Help Video playback stutters (only over wireless)

[Demetrium]

Hi folks,

I'm stumped on this one, wondering if anyone has seen similar issues or has any ideas.

Many video files (not Youtube) will playback with extreme stutter over wireless. I've tried every video player I can think of and I've also tried alternate sources (NAS vs desktop share). The reason I know this is only a wireless problem is I have no issues with identical clips once I copy them to a USB and play them using an OTG cable.

I thought at first it was a question of bandwidth, but I'm on wireless N and the problem persists on even a 640x480 .avi file @ 1250kbps, which wireless N should be able to handle. I've tried three different WAPs and three diffferent wireless networks, and they all have the same issue. I get 35mbps up 21mbps down on speedtest.net over my Nexus 7's wireless, which should easily handle the 1250kbps video playback.

This does not seem to be hardware related as both my 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7 have the exact same problem. It's almost as if Android has some sort of issues passing data between its wireless chip and the rest of the OS.

Any thoughts, ideas, or suggestions? Thanks in advance!

 

[syzmic]

I thought at first it was a question of bandwidth,

That is EXACTLY your problem. It's not a case of how fast the wireless system in the tablet is. It's a simple matter of how fast your internet connection is. The tablet is able to function many times faster than your internet provider does.

This is why people pay big bucks for the faster internet connections.

EDIT: I just realized, the numbers you have quoted for your speed test are already very fast. If those numbers are real, then the bandwidth problem is on the server side of the connection. Either they didn't purchase a fast enough connection, or you didn't pay for the "premium" service and have therefore been throttled down.

 

[John Bean]

This does not seem to be hardware related as both my 2012 and 2013 Nexus 7 have the exact same problem. It's almost as if Android has some sort of issues passing data between its wireless chip and the rest of the OS.

My conclusion from your first sentence is that the problem is not with either Nexus (hardware) but lies somewhere else. This is reinforced by my personal experience of using my Nexus 7 for viewing streamed videos, something I do a lot, and I get super-smooth performance using MX Player (others work fine too) with videos streamed from a NAS running Twonky, exactly the same as I get when viewing the same content on my TV.

You don't explicitly say how you are accessing them but I inferred that you are reading them directly as files on a SMB/CIFS share (how?) rather than using a dedicated media streaming protocol, and if true this may give a clue to the cause.

For example I can use something like ES Explorer to grab a video file from a SMB share on my NAS and "stream" it to MX Player, but this is prone to buffering issues that are similar to those you describe and is presumably down to shortcomings in ES Explorer's internal steaming server and/or its SMB implementation. It's certainly not the Nexus 7's problem as it works perfectly if I stream directly, using MediaHouse to connect MX Player to the Twonky server on my NAS.

Bottom line: fake "streaming" from a remote SMB/CIFS share is not the best way to experience good video on a Nexus

 

[Demache]

My conclusion from your first sentence is that the problem is not with either Nexus (hardware) but lies somewhere else. This is reinforced by my personal experience of using my Nexus 7 for viewing streamed videos, something I do a lot, and I get super-smooth performance using MX Player (others work fine too) with videos streamed from a NAS running Twonky, exactly the same as I get when viewing the same content on my TV.

You don't explicitly say how you are accessing them but I inferred that you are reading them directly as files on a SMB/CIFS share (how?) rather than using a dedicated media streaming protocol, and if true this may give a clue to the cause.

For example I can use something like ES Explorer to grab a video file from a SMB share on my NAS and "stream" it to MX Player, but this is prone to buffering issues that are similar to those you describe and is presumably down to shortcomings in ES Explorer's internal steaming server and/or its SMB implementation. It's certainly not the Nexus 7's problem as it works perfectly if I stream directly, using MediaHouse to connect MX Player to the Twonky server on my NAS.

Bottom line: fake "streaming" from a remote SMB/CIFS share is not the best way to experience good video on a Nexus

Exactly. In all fairness, I use FTP to "stream" video to my Nexus 7 at school. It tends to work very well strangely. You can even skip to different parts of the video. Most of my problems tend to stem from limited upload bandwidth at my house, rather than protocol issues. 5 Mbps is plenty for DVD quality video, but you start running into issues in the higher quality HD videos.

