz spectrum a chance. I knew that it dropped off quickly but figured it would be fun to test. I have tested with both and I get aprox the same speed with 2.4 or 5. The 5gz signal is much weaker so im sure if I was closer I would get a nice bump.

    I am actually using FFDSHOW DXVA decoding filters in both MP and MPC-HC. I try and setup MPC to be as close to MP as possible for testing. Either way, we can argue about Wireless N throughput all day but I don't think its the issue in this case. If it was it shouldn't be possible to play the movie in any player. As you said, G speeds should be able to support it, I was getting 12-18Mb with my WRT54GTM before upgrading.

    If anyone else wants to chime in that would be great. I would love to hear from anyone that has a setup like this working.
     

    SiLenTYL

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    im using a 10/100 ethernet connection atm...got an electrician to come to my house and fit it between my 2 pcs on opposite sides of the coz wireless was garbage ..lol
     

    Larzon

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    Try updating your system otherwise with the MPC-HC v1.4.2499.0 Standalone filters otherwise, because I noticed improvements in MediaPortal on my end.
    Curious how you do that. Does it involve installation of MPC-HC, or do you download (or extract?) standalone filters. Do you unregister the originals and then register the new ones manually?
     

    RoChess

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  • March 10, 2006
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    Curious how you do that. Does it involve installation of MPC-HC, or do you download (or extract?) standalone filters. Do you unregister the originals and then register the new ones manually?

    When a filter uses the same hooks, you can just overwrite the AX files in question. If they are in use you will get an overwrite warning, so just be sure to close any DirectX application. And in worst case you can re-register them. Remember to get the 32-bit MPC-HC Standalone filters, because MediaPortal itself is 32-bit and can't communicate with 64-bit filters (if u got a 64-bit OS).

    You can download the 'Standalone Filters' individually from the Sourceforce website, you get a zip file with a bunch of AX filters.

    The only filter of importance is "MPCVideoDec.ax", but you might want to use their splitters as well such as "MatroskaSplitter.ax" (unless you rely on haali). Also you might want to to use a tool such as "DirectShow Filter Manager" to make sure that the default settings are optimized.

    For example to force DXVA you should use the following adjustments:

    MPC.Video.png


    Enjoy.

    I am actually using FFDSHOW DXVA decoding filters in both MP and MPC-HC. I try and setup MPC to be as close to MP as possible for testing. Either way, we can argue about Wireless N throughput all day but I don't think its the issue in this case. If it was it shouldn't be possible to play the movie in any player. As you said, G speeds should be able to support it, I was getting 12-18Mb with my WRT54GTM before upgrading.

    The wireless speed depends on a lot of factors, I'm on European channels (screw the FCC) to avoid issues from neighbours radios and used special Linux tools to tweak my antenna positioning to get the best setup (seeing the raw dB value helps). Also my own home situation is thin no-concrete walls with no electrical wiring in the wireless path (Line of sight through walls). Also I'm using a quality NIC with 6dBi omni directional triple antenna ($9.99 Rosewill special at newegg, shows as $11.99 now) setup which are aligned with routers antennas to get maximum MIMO throughoutput.

    But I remember a lot of issues messing with FFDSHOW via MPC-HC to get Dolby-HD and DTS-MA to work via HDMI bitstreaming (beta7 is still the only way to get that to work in my experience), eventually I had to disable FFDSHOW for everything except the audio parts that I needed. So now that you finally indicate you are running a weird MPC-HC setup it explains a lot more.
     

    jacc1234

    Portal Pro
    April 11, 2008
    167
    7
    I got my wireless speeds up to 60Mb now but HD playback still dies within a few seconds. Im getting CAT6 installed tomorrow which will hopefully clear up this issue. I can easily push 30MB/s from my NAS over Gigabit so if I still have issues it must be related to something else.

    If I still run into problems I will try to switch back to the MPC-HC filters. Im still perplexed because MPC-HC is using FFDShow filters just like MP.
     

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