For folks with Media Servers at home

[res0nat0r]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Its compressed into x264 format stored in an mkv. I've played copied VOB's or whatever fine w/o any issues too.

[Kamal]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Generally, compressed 1080p flicks are between 8 - 12 GB, uncompressed BluRay rips are 30+ GB. So yea it will stutter on 10/100 MBIT. VOBs are DVD9 format and generally under 8.7 GB so those will stream like a charm.

There's a reason key areas of my house are wired with Gigabit

[dusk]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

My friend's Apple TV 2 plays MKV but he says the hardware (?) only supports 720p.

.

Does anyone have an idea as to why some mkv files don't play audio when streaming through my jailbroken Apple TV2?

Would love some insight into this. I now have a sudden urge to convert my movies to 720p mkv .. I'm thru watching lo-res avi files.

[feather]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Correct me if I'm wrong, if your movies are lower res to begin with, you can't upconvert like mp3s.

For your current MKV no-audio problem, you can try going to ATV settings and changing the audio to 16 bit.

[dusk]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Thanks for the link feather, I will check it out.

And yea I suppose you're right, I will not be able to convert my dvd's to 720p mkv's but maybe only my Blu-ray Discs. Or would I be better off converting to mp4? I'm pretty sure there is any other thread around here about hi-res video compression, but can't seem to find it.

[dusk]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

I play 1080p encoded mkv files via my 10/100Mbit LAN without any problems at all.

How are you streaming these files? I seem to be having a little bit of buffering and I have a Gbps connection. I am using Plex media server on my PC with the stored movies and streaming off the laptop.

I took the plunge and bought the Drobo N (only affordable option) now I am wondering if there is gonna be an issue streaming my 1080p mkvs..... any suggestions?

[Kamal]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Drobo N (I forget which gen) has read speed hiccups. This is why I built a server from scratch and connected it over gigabit. If you have 1080p files under 15 gig, you should be fine.

[res0nat0r]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

How are you streaming these files? I seem to be having a little bit of buffering and I have a Gbps connection. I am using Plex media server on my PC with the stored movies and streaming off the laptop.

I took the plunge and bought the Drobo N (only affordable option) now I am wondering if there is gonna be an issue streaming my 1080p mkvs..... any suggestions?

My hosts are all linux based so I'm serving stuff over NFS. I don't know but SMB / Windows might be a bit more heavy handed and cause issues. I can't really say about the Drobo though as I've never used it.

You shouldn't need gigabit though for it to work, my stuff is over a 10/100 standard ethernet cable and I can stream just fine without network issues.

[dusk]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

You shouldn't need gigabit though for it to work, my stuff is over a 10/100 standard ethernet cable and I can stream just fine without network issues.

So there is something fishy with my network then cause like K said, if my files are under 8 Gb... I really shouldn't have a problem.. but I definitely seem to be having an issue.

.....not a happy camper!

[res0nat0r]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

Really the size of the file shouldn't matter, as the software will just incrementally read the file as the movie plays, so the size overall shouldn't matter I don't think. Unless you downloaded or ripped a bluray with an obscenely high bitrate, then that would be the only thing file wise I see causing an issue as the software would have to process lots of MB/sec and that could cause some processor lag. But really thats not common I dont think.

I can stream a 12GB 1080p mkv file just as well as a 4GB 720p, the encoding rate is what matters. I think maybe your network settings might be an issue? I don't have any experience with Plex, but do only certain formats do this? I know on my old xbmc install on my linux box I had to enable a certain mode who's name I can't remember now for it to offload the video decoding to the nvidia chip. Without that everything was very laggy.

[Kamal]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

File size is everything for digital content res0. If you watch a 4gb file and a 12 gb version of the same movie, your network has to transmit 12 gb vs. 4 in the same time that is the duration of the movie. Granted buffering can be caused because of many reasons, network issues is generally at the top.

[res0nat0r]

Re: For folks with Media Servers at home

A lot of it is the bitrate of the encoding. If you have a 15 minute flick that is encoded in some crazy shit like 10 megabit, or whatever then you have to ingest that quickly yeah. So it really depends. That bigass file could be 90% DTS tracks since they decided to encode the english, french, german and commentary, so it really depends than just the size of the file.

It is hard to really tell what is going on above without really testing things out and seeing exactly where the problems are happening.