Better performance for DLNA than NFS on B3

[AzP]

Hi guys

I recently got a Tvix HD Café player (little small round thing) and thought it was awesome compared to my Playstation (which can hardly play anything format-wise)! But when I tried watching a 720p MKV file it started lagging and stuttering, and I was afraid that I had just bought some utter crap that didn't have enough performance to play any HD movies (contrary to its name...)

After doing some debugging, by testing the playback from a USB-stick, I found that the playback is perfectly without stuttering, so the problem must be in the network. I have a Gigabit switch on my network, so the performance there shouldn't be an issue. I tried setting up NFS sharing on my desktop computer, and the same 720p file worked without stuttering or lagging video/audio there as well.

Well, I know that the B3 is a smaller beast than my Core i7, but I was hoping that it could still serve 720p files without problems. I have tried copying files from my computer to the B3 (of course) and also the other way around, and it seems to go at about 29-30 Mb/s over NFS mount. That feels like enough, doesn't it?

As a last resort, I tried the DLNA playback from the B3 (which I had rejected beforehand because I've read about it's poorer performance in comparison to NFS), and lo and behold, it worked like a charm! Even for 1080p!

So what can I do to improve the NFS performance? Or come to think of it, do you think it's the Tvix's NFS performance that needs to be tampered with? Perhaps mount-flags (async for instance, or using UDP protocol) or something else? The problem is that there are no NFS settings in the Tvix's UI.

[AzP]

Oh, by the way, my settings for NFS are:

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/home/user 	   192.168.0.0/24(rw,async,root_squash,no_subtree_check)
/home/storage 	192.168.0.0/24(rw,async,root_squash,no_subtree_check) 

[AzP]

I'm thinking about cranking up the read/writesize to 32768, but that will have to be tested tomorrow.

[DanielM]

I'm daily streaming 1080p from my B3 to my htpc over nfs without stuttering. Over wireless. So there must be a problem elsewhere. My nfs share looks like this:

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/home   192.168.0.0/16(rw,no_subtree_check,all_squash,anonuid=1001,anongid=100)

I don't remember doing any tampering with settings. One can never be sure though

/Daniel

[AzP]

The problem could be that I have a Tvix instead of a more powerful HTPC. Like I said above, streaming over NFS to my desktop computer from the B3 works flawlessly.

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NFS:  Bubba   -> Tvix    - Stutters
NFS:  Desktop -> Tvix    - OK
NFS:  Bubba   -> Desktop - OK
DLNA: Bubba   -> Tvix    - OK

It could also have something to do with Tvix's NFS setup (or firmware) but my friend is running NFS share from a Mac mini to his Tvix, and that also works perfectly.

[AzP]

Is there anyone from Excito that can answer if this is anything they have seen before? Any tips regarding NFS sharing specific for the B3? Where is the bottleneck (or where do you think it might be)? Should I increase buffer-size?

[6feet5]

Hi,

I don't know much about codecs and container formats, but here are a couple of questions that pop up.

1. Have you tried other files that use a different combination of container format vs codec?
2. Have you tried the same file(s) on your friends setup.
3. Are you running latest firmware on your TViX.

I have a TViX HD Café and seem to remember an issue with MKV files, but I can't remember what the problem was.

/Johan

[johannes]

Since NFS isn't a part of our normal image we don't test it regularly, and hence I really can't say why these problems occur. From what you report it seems to be a combination of setting problems in B3 and in twix, but your guess is just as good as mine there.. Sorry.

[AzP]

Thx guys, I'll continue testing to se if I can improve the performance. This week is vacation though, so no testing for now

[AzP]

1. Have you tried other files that use a different combination of container format vs codec?

Yes, DVD-rip (iso/VOB) or 720p avi-file is also lagging.

2. Have you tried the same file(s) on your friends setup.

No, but he says that both 720p/1080p files MKV files play smoothly on his setup.

3. Are you running latest firmware on your TViX.

Yes I am, I think it's 2.0.8.

I have a TViX HD Café and seem to remember an issue with MKV files, but I can't remember what the problem was.

Regarding your previous question I think I've seen discussions about MKV issues on older firmware versions, but that should be improved/fixed since a while back.

Can you play 720p/1080p MKV files from your Bubba on your TViX without issues over NFS or SAMBA?

[6feet5]

Hi,

I've retired my TViX, but I reconnected it and here are the result (using this 720p video for testing):
TViX - B3 over samba: No problems
TViX - B3 over NFS: No problems

Then I remembered having problems with mkv files on my desktop computer (a couple of years old but should perform ok) so I did the same test (video still on my B3):
mplayer over samba & NFS: video not so good, it appears to halt for short periods, but audio is perfect
vlc over samba & NFS: No problems, both video and audio are perfect.

/Johan

[AzP]

Hi,

I've retired my TViX, but I reconnected it and here are the result (using this 720p video for testing):
TViX - B3 over samba: No problems
TViX - B3 over NFS: No problems

Then I remembered having problems with mkv files on my desktop computer (a couple of years old but should perform ok) so I did the same test (video still on my B3):
mplayer over samba & NFS: video not so good, it appears to halt for short periods, but audio is perfect
vlc over samba & NFS: No problems, both video and audio are perfect.

/Johan

This sounds very interesting... So the 720p file was on your B3, shared via Samba/NFS in the first test as well? That is really weird, why should my B3/TVix combination stir up trouble when yours doesn't?
Are you using any special settings on your NFS share?

[Gordon]

Could this be of interest?

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 NFS servers

Ensure that your NFS server is running in 'async' mode (configured in /etc/exports). The default for many NFS servers is 'async', but recent versions of debian now default to 'sync', which can result in very low throughput and the dreaded "TFW, Error: Write() -- IOBOUND" errors. Example of setting async in /etc/exports:

/mnt/store      192.168.1.3/32(rw,async,udp)

[6feet5]

This sounds very interesting... So the 720p file was on your B3, shared via Samba/NFS in the first test as well? That is really weird, why should my B3/TVix combination stir up trouble when yours doesn't?
Are you using any special settings on your NFS share?

The TViX had no problems playing the 720p file on my B3, it worked fine via both samba and NFS. Only mplayer on my desktop computer had problems.

No special settings on my server:

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/home/storage 192.168.1.0/24(rw,async,root_squash,no_subtree_check)

Same as the ones you mentioned in your post above.

How are your units connected with each other? Have you tried temporarily connecting the TViX directly to your B3, or change what ever hardware there might be between the two?

/Johan

[AzP]

Could this be of interest?

Code: Select all

 NFS servers

Ensure that your NFS server is running in 'async' mode (configured in /etc/exports). The default for many NFS servers is 'async', but recent versions of debian now default to 'sync', which can result in very low throughput and the dreaded "TFW, Error: Write() -- IOBOUND" errors. Example of setting async in /etc/exports:

/mnt/store      192.168.1.3/32(rw,async,udp)

As you can see in my second post, I'm already running with the async flag on. But I will test with the UDP flag though, I thought that was on the client side, but if it works on server side it's great.