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XBMB3C Stuttering


tadbitnerdy

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im85288

Agreed, this is vey strange...I did hear of issues with an older helix build regarding playback, but having never experienced any problems did not pay much attention. By renaming service.py it would prevent anything going on with the addon so that is weird. Maybe it's worth posting a log after you have renamed service.py to see if there is anything xbmb3c related in there..

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Not knowing where to turn, and willing to try anything, I loaded up a fresh install of MB server on my gaming rig. I added a single video to the library. I completely removed XBMC from my FireTV and reinstalled. The only addon I installed was XBMB3C and pointed it at the new server... stutter. I'm at the end of my rope. I know it can't be the client hardware because all my devices played back smoothly for months until 3-4 weeks ago. The only other change that happened around the same time as the stutter started was my DDWRT router died and I replaced it with a router running Tomato. My primary server is connected to that router, but my gaming rig and FireTV are on a separate gigabit switch, so that rules out the router.

 

As soon as I can, I'll rename service.py, enable logging, and post my log.

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Angelblue05

I don't know if it's related, but how's the health of your hard drives? I'm only mentioning this because I've had this unexplained stutter for a bit. Browsing via explorer would pause the content being played. To my horror, turns out one of my hard drive was borderline dead. *Knock on wood* It wouldn't hurt to rule the health of your drives out.

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Well, the same content plays from the same drives smoothly with XBMB3C disabled. And, I created a second server on another PC and copied the video files to it with the same stuttering. I have since also loaded Ubuntu and installed the server with the same stuttering results. The only common denominator is XBMB3C. Based on my experience, I can't see how everyone running the addon isn't experiencing the same thing.

Edited by ripper
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Angelblue05

Oh, I guess I missed your post mentioning this. I have both version running (703 and 705) and I'm not experiencing any stuttering problem (un)fortunately. Keep up hope! :)

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I think I may have figured it out! I have only tried this on my OpenELEC box so far, but this is the first time I've had smooth playback in probably a month.

 

The Titan Mediabrowser helper service... I disabled it and it works beautifully. I had previously removed the skin on this system because it's pretty resource intensive, but the helper service remained.

 

Now, why is playback smooth with it enabled while xbmb3c is disabled? Also, why aren't more people experiencing it? I guess I have yet to confirm that the same thing fixes playback on my other systems, but I'm fairly confident it will.

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Angelblue05

I think Titan helper service uses XBMB3C to communicate what information should be pulled from the server. Basically, disabling XBMB3C would shut down that communication and prevent the titan helper service from working. That's my guess anyway, but I could be totally wrong...

 

Isn't the Titan helper service to troubleshoot errors with the skin?

Edited by Angelblue05
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im85288

Not everyone is using the Titan skin so would not have the helper installed. If confirmed please report it on the Titan thread as it should not be effecting the addon in any way.

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marcelveldt

Hello all, I just see this post as of today.

The Titan skin helper service is indeed used to grab the images from the XBMB3C addon for all the fancy artwork.

 

Offcourse I'll provide a fix right away (if the cause is determined).

As I cannot reproduce the error in my own setups my first question is: what version of the addon are you using ?

 

EDIT: It seems like you have to be using most recent version of the helperservice, minimal version 1.2.8

 

Can anyone conform this solves the issue ?

Edited by marcelveldt
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I tested tonight with the latest Titan release from the stable repo and still got the stutter. I've just moved on to a different skin for now. I'd love to help test, but I've already got so much time involved in figuring out what the problem was to begin with.

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dark_slayer

I have no problem with the Titan skin, but one of my rigs is an i5 w/ gtx660 (gaming htpc) and the other is running a sandy bridge i3. I've not tried it on my arm devices, so I'll give it a shot and see if they have playback issues with the skin. For the fire you are probably best sticking to the nox5 mod. Not sure about all the modded skins but titan, nox4, and eminence (at least) are the more classically geared xbmc skins which can be problematic on arm SoCs (I guess even one as powerful as the fire)

 

With android and RPI xbmc is really at a crossroads. It's unfortunate because I really liked the heavy skins like nox4, mq, titan, etc. It's clear the arm boxes need a champion skin as well. Nox5 and confluence seem to be the go to for those systems

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marcelveldt

I tested tonight with the latest Titan release from the stable repo and still got the stutter. I've just moved on to a different skin for now. I'd love to help test, but I've already got so much time involved in figuring out what the problem was to begin with.

