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[kwake]

In MC 15, it was unusable for me - I would try and play any file (mp4, avi, divx, etc) and it would take a long time thinking about it while showing the spinning 'Opening' wheel...and when it finally would play, it would stutter all the time, making it totally unwatchable.

I just installed MC16 beta and gave it a try - first try boom the file played back in under a second! I didn't even see the 'Opening' spinning wheel! I had to double check that I was actually playing a file over Wifi from my NAS, and not a local file!

Very pleasantly surprised! Is this due to the new MadVR engine or something?

Cheers,
Kwake

[JimH]

In MC 15, it was unusable for me - I would try and play any file (mp4, avi, divx, etc) and it would take a long time thinking about it while showing the spinning 'Opening' wheel...and when it finally would play, it would stutter all the time, making it totally unwatchable.

I just installed MC16 beta and gave it a try - first try boom the file played back in under a second! I didn't even see the 'Opening' spinning wheel! I had to double check that I was actually playing a file over Wifi from my NAS, and not a local file!

Very pleasantly surprised! Is this due to the new MadVR engine or something?

It's not madVR.  It's the work done to stream files that can be streamed.

Are you playing them on another copy of MC?

[kwake]

Hi Jim, yes playing the files within MC. The PC I'm running MC on is too far away to wire directly to the router so I use Wifi. So it's plain old playback of video files from a NAS via Wifi (no DNLA config or anything like that as far as I know).

The NAS is wired directly to my wireless router and shows up in the Network Tree in Windows and I add the vid files to the MC library using the \\KwakeNAS\Movies format path.

I was starting to wonder if my NAS bandwidth had problems or if my wireless router was getting too old to handle the demands of streaming high bandwidth movies over the air, but looks like that isn't the case - which is a huge relief.

Ken

[JimH]

Thanks for the details

JohnT at JRiver just discovered that one of his wireless network issues was solved by moving his wireless phone base station to a location further from his access point.

Powerline networking also works well now.

[kwake]

I spoke too soon!

Everything was fine until today when I went to play an MP4 file (a TED Talks video), and MC 16 automatically downloaded and insatlled what I think is a codec, and ever since it has gone back to very choppy and unusable.

I have no idea why it decided to do this today, since I have been watching the same file types for 2 or 3 days now without any need for codec - and as I mentioned in my initial post, playback was flawless!

Is there any way to:

1. Look in the MC logs to find out what was downloaded and installed?
2. Uninstall this problematic codec?
3. Prevent MC 16 from automatically downloading codecs in future?
4. If not, how can I switch MP4 playback to the codec it was using successfully, not knowing which one it was?

Thanks,
Kwake

[kwake]

Bump...still having playback issues over wifi...any ideas?

[jroyale]

I'm by no means an expert but it looks like you are looking for input so...really there are a lot of questions to be answered first like what is your computer setup, network and what file types are you playing (HD or not HD).  Not knowing these I'll continue with the caveat that my answers are based on assumptions.

First off what baffles me is that it downloaded a codec for a file type which you claim was playing fine before that.  So I'm not sure at all why it would do that.  I'll leave this to the development team but it seems extremely odd that it would do this.

Likely not what you want to hear and you'll probably say but ya why was it playing fine before, is that wireless from my perspective is still unpredictable when it comes to playing media and in particular video files.   There is far too much noise these days and from what it sounds like you are running a g network? When I was reading your post the first thing that came to mind is that the development team likely didn't change anything with regards to the ability of mc to load files faster over wireless.

I can use my home example.  I have a non hi def version of The Lion King.  I'm not even sure if it's 480.  At any rate my router is in my basement and when I try and play it on the 3rd floor, I starts for a few minutes, then freezes or chops brutally.  If you are using high bandwidth movies and you claim that your computer is too far away from your router to wire it, then that's your problem IMHO.  

I would worry less about MC16 and more about your infrastructure.  You could upgrade to N (with adapter and router likely in the $100 range for a budget system) or you can go to a powerline network for about $150 which has become much much better over the last few years and a very easy resolution to your issue.

[kwake]

Thanks for your response jroyale, I've been tinkering around a bit and have been able to get back smooth streaming via Wifi, for the moment.

What I did was run the Codec Tweak Tool for my K-Lite Codec Pack and had it reset all settings to default. Once I rebooted my PC and fired up MC16, streaming was all good - running between 1 and 1.6 MB/s for a 1280x696 MKV movie over my Wireless G network - without so much as a hiccup.

I didn't change anything in MC, so hopefully this will last. What I'll be looking out for is MC trying once again to automatically download its own codec in the next few days, as what seems to have happened the last time the problem appeared.

If MC Dev have any ideas on what may have happened, I'd be happy to better understand - especially if there are any tips in how to avoid it in future.

Cheers,
Kwake

[jroyale]

Glad it worked out for you.  I'm surprised that the codecs had that big an effect on transfer speed.  I know a filter like ffdshow for video is a resource hog but that's an entire program.

Either way glad it worked out.