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All I want is to play backups. Why is this so hard?

1918 Views 22 Replies 14 Participants Last post by taz291819, Aug 14, 2021

Phytonic13

Discussion Starter · Jul 25, 2021

I have three rooms, all with their own setups. Nvidia shield pro, running kodi, with external hard drives. Each room serves a different purpose so the media content varies. I've searched and tried every setting I could find, but my playback never runs smoothly. Frame drops, stutters, skips. I've been trying to get it correct for a long time and I'm at the point of spending any amount to get a working media player. Yet I've read my complaint on many reviews of other devices. I'm also willing to pay someone who can get kodi running smoothly for me. Are there any players that are flawless at playback? I'd just like it to run like watching a disc does.

1 - 20 of 23 Posts

davidlem

· #2 · Jul 25, 2021

I have a single fairly low-power PC in one location on wired 1Gbps ethernet running Plex capable of serving any content to any destination, inside the house or streamed over the internet, without hiccups. That's not to say I am the only person satisfied with their configuration, but to mention the possibility that you're having an issue unrelated to your specefic device/software combinations. There could be any number of variables from wiring faults to wireless interference, disk performance to data corruption. i.e. maybe the car runs fine, but you're driving on a bumpy road and no amount of changing tires and suspension is going to fully solve for the surface irregularities.

Can you tell us more?

Phytonic13

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 25, 2021

I'd love to discus this more. I'm just not sure what to add. I've seen many people in other forums complaining about this issue. It seems 24 fps is the culprit and even though correctly set in kodi, I still get jutters, skips, and frame drops randomly. Sometimes it'll play smoothly and out of nowhere it starts to hiccup. I love the look of kodi and how it functions. It's perfect for what I'm looking for. Just can't seem to make it run mkv backups as if I was watching the disc. I'm considering getting the zapitti pro but am reading this has the same playback issue.

Gundamexia

· #4 · Jul 26, 2021

You can consider zidoo Z9X media player that can match frame rate. Make sure your devices are connected via Gigabit lan for best results. Good luck

Reactions: 1

Dr.OP

· #5 · Jul 26, 2021

Did you try VLC?

Just to be clear you have HDD plugged into you shield. Is it correct?

What file system do you use on your HDD?

Phytonic13

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jul 26, 2021

Dr.OP said:
Did you try VLC?

Just to be clear you have HDD plugged into you shield. Is it correct?

What file system do you use on your HDD?

Yes. Hard drives are connected directly. The format is ntfs and the files are direct 1:1 backups of tv show, movies ranging from 480p to 4k. Full lossless audio is being played which is why I need kodi.

Dr.OP

· #7 · Jul 26, 2021

Phytonic13 said:
Yes. Hard drives are connected directly. The format is ntfs and the files are direct 1:1 backups of tv show, movies ranging from 480p to 4k. Full lossless audio is being played which is why I need kodi.

Ntfs could be an issue as it is not supported natively by android. Although, shield has enough resources to deal with it.
Do you have an issue for higher Bitrate materials?

Could you try different nitrates from here?Jellyfish Bitrate Test Files

if you have other drives try ext3/4 file system with the same material.

If you have Pc try to share the same HDD from pc and play via Kodi.

Brian Hampton

· #8 · Jul 26, 2021

Over my network FTP is faster than SMB.

My NAS units are basic. My ATV4K running infuse connects to the shares directly via FTP. Happy to say it's more reliable than using my UHD BD player.

(all gigabit stuff)

also .... using a computer of some sort check the files themselves it could be the files.

ajohnson30

· #9 · Jul 27, 2021

How are the drives connected to the shield? If it's usb then that's a bottleneck. If you really want to have all your backups accessible throughout your house, you should seriously consider some sort of NAS unit to have them on, and then distribute them over the house network from there, preferably wired 1gb ethernet for the best results.
If you go wireless/wifi, you'll have to make sure there's no interference or low signal locations, and even then you may experience stuttering on larger files unless you can go 5ghz.

Reactions: 1

joxr

· #10 · Jul 30, 2021

Yea having a central nas feeding all your players is the way to go. Wired if possible. No matter what my wifi speeds are I always have issues so I only do wired.

Reactions: 2

DaveFi

· #11 · Jul 30, 2021

Phytonic13 said:
Yes. Hard drives are connected directly. The format is ntfs and the files are direct 1:1 backups of tv show, movies ranging from 480p to 4k. Full lossless audio is being played which is why I need kodi.

Nova Video Player - Apps on Google Play

Try Nova. I’ve tried Kodi for years and have never been able to get smooth playback out of it on the Shield.

Dr.OP

· #12 · Jul 30, 2021

Try to increase buffer size in Kod in advanced settings. I could play videos in Kodi upto 60 Mbit/s via WiFi. That is important to have a good signal. If you can go wired that would be the best option.

