PMS >1.54 CPU cycles to 100%, mkv playback stopping near EOF

[justmatt]

Intel E8400 4.02 GHz OC, 4GB RAM, Win7 64-bit running PMS 1.54.0 Build: 37c80caa1 (2012-06-25)
Renderer is a PS3 connected via wire through a ubee DDW3611 integrated cable modem/router, transcoding through MEncoder

Hey, I've been poking around here for a couple hours, and the only issue I've seen that resembles my issue is this one, PMS 1.53.0 Playback Stopping Near End of File, but the issues there seem different from mine. I'm also seeing playback freeze near the end of some files, with a concurrent spike in CPU usage. It will bump along for most of the show at 5-25%, and then about 5-6 minutes from the end, it will jump to a solid and steady 50%, and then almost exactly 4 minutes from the end (+/- ~5 seconds in every case), the CPU will jump to 100% and stay there for the rest of the file, even staying at 100% after I exit back to my directory listing. It will stay at 100% until I select and start a different file or until 2-4 minutes have elapsed.

On the files where this happens, occasionally the playback will pause and resume once or twice in that last 4 minutes, but much more often, it will play normally until 10-20 seconds from the end, then freeze. The behavior at this point varies. Sometimes it just stays frozen, sometimes it will restart for a few seconds and stop again, and sometimes it will jump backwards by some random interval (I've seen anywhere from 5 seconds to 4 minutes) and play from there. The one thing they all have in common is playback will not continue automatically to the next file in the directory when this occurs, neither is using the "next" button effective. You must exit back to the directory list manually.

The only other detail I can add is it is not necessary to "play through" to see this CPU usage behavior. If I jump ahead to 5-6 minutes from EOF, the usage goes to the 50% mark, and if I jump ahead to <4 minutes from EOF, the usage immediately goes to and remains at the 100% level.

For the attached file, my actions and observations were as follows:
23:16:29 Start Fringe.S04E17 (running time 43:14)
23:17:19 Jump to 38:00 in file
23:17:34 CPU usage to ~50% and steady
23:18:32 CPU usage to 100% (39:12 running time)
23:22:21 Playback freeze (42:59 running time)
23:22:42 Playback started, played for 1 second, stopped again
23:23:08 Exit S04E17 to directory listing
23:25:13 Return to normal idle CPU (has maintained 100% cycle since 23:18:32)
23:25:50 Start Fringe.S04E18
23:26:50 Exit S04E18 to directory listing
23:26:55 Shut down PS3 Media Server

I ran mencoder into an mpg as per the instructions in the thread linked above, and both the original mkv and the output mpg played correctly all the way to the end in VLC on my PC. I can copy the output text here if you'd like, but this post is already way too long. Sorry about that.

[Clumpco]

I am getting exactly the same behaviour, started with 1.53.0.
Yesterday it managed to hang mencoder permanently with one core at 100%.
It seems to happen with a great majority of MKV files.

[melr00k]

I am having a similar problem. It stops playback at the end of the file and will not play the next file in the sequence in the folder. Even if I exit out of the file and manually start the next one it won't play. I have to quit and restart the application after each file. This started w/ 1.53.0. Only on .mkv files and unlike the above poster the playback is close enough to the end of the file that there is nothing left to view in it so I can muddle through, it's just that I have to get up and restart the application.

Can't find any one else with exactly the same problem so I was thinking it was my PC. (don't know much about computers)

Windows Vista 64 is the OS I have.

[justmatt]

Just updated to 1.70 today, from 1.52.1, to see if this issue is fixed. It is not. CPU cycles still spike to 100% at almost exactly 4 minutes from the end of the mkv file, and the playback freezes entirely at 10-20 seconds from the end.

As before, reverting to 1.52.1, as that is the last release that I have found to successfully play mkv files to their end.

[OrionPax]

I am also having the exact same issue on PMS 1.54.0

[lanky71]

I've had the same issue for ages and finally last week made a post in the bug report, so star it so it gets more attention:
https://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserve ... &start=300