miniDLNA series 4 issue.

[hpglow]

My PS3 is throwing DLNA errors when I stream most content from my PP s4, not all content does it. Sometimes I get an error on screen and sometimes I get an issue where the audio stops but the video continues on then the video locks and waits for the audio to catch up. Every now and then the PS3 just drops out of playback (SD, HD it dosn't matter.) At first I thought this was an issue related to the fact that I was using wireless, but I have since run a cable. The PP and PS3 are on the same sub-domain currently.

What can I check? Bechmarks, utilities, ect to tell me what is the issue? I know that my CPU is often pegged and that the memory is at capacity, but I figured this was par for the course for an ARM device with 128MB.

[WarheadsSE]

If you are doing any transcoding, this is just plain bound to happen.

[hpglow]

It shouldn't be any transcoding. It should just be serving up the data. To be fair I don't know if my router is a POS or if this is a software issue with my setup.

Seems like there is always one issue or another these days. I guess I will go over my settings again and see if there is anything odd.

[schn4rk]

I use minidlna pretty heavily on my V4 and you could be onto something here. I've been experiencing similar behaviour but in my case I stream to a Philips media player that doesn't actually report any errors - however I do get the audio/video cutouts occasionally. In the absence of those error messages I had suspected the Philips box as the culprit, though. Might need to do some diagnostics to nail it down. It seems to happen when I've been streaming stuff for a while in one session, so to speak, becoming more frequent the longer I watch stuff, so perhaps some sort of memory/cache issue? I'll report back if I find anything more solid.

[hpglow]

It is kind of odd because I can copy a whole episode of Game of Thrones to the PS3 from the PP S4 in under 5 min easy but to stream that content is almost impossible. Once copied it plays fine, but I don't want to have to copy data to be able to play it.

Today I added a switch to my network to see if may be it was my router being a slug, but I have not have time to test it yet. It would just be nice if there were some software that could tell me what the issue was.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hpglow', 'I')t is kind of odd because I can copy a whole episode of Game of Thrones to the PS3 from the PP S4 in under 5 min easy but to stream that content is almost impossible. Once copied it plays fine, but I don't want to have to copy data to be able to play it.

Today I added a switch to my network to see if may be it was my router being a slug, but I have not have time to test it yet. It would just be nice if there were some software that could tell me what the issue was.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('schn4rk', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hpglow', 'I')t is kind of odd because I can copy a whole episode of Game of Thrones to the PS3 from the PP S4 in under 5 min easy but to stream that content is almost impossible. Once copied it plays fine, but I don't want to have to copy data to be able to play it.

Today I added a switch to my network to see if may be it was my router being a slug, but I have not have time to test it yet. It would just be nice if there were some software that could tell me what the issue was.

[kmihelich]

Remember to consider dates and versions when you quote other information. The current version in the repositories is 1.0.24, not 1.0.21.

Now for some real and anecdotal points before this thread gets too out of control on speculation. There doesn't appear to be any memory issues, otherwise the minidlna server that has been running on my PPv4 for over a month would be using more than 3.4% RAM. The DLNA client matters 100%, however. Most companies don't fully implement support, do a poor job of it, or have a limited selection of codecs which themselves may have issues. Samsung has been a well-noted offender, and Sony just does their own thing, they always have. Using DLNA, you're streaming the content as-is, so it is up to the client device to deal with the content on its own terms. If you've verified there are no networking issues either with physical connections or the capability of your equipment to handle sustained transfers among other network traffic, you really have only two places left to look. Either the client device can't handle it, or you're absolutely demolishing the plug with some other process(es). The latter is hard to accomplish though, as I can still compile and compress archives on the PPv4 while streaming 1080p material.

I've never had a problem streaming to either my Logitech Revue or WDTV that I couldn't attribute to an external factor, and in those cases I know that what I'm doing in tandem with streaming has the distinct possibility of disrupting my viewing pleasure. I don't bother with the PS3 because it lacks a wide support of formats and because I'm paying the power bill (5 watts is far better than nearly 200), but mostly because it's entirely inconsistent in its ability to perform with formats that it should support. I know people love integrated solutions in the equipment they already own, but if you really want to use DLNA as the multimedia platform for your home you need to consider using equipment that is proven. Otherwise, you'll need to move off of a plug to run a transcoding DLNA server on more powerful hardware to accommodate the shortcomings of what you do own.

One last thing: if you're running your system, content storage, etc., all from USB, you can easily run yourself into being I/O bound. I use only SATA-connected drives and experience no issues, so this is also something to consider about your setup.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kmihelich', 'R')emember to consider dates and versions when you quote other information. The current version in the repositories is 1.0.24, not 1.0.21.

[hpglow]

I stream from a USB 3.0 jack. The OS is installed on a USB 2.0 flash drive, and the swap is on the the USB 3.0 media drive. I could switch the OS to a faster SATA drive or rip the USB 3.0 drive from it's enclosure and run a cable to it but it seems like there should be plenty of bandwidth on the 3.0 bus to handle one drive.

I am not that great with Linux, but all I have installed on my PP S4 is Samba, minidlna, and cryptodev. So there shouldn't be real issues, since I am not very familure with Linux though I don't really know what is the bare minimum that should be running to pull off what I am doing. If someone has a list of that stuff I would apprecieate it. Then I can stop/remove everything I don't need.