Stuttering when streaming from NAS

[vsdagama]

Hey guys,

I have just wired up my home and got everything in 1 network.
But when I try to playback a movie from the NAS to the mediaplayer, I experience some slight stuttering, which I want to take care of.

Here is my setup:
ISP modem + router (192.168.0.1)
=>
Dlink DIR 655 (192.168.1.1)
=>
2 desktop pc's
NAS: Synology DS413j
Media player: Xtreamer Sidewinder 3
(wireless) 2/3 laptops, 2/3 phones, tablet, printer.

First I had the Xtreamer connected via wifi (Terrible stutters, second long delays, unwatchable)
Then I tried a powerline adapter (still long pauzes, not a pleasure to watch)
So now I ran a cat5e to the living room. It is much better, I can watch everything no problem, but when I really pay attention I can see some very smalls stuttering, which I would like to dissapear.

Here are some possible causes I'm thinking about:
1. I "made" the cat5e myself, first timer. Maybe I did it wrong? connectors not done well?
=> can I test the signal quality of the cable with a certain application on a laptop?
2. Could it be the DIR 655 can't handle the load?
(all devices aren't active at thesame time, I just tested while only the mediaplayer and the nas were "active" on the network, same result)
3. Would it help if I place all the wires currently routed to the D-link DIR 655 on a D-Link DGS-108 gigabit switch I have laying around, running that with a single wire into the DIR 655?
4. What are jumbo frames / MTU and those things? Can it help turning that on on the NAS etc?

Thanks! 😉

 

[smitbret]

Your router and NAS are certainly not the problem. It's doubtful that the cable is bad since you say you can watch a movie over the wired connection relatively smoothly.

I'm not very familiar with your Media Streamer. Have tried putting one of the problem movies on a flash drive or external HDD and playing it back that way. I am almost wondering if it is a fps issue with your media streamer or TV.

Even a Blu-Ray rip is gonna max out less than 50mbps, well within the capabilities of that router and any CAT5 cable.

 

[vsdagama]

I'll go on and test a bit later today.

- Playback the movie from usb directly in TV
- Playback from mediaplayer's own hard disk
- Playback on pc over network from nas

I already determined it isn't the source file (stutter didn't reappear when I rewinded a certain part of the movie)

Test 1:

When copying the movie (8gb) to my pc from the nas I get a speed of 30-54 mbps. Starting at 54 but sometimes even down to 30, most of the time 35 MB/s...

Could this be it?

How can I see what bandwith the movie needs?

While playing back the movie on my pc, the nas is showing a disk/volume read of 800kb-1.2MB/s and a network usage of 800kb-1.2MB/s aswell.

Movie specs are:
Batman: The Dark Knight
(BluRay) .mkv 8 Gb
overall bit rate: 7441 Kbps (5850 Kbps video, 1510 Kbps sound)

 

[smitbret]

I'm having to decipher your numbers. Seems that you are confusing mbps with MB/s and a spread of 800kb-1.2MB/s is huge.

 

[smitbret]

A blu-ray rip maxes out at roughly 45mbps which is roughly the same as 5.6MB/s. Gigabit ethernet has a theoretical cap of 1000mbps.

 

[smitbret]

It sounds like there could be a problem with the cable itself between the NAS and the media streamer. The speed you are getting when you transferred from the PC to the NAS seems reasonable and far more than enough for playback so your NAS, router and cabling between the router and PC are fine.

I don't see any use for a switch to resolve this situation.

Did you disable the wireless connection to the media streamer after wiring everything in? I used to field really similar questions a few years back with people streaming to PS3. The PS3 wouldn't automatically detect the cable after you plugged it in and would still be trying to stream over the wireless connection even though there was a Cat5 cable plugged into the ethernet port. Pete didn't realize that you had to go into the menus and change the connection type manually.

 

[vsdagama]

The streamer's menu is very clear, it's OR wireless OR wired, and I'm currently on wired.
If it was wireless I would notice, it would skip literally seconds while watching a movie

So, you're suggesting the cable between the router and the mediaplayer (which is the one I made myself).
How can I test the cables integrity for example with a laptop? Are there apps for that?

I'm thinking a different route. (since I could also notice some smaaaall hickups when watching on my pc) (mind I appear to be very sensitive to those things, also when I'm gaming for example, it's irritating..)
Could it be the NAS is too slow to deliver the blueray?
You are talking about +- 45mbps required, the nas can only copy a single big file at around 35 mbps average...
How can I know what mbps is required for the specific movie I'm testing? I only know the bitrate (7441 kb/s) and while the NAS is streaming that specific file, it's telling my the network bandwith usage and the data read speeds which are both around 750KB/S - 1.2 MB/S, which I find weird numbers.

 

[smitbret]

A NAS copying only 35mbps is a broken NAS since that is equal to only about 4MB/s. I really think you are confusing bits and bytes.

1MB/s = 8mb/s = 8000kb/s

That means that even if your NAS can only transfer 5MB/s, you should have enough to stream an uncompressed Blu-Ray rip.
Most likely, when you are saying your NAS can only do 35mbps, you actually mean 35MB/s which is about right for an inexpensive consumer grade NAS and is plenty fast for what we are talking about.

Just out of curiosity are you just streaming the network share with the file on it or are you using something like Plex?

 

[vsdagama]

I was indeed mixing it all up

You mentioned a blue-ray could need around 45MB/s and since my consumer-grade NAS does only 30-35 on average, that could explain the small stutters, doesn't it?

I'm just reading the files via the media player's interface, nothing like NFS or DLNA or those things. Don't know what plex is, will look it up.

*edit: Still confused.. 😛

So I read somewhere on the net that a blueray would need about 55 megabit per second.
This translates to 6,88 megabyte per second I believe.
So when my NAS can transfer files at about 30-35 megabyte per second, it means it could stream around 4-5 blueray streams at thesame time? :O

In that case the NAS clearly isn't the problem, but indeed I should look deeper into the mediaplayer.

 

[smitbret]

Plex is software that is used to stream media from a NAS or PC to other devices like an Xbox, PS3, etc. Sometimes it will transcode video files to make sure they are in the right format for playback on whatever device they are sending it to and if the CPU in the NAS/PC isn't powerful enough to transcode it as fast as it plays back then you will get pauses, stuttering, etc.

Blu-Ray rips max out at 45mbps.

35MB/s = 280mbps. Your NAS is plenty fast. If you are transferring from the NAS through your router to another PC at that speed, then the issue isn't your router or the cables in that line, either.

It may be a setting in your xtreamer, too. I know when I had my WDTV Live set for playback at 24fps and I would try to playback video files with a variable frame rate, the picture would get stuttery and look odd. No one else in the house noticed or complained about it, but it drove me nuts. I would seriously try to connect an HDD or flash drive to the Xtreamer and see if it happens when you remove the network from the equation.