 

[John Bean]

My comment was based on the implied use of SMB by the OP ("NAS vs desktop share") - something I originally tried to do (using ES Explorer) before discovering the "proper" way to do the job. Not only does it not work very well it also has problems trying to seek.

I didn't investigate using other file-based protocols once I discovered how well MediaHouse worked with streamed content, but it's quite possible (indeed likely) that one protocol will work better than another. From your experience it sounds like FTP is a better choice if no uPnP/DLNA media streamer is available

 

[Demache]

Yeah, SMB in my experience is pretty mediocre for streaming unless its a Windows-to-Windows transfer.

 

[Demetrium]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Based on your input I'm thinking this is probably a buffering issue with ES File Manager. I'll try some of the other methods you mentioned and let you know if I see a difference.

 

[TheAmazingDave]

I only have major issues when using a BT headphone to listen. It seems the N7 doesn't like processing digital audio over BT while running video at the same time.

I tried changing my IO scheduler, and it seemed to help with performance in other areas, but I haven't tried my BT headphone again.

Regardless, I agree with the others. Are you streaming from a home server? Is it a real server, or just a PC with media on it? Chances are you're streaming from another PC, which does not have the services to optimize streaming video to other devices.

What I mean by that is, that if a scheduled thread takes priority on the host PC while it's streaming video to your tablet, guess what happens.

 

[TheAmazingDave]

Oh, BTW, I have an old Dell PowerEdge here in my room with server 2008, a gigabit link to the WLAN, and I do also have to wait sometimes while streaming, specifically when I seek to other positions on large files. I do not have any file streaming services running on it, simply accessing videos from a shared directory.

It would be painful, I'd imagine, if I was streaming from my old laptop in the corner...

edit: you can peruse this if you'd like to learn more. Even though it's regarding Server 2008, I believe you can run IIS7 on a regular Windows install as well.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/video/streaming-media-with-server-2008.aspx

 

[Demetrium]

My conclusion from your first sentence is that the problem is not with either Nexus (hardware) but lies somewhere else. This is reinforced by my personal experience of using my Nexus 7 for viewing streamed videos, something I do a lot, and I get super-smooth performance using MX Player (others work fine too) with videos streamed from a NAS running Twonky, exactly the same as I get when viewing the same content on my TV.

You don't explicitly say how you are accessing them but I inferred that you are reading them directly as files on a SMB/CIFS share (how?) rather than using a dedicated media streaming protocol, and if true this may give a clue to the cause.

For example I can use something like ES Explorer to grab a video file from a SMB share on my NAS and "stream" it to MX Player, but this is prone to buffering issues that are similar to those you describe and is presumably down to shortcomings in ES Explorer's internal steaming server and/or its SMB implementation. It's certainly not the Nexus 7's problem as it works perfectly if I stream directly, using MediaHouse to connect MX Player to the Twonky server on my NAS.

Bottom line: fake "streaming" from a remote SMB/CIFS share is not the best way to experience good video on a Nexus

So I finally got around to setting this up (I was out on travel for a bit) and I still seem to have the exact same problem. I setup Twonky on my NAS and I can see the media fine using mediahouse. However once I play the video using MX Player it suffers from the same stuttery playback that I get when just browsing to a Windows share using ES File Explorer.

Again, the same video plays back flawlessly if I use MX Player and pull the file from a USB OTG flash drive.

Do you use transcoding on your NAS via Twonky? Is there something here I'm missing?

 

[John Bean]

I don't do anything special, it just works.

That said I do recall having some early issues with MX player at its default settings but only with a few "difficult" video files that turned out to be the decoder settings. The defaults used "HW+" only for local files and that caused symptoms similar to those you describe with a few files when streaming. I changed the default settings to HW+ for network and the problem went away in all but one case where HW+ couldn't be used.

No guarantees that the same applies to your setup but it's worth a look. Some video files are just not suitable for low(ish) bandwidth use unless they use a codec that allows hardware-assisted decoding (like HW+) to be used; I've had to transcode only one for that reason out of many hundreds that "just work" with the MX Player.