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MB 1.17.2 sluggish when browsing Movie Library


Melyan
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Melyan

First of all I 'd like to give kudos to all the developers and tech support personnel for the effort put into this channel as well as the Media Browser platform.  Becoming a supporter has been worth it.

 

My HTPC setup where MB Server is installed:

Windows 7 x64 Professional

i3-3225 3.30 Ghz

Intel DZ77GAL-70k motherboard w/ 8GB RAM

Video - integrated intel HD-4000

128GB Samsung SSD (OS)

2 TB Seagate HD SATA (HTPC programs and temp Movie storage)

4 TB Seagate HD via USB 3.0 (Movies and TV shows (no WMV)transfer rates of 130MB/sec)

Ceton infiniTV4-PCI

 

Network: (all components connected via wired CAT-6E)

Htpc

2 Windows 8.1 Desktop computers

2 Ceton Echos

1 Roku 3 (v5.3 build 4016)

2 Verizon Fios routers (bridged with primary supplying DHCP)

 

Software:

MB Server (Version 3.0.5207.42864) - Developer Build

MB Roku 3 (Version 1.17.2)

 

The Problem:

I've installed the Media Browser channel on my Roku 3 via the Store and it connects to the Media Browser Server after entering the LAN IP address of the server.  I can see the that the Roku 3 is connected by opening up the MB Server dashboard.  The Roku is listed along with my Ceton Echo devices so the handshake is successful.

 

When I open the Media Browser Channel on the Roku, it opens immediately and works great.  Any movie or TV show from that initial screen with a thumbnail can be scrolled through and selected and the number count updates accordingly. (i.e. 1/28 goes to 2/28 immediately)

 

Now say I want to access my movie library instead of the few movies on the initial screen.  The library screen pops up showing thumbnails of the 1-230 movies I have in my library.  If I scroll right by one tab to see more movies in my library, the counter sticks at 1/230 and after about 20 seconds goes to 2/230.  After that 20 seconds, I can scroll right two more times so the screen updates to 4/230 but everything just gets even more sluggish.  It's almost like it's automatically trying to transcode before I've selected the movie to watch one I enter my movie library.

 

I browsed the forums and noticed someone had what I thought was a similar issue with regard to metadata file sizes.  Just to check if that was the issue I was experiencing, I deleted all of my metadata out of my folders so that the only files remaining were mkv,m4,avi,iso and srt,idx files and the problem persists.  It's definitely possible that I'm an idiot and I've configured something wrong.

 

Keep in mind, all of my movies play back fine on the Roku 3 when they finally show up.  I'll try to include logs but please bear with me since it's my first time submitting feedback.

 

Logs:

Server

http://paste2.org/A01t5Icy server

 

http://paste2.org/Vw9IUG69  server

 

http://paste2.org/pI4peMAg  ffmpeg

 

 

Thank you in advance for any and all help provided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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gcw07

Can we get a clean server log. Basically open up the Roku MB channel, then delete the server logs that are in the directory, then click into the movie section. Then post that log. Just want to see only those fetches to see how long they are taking. Thanks.

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Tikuf

Can you test a couple of things for me please 

 

Turn off dlna in the server dash.

Disconnect any device that hooks up to mb except the roku.

 

Then grab some clean logs as Grant suggested above. > Clean Logs how

 

I notice that dlna is throwing errors for you and the the image fetching prior to those errors was 10 ms after them it blew out to 450 ms. I would like to see a log with just the roku attached so we can look at the image fetching times.

 

TIA

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Melyan

Thanks for the quick replies.

 

New Alpha build of Media Browser Server. (Version 3.0.5209.29215)

Media Browser for Roku 3 (Version 1.17.2)

 

 

As recommended, I took the following steps.

