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UHD video playback


ataylor

Question

I'm at a bit of a loss where to ask this question or what might be causing this but as it seems to be a file access problem and as folks around here are cluey on such things here it is..

When trying to play an UHD movie file (55gb file size for ~150min) from my drive pool across a network something can't keep up. I only get a handful of frames per minute and sound is broken or just lost. This behaviour is exhibited from both VLC on my PC (playing from a mapped network drive) or with a direct path from Kodi on my Android TV. When playing the file locally from a USB drive the movie works fine so the playback hardware can cope.

The file is stored on a 4tb WD Red drive and duplicated to another. I've tried with Network I/O Boost and Read Striping both enabled and disabled.

When playing the file, pool read speed jumps all over the place, generally between 1 MB/s - 7.5MB/s
If I copy the file from the network drive onto a local hard drive pool read speed is a solid 80MB/s - 90MB/s (drive read and network speeds seems fine in this case)

The next closest data point I've got is a 1080p movie file, 30gb for ~130min this plays just fine and read speed from the pool typically hovers quite nicely around 4MB/s - 5MB/s.

I'm at a loss as to what would cause this. Any suggestions? Tools that might help diagnose, things I should check etc?

Cheers,
Andrew

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Just to provide closure to this in case anyone comes across it in the future.

After upgrading some of my network gear I discovered that the port my 2017 model TV (Sony kd65x8500e for those playing along at home) was connected to was only operating at 100Mbps. After checking the spec. sheet I was bamboozled to discover that Sony's 4k smart android TV was designed/sold with a 100Mbps Ethernet port (in 2017!!) this is perhaps the single most baffling hardware decision I've ever seen from anyone. In any case I now have an Nvidia Shield connected and it plays everything just fine.

Nothing needed to change with my DrivePool configuration and I remain very happy with the software.

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To clarify, you're getting less than 10MB/s from the te pool, but 80+MB/s from a non-pooled disk? 

If so, then yeah, something is interfering.  My first guess is your antivirus software (or possibly a disk utility, such as an encryption program). 
Try uninstalling those and see if the problem persists. 

If it doesn't go away, then open a ticket here: https://stablebit.com/Contact, and run the StableBit Troubleshooter:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Troubleshooter

And try enabling file system logging, and reproduce the issue:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_2.x_Log_Collection

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Thanks Christopher,

4 hours ago, Christopher (Drashna) said:

To clarify, you're getting less than 10MB/s from the te pool, but 80+MB/s from a non-pooled disk? 

Both speeds quoted are from the drive pool, I'd expect a slower speed when 'playing' the file as the media players would only pull down what they need as they go. I was including the higher figure to show that the network, archive drives, system etc. could reach good speeds when just dumping the file across the network.

4 hours ago, Christopher (Drashna) said:

If so, then yeah, something is interfering.  My first guess is your antivirus software (or possibly a disk utility, such as an encryption program). 
Try uninstalling those and see if the problem persists. 

On the money here. I disabled Avast AV and the situation improved significantly. Files will now start playing instantly (where as previously it would be 30-60 sec before any action) but do still start struggling after a short while. After I uninstalled Avast to ensure it wasn't interfering at all and rebooted I've now got a drive failure to investigate before diagnosing this issue further. Will check in again when that is sorted.

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Figured that was the case.

And sorry to hear about the drive! 

 

Also, if/when you reinstall Avast, try excluding the pooled drives from Avast.  If that doesn't help, then try enabling the "Bypass file system filters" option (Manage Pool -> Performance -> Bypass file system filters), and see if that helps. 

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