720p Streaming Issues on good system [fixed]

[killerwolf]

hello!
Problem; A couple of days ago a mate of mine introduced this imba software for me and showed it on TV that it could stream .mkv (720p files/1080p files) which i loved, since i've been waiting for some rocksolid stuff like this, and i hurried home to install it. Right of the bat i tried with wireless connection which i feared would be causing problem 'due to the crap actually being wireless. Yea, it did some staggering and a bit to much to be liveable so i went to bed and went to the shop today to pick up a 15m TP-cable. Now my baby is plugged into my router(which i suspect is a huge piece of crap.)

What's new? It didn't stagger in the beginnning, as a matter of fact it took decent time before it staggered ~6min into the movie instead of the very first big colored scene, did some random changing to like transcode buffer max size 600/"Enhanced multicore support for H264 HD content".. and some other stuff, didn't get much better and did some other random stuff and then i eventually changed it back when i've spoken to my friend who said he had not changed anything at all.

did some forumsearching and found some sweet changes to apply like putting a cap on "Maximum bandwith in Mbit/s" to 30 (deafault :0) and putting the AC3 Audio bitrate to 384 and also audio channels to 2channels stereo since alot of threads implied that the posters of those threads ROUTER might be giving them hard time when it's set to "0".

What happened? It worked for alot longer time !.. seem'ed to be fixed and i was wheeling back and forth in my apartment of happiness when it once again staggered at random places in my 'good will hunting' movie... MEH!!!!! (altho it made it pass all the other scenes that have been causing problem before..)

I'm out of ideas so im asking you guys if you got any good ideas... I still think it is my router, but i hope there was a godly setting i could use that don't force me to buy a new one... like putting Mbit to 69,7508 and 384 with enhanced multicore support or something....

Quick introduction on my system;

Intel Quad 660(2,4ghz) running at 2,7 ghz (300x9).. stable
4 gig memory, ~3,25 physical avaible after gfx card steals away some
GFX is ASUS 8800 GTS yadayada card

im running this on a win XP professional with service pack 2 (yea im lazy)

Router is a Netgear ”WGR614v6”.

Overall my PC is healthy, with low cpu temps and such since i got a monstrous schyte mounted on it and I hardly feel that it can be my PC that is to slow to transcode 720p when P4's almost can do 1080p's.
My playstation 3 is updated with the latest online firmware and i haven't been pounding on it with a jackhammer so can't be that either imo.


ROUTER IS THE EVIL? OR IS IT?

help !

/robert, sweden

[killerwolf]

For what it's worth, it hardly never staggers in the beginning of a movie, like if i stop the film when it staggers to dump the buffer status and then starts it again from the same spot it doesn't stagger until some time after,.. it dead certain to start to stagger when i have "capped" the buffer status after some time watching a movie...

dunno if it's just me.. Tried with 50 mbit / 600 megabyte maximum size on transcode buffer.... 2 channel stereo / 384 bitrate.. woth enhanced multicore support... didn't help

[meskibob]

If both your PC and your PS3 are wired to the router with Cat5/5e/6 cable, then you can increase the max bandwidth setting to your router's max 100mpbs (say 90mbps for safe measure). However, if you did use Cat5, you should bump that up to Cat5e as it has several other benefits over Cat5 besides the overall throughput increase.

[killerwolf]

If both your PC and your PS3 are wired to the router with Cat5/5e/6 cable, then you can increase the max bandwidth setting to your router's max 100mpbs (say 90mbps for safe measure). However, if you did use Cat5, you should bump that up to Cat5e as it has several other benefits over Cat5 besides the overall throughput increase.

Both the cables are CAT6.

[meskibob]

I guess it's time to post the debug.log (found in the application directory). You can attach it here if it is zipped.

[tongkk]

What is your vesion of PMS ? I only have a smooth play back in version 1.03 only , all other version (from 1.04 to 1.10.5) The later the vesrion, the ,more frequent of studdering . May be you downgrade to 1.03 to see dosen't it improve . If it does, then upgrade the PMS vesion one by one until studdering occur !

[killerwolf]

What is your vesion of PMS ? I only have a smooth play back in version 1.03 only , all other version (from 1.04 to 1.10.5) The later the vesrion, the ,more frequent of studdering . May be you downgrade to 1.03 to see dosen't it improve . If it does, then upgrade the PMS vesion one by one until studdering occur !

i'll try this when I get back in action. Gonna post a debug log,... is it the "traces log"...? I'll post it in a few hours,.. thanks for the quick responses and help =)

[meskibob]

Gonna post a debug log,... is it the "traces log"...?

It's not the trace; it's the full log in the application directory (eg C:\Program Files\PS3 Media Server\debug.log)

[Topguy]

Just some hints on what to look for when stuttering starts.

* Keep an eye on status-tab in PMS, both cache status and bitrate.
* Press [select] and watch the bit rate reported by the PS3.
* Open task-manager and watch for "mencoder" and "TsMuxer" processes, and their CPU usage.

There are some other "mencoder" parameters which I think have better impact on bandwith usage.
I dont remember exactly what its called but its a big (wide) pulldown menu under "mencoder" transcoding settings.

[killerwolf]

I did some changes last night,.. and went to bed, defragging my harddrives and leaving Ps3mediaserver up...
(changed bandwidth to 90 on the router as someone suggested... since 30/50/60 might not be enough for some parts/movies and the fact that my router SHOULD be able to do 100 since its not THAT old and 90 is just for precaution.

guess what,.. it works now, ive watched a full lengthing 1080p ironman without staggering, watched 80% of my nemenis movie good will hunting, even watched a bit of 12 monkeys army 1080p...

this software rocks, thanks all, i will change my topic to fixed now, altho' im not sure how it's fixed, but it was 100% certain a routerproblem imo, i guess moderators can go in and change if they spot other possible stuff.