Nobr8ks

· #13 · Aug 4, 2021

My Linux box has simple SMB shares, and most of my clients are RaspberryPi's 3b (1 wireless) LibreELEC/KODI. Have NEVER had a playback issue.

Just grabbed an external, self powered USB 4tb HD NTFS and attached on my RPi 3b (Am now watching 720p/BluRay of Valerian city of a thousand planets)

Some ripped movies, but most are recordings from WMC (.wtv)

RafaelSmith

· #14 · Aug 10, 2021

I have all my BDs and UBDS, ripped to .mkv and stored on a Unraid File server. Shared on the network via SMB as well as NFS.

Kodi running on Nvidia Shield can play the files without any issues...except on occasion it will not "trigger" ATMOS...so my AVR downsamples....but usually stopping and starting the movie fixes the poblem.

Thats said, my preferred method for playback of the .mkvs in my dedicated HT is a Odroid N2 running Coreelec (Kodi). Its flawless and just works and no matter how complex my Kodi skin is it is snappy.

I also run a Plex server on the Unraid box which serves the same move collection to Plex clients (TVs in bedrooms, Phones, Tablets, etc). I have had nothing but bad luck with Plex client on the Nvidia Shield which is why I ended up with the dedicated Kodi box. But Plex client on other TVs (Roku, LG) works fine.

Everything is hardwired gigabit connections. (I use a Usb3->Ethernet adapter on my bedroom LG tv to get around the slow ethernet port on the TV) which is not exactly 1gigbit but more than enough for the .mkvs).

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Mike Lang

· #15 · Aug 10, 2021

With Plex running on a wired gigabit i7 desktop, all my backups have been flawless to our Apple TVs, Fire sticks, Rokus, & iOS devices both in home and away.

Lost Dog

· #16 · Aug 11, 2021

RafaelSmith said:
Thats said, my preferred method for playback of the .mkvs in my dedicated HT is a Odroid N2 running Coreelec (Kodi). Its flawless and just works and no matter how complex my Kodi skin is it is snappy.

I also run a Plex server on the Unraid box which serves the same move collection to Plex clients (TVs in bedrooms, Phones, Tablets, etc). I have had nothing but bad luck with Plex client on the Nvidia Shield which is why I ended up with the dedicated Kodi box. But Plex client on other TVs (Roku, LG) works fine.

Everything is hardwired gigabit connections. (I use a Usb3->Ethernet adapter on my bedroom LG tv to get around the slow ethernet port on the TV) which is not exactly 1gigbit but more than enough for the .mkvs).

Do you get all the HDR flavors using the N2? At this point, I can't keep track of who can output Dolby Vision vs HRD vs HRD-10... I've been playing with the idea of picking up a N2+ but I want something that will support everything I throw at it. I use MythTV for non-4k video now (due to the old video card not supporting h265) and would like to unify everything in one go...

RafaelSmith

· #17 · Aug 11, 2021

Lost Dog said:
Do you get all the HDR flavors using the N2? At this point, I can't keep track of who can output Dolby Vision vs HRD vs HRD-10... I've been playing with the idea of picking up a N2+ but I want something that will support everything I throw at it. I use MythTV for non-4k video now (due to the old video card not supporting h265) and would like to unify everything in one go...

Sorry, I cannot answer that since my N2 is in the dedicated HT which is still 1080p projector.

RafaelSmith

· #18 · Aug 11, 2021

This discussion seems to indicate that N2 running Coreelec does do DV

https://www.reddit.com/r/kodi/comments/kp1878

CJ4life

· #19 · Aug 11, 2021

Have you tried PLEX? The plex client through the Nvidia Shield plays just about everything.

From there you’ll want to mess with a couple settings: you can try “match frame rate” within the Plex client settings on the shield when you do have it set up as that fixed my issues with 24p content, or the “Match Frame Rate Beta” setting within the Nvidia shield. It isn’t recommended to try both settings on at once.

The previous solved a myriad of micro-stuttering issues for me.

If you don’t care one lick about audio, you can try the Apple TV with Plex / Infuse as I find it to be a more stable video media player, but there’s limited DV support and absolutely no support for Dolby TrueHD Atmos or DTS X. I would probably steer you away from the “no-name” media player solutions: the experience will be more buggy, less polished and generally more frustrating than the Shield.

RafaelSmith

· #20 · Aug 12, 2021

CJ4life said:
I would probably steer you away from the “no-name” media player solutions: the experience will be more buggy, less polished and generally more frustrating than the Shield.

That was not the case for me. I had far more intermittent issues (suttering, lip-sync), etc trying to get both Kodi and Plex to work on my Shield than I did getting Kodi running on a N2. Literally downloaded the image...wrote it to a SD card and after setting up where to look for movies on my network and enabling passthru audio that was all I had to do. Its been running non stop without error since and has played every type of file/format I have thrown at it. On Shield with Plex its pretty 50/50 with ATMOS encoded movie if I will have to stop/restart a few times before it "triggers' ATMOS on the AVR.

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