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[RCFlyer]

Hi,

I store my music and video files on network drive(s). I am running MAC Sierra OS on the new Mac Book Pro (touch bar), MC22 build 93 and connecting to the network drives using smb on a wifi connection.

When playing music from the network drive(s) on my MAC, it plays without an issue.

However, when I play a movie on my MAC from the same network drive(s), the movie plays and at various times through out the movie the video and audio "freezes" for some period of time. It will then return and continue to play. The "freeze" period can last from 2-10 seconds (approx). Upon return it is not where the movie froze at but further along the movie. So during the "freeze" period I have missed a portion of the movie. It will do this multiple times through out the movie. It does not seem to mater on the type of movie format (avi, mkv, mp4).

If I use an ethernet connection on my MAC as opposed to wifi, the movie will still freeze.
If I use another software player on my MAC and play the movie, it plays fine, i.e. no freeze ups.
If I use MC 22 (latest build) on my Windows 7 machine, the movies play fine, i.e. no freeze ups.
I have another MAC book pro (not touch bar) running El Capitan with MC22 and the movies will freeze. Wifi or ethernet connection makes no difference nor does the movie file type.
On the same MAC book pro (touch) Sierra I have concurrently Parallels VM running Windows 7 with MC 22 and the movies play fine.
We also have 2-MAC book Air and an iMAC running MC22 and they all exhibit the same movie "freeze" up when playing from the network drive(s).

If I copy a movie from the network drive(s) to my MAC book pro (touch) local drive, the movie plays fine.

Thanks

[blgentry]

It's likely that there's some sort of network issue with your Macs and your NAS.  The fact that you can play local movies correctly indicates that MC can play your movies without problems.  The NAS and/or network would seem to be the issue.  This would seem to also be backed up by the fact that you can play music correctly via that NAS.  Movies have a lot more bandwidth requirements than music.

I don't do much file sharing with Macs, so I'm not sure what the best protocol is to use for high performance.   What kind of NAS is it?  I wonder what would happen if you connected to the drives via AFP instead.

Brian.

[RCFlyer]

I find it odd that "other" players play these movies just fine. If the movie file type is mp4, then Quick Time player plays the movie just fine from these NAS drives. Any Video Player plays all of the NAS drives movie types just fine. But MC22 has these freeze ups.

When a Windows machine be it a VM running on my MAC or a machine running windows out of the gate, it runs the NAS movies using Quick Time and MC22 just fine from all of the NAS drives.

I have tried AFP with the same results. Its understood that there is a substantial bandwidth requirement for movies over music. And with that being said, then why do the "other" video players play w/o issues?

In MC22, Audio, core audio setting, buffering, software we can set this to a user selected value. I have mine at 1000 milliseconds. The note on the setting pop up window states "Increasing buffering makes playback more skip resistant,......."

Perhaps a similar MC22 setting is required for the video buffering?

[JimH]

... why do the "other" video players play w/o issues?

Antivirus could do that.

[RCFlyer]

Great suggestion, however, I did not install any antivirus software on this MAC or my others. I only use (and rely on) the Mac OS "built in" security features (sandboxing and gatekeeper). For my Windows machines (except for my VM on my MAC running Windows), yes there is antivirus software installed, but the Windows machines play these NAS located movies just fine on MC22 as do other Windows video programs. But when MC22 works, this is my preferred selection (always).

When I did the afp testing, there was still an smb connection concurrently with the same NAS drive that I connected to as afp. I removed all of the smb drive connections and made an afp connection only. With the afp connection made, playing a movie from that NAS afp connected drive on MC22, seems to play w/o the freeze ups.

Prior to the afp re-testing, I did remove the checked selections from options, general video settings, Hardware acceleration and VideoClock. I will re-test with these selections made with just an afp connection to see if they have any effect.

[blgentry]

It looks like you've found the factor that causes the issue (SMB shares from your NAS).  I have no idea why.  Maybe some subtle incompatibility.  Or some parameter that needs to be set on the Mac or NAS side in order to increase SMB performance, or reduce SMB overhead on the kernel.

I know for a fact that OSX handles connected drives in ways that most people would not expect.  For example, let's say I'm editing a text document and I want to save it to my desktop.  If I press the save button the dialog for saving files will come up and show my computer and files.  BUT... If I have external drives connected that are spun down (power saving), the dialog will freeze and the beach ball will spin.  This continues until EVERY SINGLE DRIVE connected to my computer has spun up and OSX has "touched' the drive.  It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Something similar may be happening to "poll" the SMB drives or something.  Just guessing.

Brian.

[RCFlyer]

I am still somewhat perplexed that the other video players can play these files w/o the freeze ups with an smb connection to the NAS drives yet MC22 encounters freeze ups.
Perhaps like the audio skip feature buffer, there should be a video buffer?

These movies are being watched directly on my MAC. MC22 is not (at the moment) a media network server for these video files. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, MC22 will play the movie directly from the source w/o any conversion when being viewed on my MAC. It only converts the video when MC22 is a Media Network server if the video conversion option is changed from "original" to another selection.

Is there any other options that might effect the video freeze up when viewing directly on the MAC?