 

1. Disabled DLNA within dashboard

2. Shutdown Media Browser Server.

3. Physically disconnected both Ceton echos from LAN (previous ip's were 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.20)

4. Ensured Roku 3 was only device connected. (ip 192.168.1.11)

5. Deleted log files from Media Browser-Server AppData

6. Restarted Media Browser Server

7. Selected Media Browser Channel on Roku 3

8. Selected Movie Library (browsing these movie thumbs is where the sluggishness occurs)

9. Selected a movie and it played fine

10. Stopped movie and exited Roku 3 MB channel

11. Copy & Pasted server log to paste2 (included below)

 

New Logs:

Server log - http://paste2.org/CtL5N6VE

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Melyan

I agree, but looking at similar fetches from the same location later on in the log file don't show similar delays.  One thing I have noticed is that it appears that the delays occur whenever the device/user id changes.

 

I'll try removing my library files stored on my external USB 3.0 HD from the server and only access those stored on the internal HD and see if that is where the delay is occurring.

 

I'll report back the results.

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gcw07

Looking at the log, we need to figure out why your server is being extremely slow. Something like this image fetch:

 

  1. 2014-04-07 11:57:17.5477 Debug - HttpServer: HTTP Response 200 to 192.168.1.11:55952. Response time: 1505.0861 ms
 
That is taking 1.5 seconds just to fetch an image. That is extremely slow. My system for instance that takes 0.2-0.4 seconds. When you compound that by 100 items fetching, that is probably the cause of the slow down. So what we need to figure out why your server is returning data so slowly.
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do you see the same kind of slowness browsing the web client on the server machine? if not, how about browsing the web client from another machine or device?

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Melyan

I think I've found the problem.

 

As I mentioned in my first post, My movie library is split between two separate HD's.  One is an internal 2TB SATA and the other an external 4TB USB 3.0 drive.

 

I went into the MB dashboard and removed the Libraries for the files located on the external HD so that only the Libraries on the internal drive appeared on the MB Server.

 

I then fired up the Roku 3 and went to the MB channel and everything is lightning quick.  Response time when browsing all folders is instantaneous as well as loading/playing movies.  Therefore, it appears to be how the Roku 3 interacts with MB Server to access libraries on external drives even If I use UNC paths on both drives.

 

I say it's between the Roku and the server and the external HD connected via USB 3.0 because I don't experience these delays when viewing from the web client on other machines within my LAN.

 

If I come up with any workarounds or solutions, I'll post them here.  However, at the moment I'd venture to guess that it's a USB driver issue.

 

Thanks again for the help.

 

TLDR (Solution);

 

If your media library contains movie files and metadata located on an external USB HD connected to your HTPC, you may notice slow access times between the Roku 3 media channel and MB-Server.  To temporarily fix this issue, transfer data on the external drive to an internal one.

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Tikuf

If you have a spare sata port on you pc why not remove the disk from the external and make it internal?

 

I dont know that it is specifically a roku issue but rather you don't notice it as much on other clients.

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Melyan

That's my next step.  I was hoping to be able to use the drive as a 'vacation' drive so that I could bring my library with me when I go to my other property.

 

I only believe it may be a Roku issue/limitation since when I the library on the Roku channel, it can take 15-20 seconds to scroll from movie 1 to movie 2.  Then another 25-30 seconds to go from movie 2 to movie 3.  When performing the same action via the web client on any other PC on my LAN other than the HTPC, the same actions may be performed in less than a second.

 

I'll just need to dig around a bit more since I don't have a concrete solution yet and everything right now is a guess.  At least I now have a starting point that works and I can go from there.

 

Thank you.

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Tikuf

If you leave it for awhile the roku should cache the images. It maybe that it isn't because the cache is updating due to the fact it is an external drive (just a guess)

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Melyan

I found out what the problem was and discovered that I'm in fact an idiot.  The Roku was reading my file structure as a collection which it wasn't and was choking on it.

 

To better explain:

 

internal HD file structure:

 

I:\Media\movie 1 folder\movie 1.mkv

            \movie 2 folder\movie 2.avi

            etc.

 

external HD file structure:

 

J:\Movies\Children's Movies\movie 1 folder\movie 1.mkv

                                           \movie 2 folder\movie 2.mkv

 

               \Movies\movie 1 folder\movie 1.mkv

                           \movie 2 folder\movie 2.mkv

                            etc..

