MKV Over LAN From Shared Folder

[Kismet101]

I would like to watch my movies over a private LAN. I began with a few standard def movies using .mkv with h264. My settings for handbrake ordinarily consist of: automatic crop; loose anamorphic; detelecine; decomb; h264; fps same as source; cq of 64; automatic audio source; 3 ref. frames; mixed ref.; 3 b-frame; spatial; weighted b-; pyramidal b-; uneven multi; 32 motion est.; 9 subpix; all analys; 8x8; deblock -2 & -1; trellis 1; no pskip; no dct; cabac. No chapter settings. format set to MKV. I'm not worried about space obviously. The standard def plays over the network from a shared folder without a hitch. I normally watch via WMP or VLC, but also have Arcsoft Total Media(for Bluray/HDDVD play its awesome). The issue began with 2 hd movie attempts. The files were done through RipBot264. I used RipBot264 v1.13.3. Profile is set to High; CQ Mode set at 18(listed as the highest quality setting for CQ from information I've found); copystream audio, and the only property change is autocrop on. When either of 2 different movies are played on the host pc the playback is great. When played from secondary machine movies begin great, but several minutes into the film the audio becomes out of sync with video. In both instances the audio is ahead of the video after the same point in the film on nearly every attempt. I had no luck using Handbrake on these movies, but tsMuxeR gave me the same result from .ts files. I don't think it's the app, but I'm trying to rule out through elimination. My OS is Vista Ultimate 64. The file is shared from an EVGA 780i, Core2Duo 6300 overclocked to 3.1 and 2x2 ram. Secondary pc is Winfast 939, AMD FX 4200, 4x1 ram; also running Vista 64. I initially had an ASUS 4350 in the 939 because of the native hdmi, but the entire system seemed hurt by this card and was swapped with a 7900gtx previously in the EVGA. The 7900 gave local play everything it needed, but did not change the hd mkv play via network. Both machines have the same codecs as follows: AviSynth 2.57; ffdshow 2647; Haali Media Splitter. I haven't pulled the files onto the other machine yet to try local play. 17gb and 12gb will take a while to move, but that is next on the list. The Winfast worked fine playing bluray disc and hddvd via ggc-h20l. My big question is it the files, the network, or something I'm missing? I'm pretty new at this, but I've been able to stumble on the right advice and information along the way. Watching over a wired network seemed pretty straight forward to me, but I have found this to be incorrect at this point. The "network" in question is just a 5 port 10/100 Fast Ethernet switch I found in my basement. Only the 2 pc's occupy the space. The switch is only used to share between the two computers and no internet is shared. If this problem has already been posted I would appreciate a link or direction. After looking at a few hundred posts that even remotely appeared related I have grown despondent. I've watched vlc while media information is up and there is a huge difference between the input stream bitrate of the hd and sd files, so I tried upping the cache without an acceptable improvement. In WMP I changed the buffer to 15s, and even selected "drop frame to keep audio..." at one point but no change. Is there something wrong with my files or is my connection not capable of what I'm asking it to do?

[J_Darnley]

GAH! How about some paragraphs.

It sounds like your other PC just isn't fast enough to play the HD videos. Are the 1080p videos or did you resize them when you encoded them? If the network was the limiting factor then the player should pause while it waits for more data. Also, does your network run at 10 or 100 Mbit/s? At 100 it should be fine for transporting the videos but at 10 it might struggle in some places on some videos.

[Kismet101]

Sorry about the length, and sentencing. I had an issue while typing and while dealing my machine went to sleep, so I had to start over.

Any way, my DU meter shows a file transfer of 98.5 Mbps. While trying to watch a movie on the other hand DU only shows around 25 Mbps. WMP shows much less upload versus XBMC though, 112 to 156 kbps and 112 to 256(these numbers are on the 'ish side). After watching the same thing happen, trying VLC to verify numbers just didn't make the to do list. I honestly don't know what I'm doing and probably have no business trying.

The Winfast is capable of running 1080p content. I know its an older board(dinosaur old, not moon old), but I have been able to watch these same movies from the blurays and hddvds they originate from without trouble. I also tried the mkv files today and they play just as they should when played off the hdd in the machine. When I started this quest for a more flexible container the Winfast was my main machine. My best man was making a change over from the 780i and after some issues with parts I ended up with an awesome board and an old mule. So it went from waiting days(more than one) to get BBC's Planet Earth (hddvd) into mkv to just a while.

Could this be happening because I am trying to play an intensive file while pulling a large amount through the network? Would changing the audio put less strain on the pcu while watching? Each file only contains one audio stream, but the settings are keeping the audio quality. I don't particularly want to downmix, but this is irritating me. I know I could obviously just move the source hdd to the Winfast, but the Winfast is a secondary machine and I'd rather not have to leave it on when it's not necessary.

On an off note, this site is awesome. I would never have gotten this far if it weren't for the diligence that so many other people have put towards this stuff, and the folks willing to put effort into some great open source software.

[Kismet101]

I'm still at it. I started from the beginning with one movie, but this time I set the audio mix to 5.1 aac 320k abr instead of x.x copy stream. This is still using RipBot264. The a/v is worse. Not only is the audio ahead of the video, it is happening right from the beginning along with severe stuttering and pausing in both audio & video. Before the video pausing was slight, and with this movie in particular barely noticed. If the audio ever paused before I never noticed or didn't preview far enough into it.

I've gone back, and since HandBrake seems to not like working with the few bluray I have, using TSmuxeR and remuxed it to a file HandBrake will use. In Handbrake I'm using the settings previously mentioned, but set the audio to downmix to ProLogic running at 256k. HandBrake has listed a rediculous amount of time to complete, so I won't be able to test it for a while.

I'm dead set on getting this to work. It has to be some limitation in the network or a combination of the network and the Winfast. The Winfast alone will play this movie from the disc, and off the hdd, but just won't pull a 1080 file instead of a standard def. The sad thing is I'm sure once it's all said and done I'll be the only one in the house to watch these.

[Kismet101]

Now that an obscene amount has past I must apologize for so late a response. Well, my issue was in fact the amount of processor needed to pull the hd file through my network + watch it. The Athlon was able to convert(slowly) and play a hd file from a mounted drive, but not streamed. Thank you J_Darnley for your reply, and you were in part correct. The Winfast has now been put to pasture. Now that I've been down that path it's pretty obvious what the problem was, and it's funny how hobby of leisure has now become a poor paying job. I have been able to stream through my network with fewer and different problems since. I appreciate every group and individual who is out there burning the midnight oil or just killing some time for opensource and freeware or giving troubleshooting advice. Your efforts are invaluable.