PMS and Vista Ultimate 64 network issues.

[Fifty]

Hello, I would like to start by saying thank you very much for the best media server created for the PS3, hands down.

I've been running PMS on XP 32bit for quite some time now without any problems what so ever, I've been able to throw pretty much anything at it and it has never complained. 1080p mkv + srt, DivX, and ISO, everything has worked flawlessly. But then I went and did something stupid. I got a license for Vista from my job and I thought to myself, what the heck, lets try it out.

Now things don't work so well anymore. I can play DivX without any problems but when it comes to MKV it just wont function properly. First of all it takes some time between pressing play until anything at all happens. When something happens it's usually just a line of subtitles from somewhere far into the movie. In some cases I get image but its stuttering very badly, then just freezes and then "fastforwards". When I look at my network traffic I notice that its not a nice flow of traffic, rather sending at about 70Mbits/s for a short time then a complete stop and then the same thing all over again.

I also get a lot of DLNA errors since my emmigration to Vista 64.

Im using a wired connection between the computer and the D-Link router and also wire from the router to the PS3. This has never been an issue before.

Excuse my english, its not my native language as you might have guessed by now, hopefully you understand what I mean anyways =)

Any ideas?

[shagrath]

I also get a lot of DLNA errors since my emmigration to Vista 64.

I guess we need to start there... someone found this command helpful a few days ago, you can try:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

[Fifty]

Thank you very much for the reply, unfortunately it didnt solve my problem. Although I havent seen the DLNA error messages all that often this evening. On the other hand I get the 80710092 error code quite frequently. Any more guesses?

[Fifty]

I think I have found the problem, or at least a large part of it. When I start a movie (in this case a 1080p mkv) the buffer doesn't get a chance to build up. If I pause the movie however and let the buffer build up the movie runs fine after that.

The next question is why isn't the buffer building up properly. I've got an Intel Quad 8200 working at about 30% while transcoding. Why isnt the processor working harder if it cant keep up? If I look at my processor usage I can see that its really only one of the cores that is working, the other three are pretty much idle. This was never an issue on XP 32. I tried to turn of Superfetch in case it had something to do with that, but it made no difference. I have only been using Vista 64 for a couple of days so I really need help here.

Any ideas? Has anyone experienced something similar? Anyone running PMS on Vista x64 without issues?

[Garwalde]

Increase video quality settings in Common settings and set a lower bandwidth
limit until you find a setting that works for you, or just lower bandwidth until
you hit a magic spot.

[jamesdean]

I am using Vista x64 and have no issues. I am using a Netgear acces point in combination with the bridge. ( 5 GHZ ) and I must say that it is working great wireless. Quality settings are set to best quality, and my max bandwidth is set to 50 Mbits/sec ( sometimes it will pass the 50 Mbits up to 70-80 and that is no problem, when I set max bandwidth higher it will go up to 100 Mbits and that I will get the stuttering.Transcode buffer to 90 MB. My PC system is Quad Core 6600 with 4 GB internal memory. I hope you will solve the issue. For me the PMS is a great program and thank the guy who made this possible.Also the frequently made updates are great.

Cheers!
James

[Fifty]

Hmm, seems like "Enhanced multicore support for H264" did the trick. Now all cores are sharing the load equally. And total CPU usage tops at about 70% initially when I start a movie, then drops down to about 30% when the buffer has filled up a bit. Sweet! But my old files wich I converted to .m2ts (before I found PMS) dont seem to play right at all, they are fastforwarding. I cant remember them doing that with previous versions of PMS, but then I used XP 32 when I played them last time. Has it got something to do with PMS or Vista x64?

Since the .m2ts files didn't funktion properly I reverted back to "Enhanced multicore support for H264" unchecked just to see if that was the problem. It wasnt, the .m2ts files still didnt work but the odd thing is that I can now play 1080p mkvs without any problems even though the Multicore support is now turned off. I just dont get this, I feel very confused.

[Garwalde]

DId you completly restart PMS after those changes? I've had issues with settings
not changing if I don't restart PMS.

[jamesdean]

Hmm, seems like "Enhanced multicore support for H264" did the trick. Now all cores are sharing the load equally. And total CPU usage tops at about 70% initially when I start a movie, then drops down to about 30% when the buffer has filled up a bit. Sweet! But my old files wich I converted to .m2ts (before I found PMS) dont seem to play right at all, they are fastforwarding. I cant remember them doing that with previous versions of PMS, but then I used XP 32 when I played them last time. Has it got something to do with PMS or Vista x64?

Since the .m2ts files didn't funktion properly I reverted back to "Enhanced multicore support for H264" unchecked just to see if that was the problem. It wasnt, the .m2ts files still didnt work but the odd thing is that I can now play 1080p mkvs without any problems even though the Multicore support is now turned off. I just dont get this, I feel very confused.

I have enabled the multicore support and the fixed up some issues comparing to earlier relseases....
Good luck!

[Fifty]

Yes I pretty much always restart PMS whenever I make changes. Except for adding directories and such.

Since I changed to Vista everything seems to be so random. I've been struggling for hours to make things work properly without success (including restarts). Then turned off the computer, went to work, came back 9 hours later and the all of a sudden things suddenly work just as I want them to. These things are always network related, like PMS and uTorrent. Networking went from bad to worse when migrating from XP to Vista. If it wasnt for the gameoholic in me I would only use Debian.

Is PMS supposed to support the .m2ts file format or am I only being confused?