Ok, thanks a lot for your contributions. Wel'll let you know when it's 100% solved :-)

 

Users who want to test this: make sure you use minimal version of 1.2.8 of the helper service and you restart XBMC after the update.

 

In my test-setup and in my own living roon setups I don't have the problem anymore with latest version.

I hope some users can confirm this.

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marcelveldt

I have no problem with the Titan skin, but one of my rigs is an i5 w/ gtx660 (gaming htpc) and the other is running a sandy bridge i3. I've not tried it on my arm devices, so I'll give it a shot and see if they have playback issues with the skin. For the fire you are probably best sticking to the nox5 mod. Not sure about all the modded skins but titan, nox4, and eminence (at least) are the more classically geared xbmc skins which can be problematic on arm SoCs (I guess even one as powerful as the fire)

 

With android and RPI xbmc is really at a crossroads. It's unfortunate because I really liked the heavy skins like nox4, mq, titan, etc. It's clear the arm boxes need a champion skin as well. Nox5 and confluence seem to be the go to for those systems

Well, in fact Titan is optimized for running on lowpower systems.

I know that a lot of users use the skin with a Pi for example but I think those users don't use MB3 as their library (while they should but that's another discussion)...

 

I think as soon as you enable all kinds of widgets and rotating artwork things will slow down.

 

I don't own a Pi myself so it's a hard for me to see/check it so I rely on what users say about it.

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It's clear the arm boxes need a champion skin as well. Nox5 and confluence seem to be the go to for those systems

XBMC already has that with Amber, it's an excellent skin, particularly for lower spec systems. I only stopped using it because I've moved to mediabrowser from plex, hopefully Pecinko will make an xbmb3c compatible version.

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tadbitnerdy

I have no problem with the Titan skin, but one of my rigs is an i5 w/ gtx660 (gaming htpc) and the other is running a sandy bridge i3. I've not tried it on my arm devices, so I'll give it a shot and see if they have playback issues with the skin. For the fire you are probably best sticking to the nox5 mod. Not sure about all the modded skins but titan, nox4, and eminence (at least) are the more classically geared xbmc skins which can be problematic on arm SoCs (I guess even one as powerful as the fire)

 

With android and RPI xbmc is really at a crossroads. It's unfortunate because I really liked the heavy skins like nox4, mq, titan, etc. It's clear the arm boxes need a champion skin as well. Nox5 and confluence seem to be the go to for those systems

 

The problem isn't necessarily with running the skin, but rather just having the helper service running in the background.  I am running an i5 with a GTX750Ti and 8 gigs of RAM in my HTPC, and I was getting the stutter from the helper service.  So I think it can happen on any system with the Titan skin installed. 

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marcelveldt

The problem isn't necessarily with running the skin, but rather just having the helper service running in the background.  I am running an i5 with a GTX750Ti and 8 gigs of RAM in my HTPC, and I was getting the stutter from the helper service.  So I think it can happen on any system with the Titan skin installed. 

Yes that's correct; the stuttering happened with the old version of the helper service while it was not compatible with latest version of the XBMB3C addon after the new authentication system.

 

Can you confirm that using the latest version of the addon (2.1.8 or higher) solves the issues ?

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Users who want to test this: make sure you use minimal version of 1.2.8 of the helper service and you restart XBMC after the update.

 

In my test-setup and in my own living roon setups I don't have the problem anymore with latest version.

I hope some users can confirm this.

I have just checked & unfortunately it's still stuttering, my system is running;

 

Xbmb3c 0.9.713

Titan skin helper service 1.2.9

Titan helix 3.1.23

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marcelveldt

I have just checked & unfortunately it's still stuttering, my system is running;

 

Xbmb3c 0.9.713

Titan skin helper service 1.2.9

Titan helix 3.1.23

OK, hold on... I will do some more testing with the latest addon version and report back.

Does the stuttering occur with just any content ?

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OK, hold on... I will do some more testing with the latest addon version and report back.

Does the stuttering occur with just any content ?

I only quickly tested it with a TV episode I recently watched (720p mkv).

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marcelveldt

I only quickly tested it with a TV episode I recently watched (720p mkv).

 

Can you please install the provided testversion of the helperservice ?

 

script.titanskin.helpers-test.zip

 

Please check if the problem is resolved, if not, could  you provide me your xbmc logfile ?

I enabled debugging in the helperscript so that can help me investigating the issue...

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