 

by changing the external HD structure to

 

J:\Children's Movies\movie 1 folder\movie 1.mkv

                               \movie 2 folder\movie 2.mkv

                                etc..

 

J:\Movies\movie 1 folder\movie 1.mkv

              \movie 2 folder\movie 2.mkv

               etc..

 

it now works fine on the Roku.  The web client and Media Browser Classic were able to understand the original folder structure before I just changed it, but the Roku couldn't.  Thanks again for taking the time to help.

 

Spoke too soon.  It helped but still sluggish with the USB drive.  Cannibalizing extra USB drive as we speak to make an internal drive.

Edited by Melyan
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gcw07

It really has to be the server's communication between the server and the drive is what is causing the slowdown. I have all my media stored on an external NAS and browsing it lightning quick. So it must be something with that interaction in your setup. BTW, the movie section of the channel doesn't browse or lookup things by folder structure. It just grabs it from the server looking for all movies. So I don't think your folder structure is the main cause. MBC will be faster always because it internally caches all images (on the machine running MBC), etc., something other devices like the Roku can't.

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Melyan

Still getting really odd behavior but I've narrowed it down to 15 files

 

The steps I've taken so far.

 

1. removed external USB drive from enclosure and connected as an internal HD via SATA 6.0GB port

2. transferred all media to respective folders on said HD.  (all transfers were around 170MB/s)

3. made new folders network shares (three folders as follows)

     -/Children's Movies (25 movies)

     -/Movies (215 movies)

     -/TV (6 series w/ approx 20 episodes each)

 

4. Accessed MB-Server via Roku with same issue on Movie folder.  Both Children's and TV folders can be browsed instantly.  Movie folder for lack of a better word hangs.

5. Separated movie folder into 6 separate folders (i.e. movie1, movie2, movie3. etc..)

6. accessed new folders from Roku and narrowed down possible problematic files to movie2  (every other movie folder opened instantly)

7. created new folders labeled movie2-1, movie2-2, and movie2-3 and divided the files evenly amongst them

8. movie2-1 opens instantly on Roku, therefore move all movies in this folder back to original Movie folder since they are known to play

9. selecting movie2-2 or 2-3 on the roku channel completely locks it up where I need to unplug the cord to reset

10. One by one, start moving movies in folder movie2-2 to movie2-3 to see if I there is a problem file.

11. after all movies are out of folder movie2-2 with no success, create new folder movie_garbage.

12. I'm still in the process of "taking out the garbage" so to speak and have about 20 movies to go but I'm beginning to think it's an issue with the onboard LAN of my MB.  I have a PCI NIC on the way (unfortunately donated all my spares to charity) to test this theory and for $12 it's worth a shot.

 

I'm just at a loss, since every one of these files along with metadata works fine on every PC on the LAN using the Web Client as well as playing fine on my Ceton Echo extenders.

 

After doing some research, it does appear that the onboard NIC's on my MB have had quite a few issues and maybe the Roku isn't able to handle the hiccups.  It streams HBOgo and Amazon Prime just fine.  It just seems odd that when I divided my library into separate folders, 5 out of 6 instantly showed up on the Roku, yet I haven't yet separated the one or more movie files causing the issue.  I'm not too attached so I'll move them out of MB-server until I can figure out what is going on.

 

I agree with you gcw, this doesn't appear to be a MB issue.

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gcw07

I'm with you and not sure what exactly is causing the problem. There has to be some type of bad movie or something that the Roku doesn't seem to like. Playback while might be an issue, isn't going to be the issue with sluggish browsing of movies.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Melyan

Unfortunately having the same issues with the new NIC.

 

Out of curiosity gcw since you can browse your library quickly:

 

1.what are your poster and backdrop sizes?

       -I currently have mine set to posters 500w, backdrops 1280x (resized using MCM)

 

2.when browsing the library, what info is the Roku requesting from the server. (xml, poster/backdrop...anything else? i.e. probing for playback data, or embedded metadata?)

