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[Bengi010]

As of the last couple weeks certain movies or shows in my library are either not loading or taking an extremely long time to load (5-10 minutes).  I can't find any pattern to which play and which don't.  It doesn't happen on my desktop where the files are on a local hard drive, but streaming to the media room or a laptop it happens regularly.   It's only certain files, most things play fine but some just will not load consistently.

Edit: It looks like there is a pattern I missed before.  It seems that only MP4 files have trouble loading.  MKV and MPG seem ok

[jmone]

When you say streaming, do you mean using DLNA and/or MC Library Server Clients and/or Gizmo?

[Bengi010]

Server/Clients over wifi

[jmone]

Ok, Do you have the files on a Network Share that the Client can also see with the same path as the server (eg \\SERVER\Movies\Movie.mkv" or G:\Movies\Movie.mkv)?

[jmone]

You have a couple of options (see pic):
1) "Play local file if one matches Library Server":  If both your client and server use the same paths this will mean you Client MC will try to play the file nativly without MC doing any conversion.  This is the most feature rich and least intensive on the MC Server as no transcoding is done.  The downside is your Wireless network must be reliable enough to keep up with the video stream
2) "Video Conversion":  If you need or want to, you can select what format MC Server will use to transcode to and you may find some luck here.  This may help with the Wifi bandwidth/reliability but the PC running the MC Server needs to convert it.  Try a few and see what balance works for you.

[Bengi010]

I'm not too proficient with this sort of thing. I don't think the files are shared on the network.  They are like your second example G:\Movies\Movie.mkv

Would setting up network sharing improve things do you think?  If so I'll have to look up how to do that.

[jmone]

What version of Windows are you running on your PC's?

[Bengi010]

7

[jmone]

FYI - Here is some info on how Library Server works - http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Server

[jmone]

FYI - Here is some info on how Library Server works - http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Server

It is pretty straight forward (if you know what you are doing), especially if all you PC's are part of the same "HomeGroup" - have a read of the MS article on this - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows7/share-files-with-someone

If you want to go down this path you would need to:
1) Create the Share on the PC with the Media (eg you right click on the top level folder underwhich all the media is stored in Explorer --> Share With --> Home Group (read or read/write pending you preference).  All PC's on your homegroup should now be able to browse the contents of this folder in Windows Explorer --> Network --> PC Name.  Make sure this works before moving on
2) Change the filepath in you Library Server Library to the UNC path name (eg from say G:\Media\movie.mkv --> \\"SHARENAME"\Media\movie.mkv).  MC will do this for you if you select all your media --> right click --> library tools --> Rename, Move, & Copy Files then use just the "Find & Replace" option with the Drop Down option "Update Database to point to new location) selected.  Check that both your Server and Client PC's can play the media.  In the future you would import all media from this share not the physical location so the path is always in the correct format.

It is a quick and easy change BUT - if you are not used to these things it may be better to get someone who does to come around.  It may also expose a different issue that your WiFi network is not strong enough to play original material over it... so converting may still be your best option.

[Bengi010]

I think I understand and it seems to be working.  Thank you.  But I'm not clear on what you meant by "In the future you would import all media from this share not the physical location so the path is always in the correct format."  Do you mean that when I rename files I simply use the Share name instead of the Drive letter or is it something else?

Nevermind, figured it out

[Bengi010]

One last thing.  This fix makes it seem like this has always been the case, that MP4 files just don't play until the whole file has loaded and that takes time... but I have a substantial number of mp4 movies and I swear I've never had this issue until last week.

[jmone]

As I use the "play local file" option and don't have MP4 source material I would only be guessing as why you are seeing a change of what was streamed vs needed full transcoding.  It could be the format of the video or audio streams in the MP4 container.  You could try the transcoding option and select one of the TS formats as these are streamable if you did not want to use the "play local file" option.

[Al ex]

As I use the "play local file" option and don't have MP4 source material I would only be guessing as why you are seeing a change of what was streamed vs needed full transcoding.  It could be the format of the video or audio streams in the MP4 container.  You could try the transcoding option and select one of the TS formats as these are streamable if you did not want to use the "play local file" option.

Hi,
I am also just trying to find out, what the best way is to stream movies either via WiFi from my Synology NAS to a Samsung TV via JRiver or even externally over the Internet via Gizmo.

Sometimes, movies work smoothly and start fast, sometimes they dont start at all. And also very annoying: AVI and VOB seem to not allow fast forward.

I now want to convert all my movies to a format, which can be streamed "natively". I was wondering, if MP4 with H264 is the best choice, as I can also stream that without conversion to an iPad? And MP4 should allow me to fast forward movies!

[Bengi010]

I'm using the play local file option now and I am still having trouble with mp4 files.  Sometimes they work but often they take forever to load and the only way to unfreeze the computer is to shut down media center.  It's really annoying so I'm looking into conversion but I'm not sure which option to choose.  
  Should I let MC convert on the fly each time, and if so which format is a good choice MPEG2 of H264-TS, autofps or no?  I'll do some trials but I was hoping to find some info in the wiki or the forums and come up empty.
  The other option is to convert the actual file, probably to MKV since that seems to stream well.  Any suggestions on good converters?

Update:  With a little research and a little experimenting I found a solution that I want to share with anyone else having this problem.  Since it turns out the actual audio and video encodes in the mp4 container is also compatible with an mkv container I simply renamed all my files.  No conversion necessary.  I used file/rename/copy command to find and replace all instances of .mp4 with .mkv and that's it.  If I run into any problems with this solution I'll update again.