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[ssto5535]

I recently began experiencing playback/buffering issues when streaming my music library from a remote PC at home to another PC at a different location using the Panel web streaming interface. Occasionally (several times per album) the music pauses and waits 30-60 seconds before buffering and continuing playback. The issue is worse if I change the quality to stream PCM, better if I reduce the MP3 stream quality. I have not been able to observe any network issues with either PC that could be leading to this (of course my employer's IT team could be screwing something up, like usual), both machines remain connected to the internet and appear to have sufficient network bandwidth available when the issue occurs.

I have noticed in the playback bar that it appears that songs are only buffered a minute or two in advance (i.e. panel web interface is not buffering the entire song, or multiple songs in advance). I also use Gizmo sometimes to stream from Media Center and have noted that Gizmo has an option to "cache download ahead" up to 10 songs.

Where can I find or how can I enable "cache download ahead" for the MC panel web interface? I've looked in the Panel web settings and the Media Center menus but cannot find anything. Surely there is a way to enable this to help resolve this issue.

Thanks in advance!

[JimH]

Panel doesn't cache, but your problem seems like limited bandwidth.

[Awesome Donkey]

In addition to being no caching for Panel, the only remote that does (as far as I know) is Gizmo.

[ssto5535]

I was hoping that caching the entire song (or entire album) would be a solution for this, but seems like it might need some additional troubleshooting.

I agree that changing the streaming quality and seeing an effect on the occurrence rate of this issue seems to indicate a network issue of some kind, but I can't see anything wrong when the issue does occur. Plenty of bandwidth... 40mbps up on the host machine and 600+ mbps down on the client. No interrupting of internet service on either machine when the issue occurs. The download speed when buffering is much faster than playback (I can see the buffer progress very quickly when it does buffer). It definitely seems like some issue fetching additional content when panel determines that it needs to buffer more of the song. Any other suggestions on how to troubleshoot?

[ssto5535]

I have observed that the audio quality on Panel changes how much playback time is buffered. I'm speculating that Panel only buffers a set amount of memory, and not a set amount of playback time, thus lower audio quality means a longer audio buffer time. Thus reducing the audio quality reduces the number of times the stream must buffer per song (and album), which could be an explanation for why the occurrence rate of this issue changes with audio quality.

I have also found the Activity Log (Services & Plug-ins --> Media Network) for within Media Center on the server side. I can see events in the log whenever the server buffers. What potentially useful information should I be looking for in the Activity Log when the issue occurs? Is there anywhere else I should be looking for more info?

[JimH]

You may be seeing the time it takes to convert formats.  Especially if the server has a lower powered CPU.