       -I was under the impression that it just grabbed the current library from the server (xml, and poster/backdrop)

 

This is driving me nuts because when I can finally browse to a movie, I can play a 30GB 1080p mkv/avi/mp4/m4v/iso movie without a hitch.  It's almost like I'm getting the 3Mb/s (or less) Roku streaming bandwidth rate to populate and browse the MB app, but streaming the movies from the server on my LAN (transcode or not) is fantastic with no buffering.

 

Crazy, I know.  I'm still thinking it's a hardware/network issue and not a problem with the app.  I'm still in the process of diagnosing the network with Wireshark and Nmap with nothing apparent so far.  Will keep looking.  Thanks again for the incredible app and support.

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gcw07

Unfortunately having the same issues with the new NIC.

 

Out of curiosity gcw since you can browse your library quickly:

 

1.what are your poster and backdrop sizes?

       -I currently have mine set to posters 500w, backdrops 1280x (resized using MCM)

 

2.when browsing the library, what info is the Roku requesting from the server. (xml, poster/backdrop...anything else? i.e. probing for playback data, or embedded metadata?)

       -I was under the impression that it just grabbed the current library from the server (xml, and poster/backdrop)

 

This is driving me nuts because when I can finally browse to a movie, I can play a 30GB 1080p mkv/avi/mp4/m4v/iso movie without a hitch.  It's almost like I'm getting the 3Mb/s (or less) Roku streaming bandwidth rate to populate and browse the MB app, but streaming the movies from the server on my LAN (transcode or not) is fantastic with no buffering.

 

Crazy, I know.  I'm still thinking it's a hardware/network issue and not a problem with the app.  I'm still in the process of diagnosing the network with Wireshark and Nmap with nothing apparent so far.  Will keep looking.  Thanks again for the incredible app and support.

1. I don't do any resizing. So whatever the defaults are. I think most posters are 1000x1500px. Backdrops are usually 1920x1080px. The channel itself though isn't requesting those sizes. It requests at the size it needs so it is much smaller sized images.

 

2. It grabs the data in json form. And yes it grabs playback data and other information that is available to all clients. It does this paging so 100 are fetched at a time.

 

It to me is probably a connection issue or something else with the communication between the server and the Roku. Not sure and you might have mentioned somewhere above if you tried or not, but did you try hand wiring it to your network instead of wireless?

 

What I would suggest trying it maybe going through and eliminating folders. Like if you have a "movies" folder and a "movies1" folder. Remove one and try. See if it makes any difference. If it does, then slowly start adding back folders 1 at a time. It could very well be some single movie it is struggling with.

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ramrod215

I just got a Roku and had issues with it hanging often. It seems to be smooth as silk now.

-I use Media Center Master so I had it auto resize all artwork. (Whatever the default setting was in mcm)

-I had two Tv folders one for WTV recordings and one for archived series.~250episodes

*restructured them all to one Main

folder

*fixed the ones that didnt contain

series folders (pain with wtv files

from mc)

 

Now works flawlessly. Amazing software all around

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  • Solution
Melyan

It appears that I've finally figured it out.  As mentioned in my original post, I use Media Center Master (MCM) to fetch metadata, create movie.xml's, and organize my library.  It turns out that my Roku 3 doesn't take kindly to the movie.xml files generated by MCM.  It works fine with the series.xml data for TV episodes and I surmise that it's due to the movie.xml's having embedded mediainfo in them aka vid bitrate/samplerate/codec yada yada yada whereas the series.xml files don't.

 

This is what I did to fix it.

 

1.  I deleted every movie.xml file in each of my movie folders.

2.  Opened Media Browser 3 dashboard

3.  Went to Library tab and scanned Library

4.  Clicked pencil icon at top left to enter MB3 web client

5.  Selected Movie Folder

6.  Selected Refresh  (this allowed Media Browser to generate new movie.xml files for each of my movies)  This can take a few minutes depending on the size of the library.

7.  Once refresh was complete, went to TV with Roku and started Media Browser app

8.  Now I can scroll through movies flawlessly with no delay 

 

 

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to help me solve this.

 

 

 

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  • 3 months later...

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