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[GRW]

Hi,

I'm having video playback issues on MC24 (mac version). The video will play back perfectly for about 40 seconds then the picture/sound will freeze for about 10 seconds after which the video/sound will play back again ok for another 40 seconds before freezing again...and so on. This issue only seems to affect playback of blu ray rips. Other videos (such as tv recordings and youtube downloads...etc) play back perfectly. The file size of the blu ray rips are larger than the other video files. All my video files (including the blu ray rips) are in mp4 format. I have tried changing some of the video output settings but this has not helped. I am having these issues on both my 5K imac and my MacBook pro laptop. All my video files are stored on a WD my cloud network drive.

I should point out that I also have MC24 installed on my windows 10 pc and do not have any of these issues on this machine. All my video files (including the blu ray rips) play back perfectly on my windows 10 pc. This implies that the issue is with the mac software.

Can anyone please give me advice on how to resolve these playback issues on my Apple devices? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Cheers.



 

[GRW]

Just by way of an update, I can confirm that the same blu-ray rips stream perfectly on my MacBook pro and 5K iMac using finder and vlc player. This proves that there are no issues with my local network. Surely JRiver media centre can be tweaked to play these files.

Appreciate any advice guys on how to get these files to stream properly on MC24.

Cheers.

[blgentry]

After your first message, I was pretty sure it was your network and/or drive.  But if another application plays the exact same files ok.... Hmmm...

To be double sure, it would be a good experiment to copy one of your bluray rips to your local drive and play it with MC from there.

I have played quite a number of full resolution bluray rips, in their original formats, from my Macs and have not had any issues with playback stopping as you describe.

Out of curiosity, what are you using for audio playback? External DAC, internal sound card, etc.

Brian.

[GRW]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for reply. I'm just using the internal sound card for audio. I was using a dragonfly red external usb dac when playing flac files on MC24 but have reverted to the internal sound card for movies.

As suggested, I will copy a blu ray rip to my local drive and attempt to play from there. Will let you know outcome.

[GRW]

Ok I can now confirm that MC24 plays the blu ray rips perfectly from the local hard drive but not from my WD nas.

It's interesting to note that the video freezes at the same points in the movie each time.

I thought that my McAfee AV software might be interfering with playback but have now ruled this out. I uninstalled McAfee but the playback still freezes.

I'm really baffled by this and the problem exists on both my MacBook Pro and on my iMac.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Do JRiver have a dedicated support team that I can approach for help with this issue and if so can I have their contact details?

Cheers.

[blgentry]

The general advice on network problems includes steps like:

Reboot every device:  Routers, NAS, client computers, etc.
Use a wired connection if at all possible.

There are lots more things to try, but those should get you some results or at least information.

Brian.

[GRW]

That was the first thing I tried (i.e. rebooting router, modem, network drives...etc). Did not work

While my MacBook has only wireless access to the network, my iMac is hard wired to the router via home network plugs.

Don't know what else to try?

[Hendrik]

How do you access the NAS? I'm not sure how the common way to do something like that on Mac would be done. Do you mount a Windows CIFS/SMB share?

[GRW]

The nas drive is automatically recognised as part of my network and appears in the finder list. As far as I remember, I did not have to configure anything on the MacBook. The drive just appears in finder.

[blgentry]

I found this article that addresses slow SMB performance on WD Mycloud when using Mac as a client:

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=14878&lang=en

I have no experience with this, but it's probably worth a shot.

Brian.

[GRW]

Ok it looks like the WD My Cloud NAS is not the problem after all. I have many movies/videos stored in several locations throughout my network. These are located on 3 different drives:

1) WD My Cloud NAS Storage
2) 7TB Seagate Drive connected by usb 3.o directly to the back of my Linksys Router.
3) WD 4TB portable hard drive connected directly by usb 2.0 to the back of my Linksys Router.

I have now established that the movies/videos associated with the freezes are located on the 7TB Seagate Drive and not the WD NAS. I accessed my router settings for the external storage, unmounted and remounted the Seagate drive. The router was set to scan the Seagate drive every 2 hours. I have turned this scanning feature off. Unfortunately these steps have not corrected the issue which still persists.

Thanks for all advice to date and apologies for misleading as I honestly thought the issue was with the WD NAS. The problem though is definitely with the external Seagate storage attached to the router by usb. There are no issues whatsoever when playing videos/movies from this Seagate drive on my Windows 10 pc so it looks like a mac issue.

Any other thoughts guys as this is really annoying me that I can't resolve this issue.

Cheers.

[JimH]

2) 7TB Seagate Drive connected by usb 3.o directly to the back of my Linksys Router.

Can you plug it in somewhere else?  Plugging it in there may just not work.

Are you sure the port is USB 3.0?

[blgentry]

The article I posted above might still be relevant to your Linksys box as well, assuming it is mapping drives via SMB (Windows file sharing).

Brian.

[GRW]

Ok guys, thanks for all the replies and suggestions. I have tried all recommended possible solutions but nothing works (video still freezing). I’m throwing in the towel and admitting defeat 

I’ve decided to abandon the Seagate drive and use only WD my cloud network drives for media storage. I’ll use the 7TB Seagate as a back up in case the WD cloud drives fail.