NowTV lots of buffering on transcoded content

[goverton 1]

These are the symptoms I see:

 

Client side:

Content that requires transcoding (usually only audio) buffers every few minutes for a minute or so. NowTV box says "Transcoded    mp3".

The buffering is more frequent at the beginning of the program, lessening as the program plays further, beyond the halfway point buffering reduces significantly and playback is much smoother.

Direct play content is fine.

I've tried various bandwidth settings on the NowTV, I believe I'm at 7Mbs which is more than enough for all the content I'm having issues with (most is encoded at 2-3Mbs).

 

Server side:

I'm running the UnRAID docker.

CPU (Phenom II X4 840) rarely breaks sweat at 30-40% for a few minutes at the beginning, settling down to practically idle (3-5%).

Disk usage spikes in tandem with CPU spikes.

Network usage is "bursty" throughout the program.

RAM is running pretty high (only 4GB), I tried stopping all other docker containers which seemed to help for a while but I'm still having issues (more RAM coming from some dodgy Hong Kong ebayer, really hard finding DDR2 these days!)

Remux logs are created and look fine, the log is finished within a few minutes (coincides with the CPU and disk usage spikes).

Rewinding often seems to triigger another remux event, shouldn't it re-use the existing temporary transcoded file?

 

Server side all looks ok to me.

 

I'm going to try Blue Neon to play with the audio settings to try and prevent the transcoding but this is side-stepping the issue.

What does "Transcoded    mp3", is it transcoding to or from MP3?

 

How long does temporary transcoded content survive? Is it deleted as soon as the client stops watching the program?

 

Sorry, no logs at the moment, posting from work (shhh...)

[ebr 14959]

The transcode log will give us a clue but it sounds to me like either the transcode or the network isn't able to keep up.

[Luke 37249]

Hi @@goverton, yes as Ebr says, please provide the information requested in how to report a media playback issue. thanks !

[goverton 1]

It was the network!

 

I did not suspect the network, it's sitting literally 2 feet away from the router, 100% signal strength but the connection speed was fluctuating from 1-6Mbps. I've now forced it to connect to a different access point which is further away and has an extra hop and I'm (right now) getting an infinitely better experience! No buffering, library browsing is way faster, thumbnails actually load! Amazing.

 

I know wifi signals radiate in a torus shape but with a 100% signal strength I assumed I'd be getting at least reasonable bandwidth!

 

I'll try moving the NowTV a few feet further away and see if that changes anything.

 

And the RAM from the dodgy Hong Kong ebayer really did turn out to be dodgy.

[ebr 14959]

Thanks for reporting back.