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Forum Discussion
ReadyNAS Pro HD Video Playback Issues
I am having problems playing videos on my new Mac Mini that I am using as an HTPC.
My NAS is a ReadyNAS Pro (RNDP6000) with 3 x 1 TB hitachi ultrastar (HUA722010CLA330) drives and a 1.5 TB seagate (ST31500341AS) drive setup in RAID config using X-RAID2. My switch is a NETGEAR ProSafe GS108T-200NAS initially set to the default settings. I haven't had a chance to start messing with VLAN settings or anything else. There is a bit of a learning curve on my part. I also have a brand new Mac Mini running Lion with a 2.7ghz i7 processor and 8GB of RAM with a wired connection to the Netgear switch accessing the NAS under CIFS. I also have a HP desktop running Windows 7 using a similar configuration.
The problem I am having is video playback when accessing large video files off of the NAS. These are typically 1080 HD mkv files although I have also experienced intermittent problems with video files in 720. Depending on the movie, I can have anything as minor as occasional stutters in the video playback to as bad as the playback issue crashing the program and sometimes even messing the network and, it seems, crashing the switch for a couple of minutes - I noticed this when my wife was on her iPad and she was suddenly unable to get on the internet and the same with the laptop I was on while working on the network.
As far as the movie playback, I have tested movies as small as 7.5GB with only slight stutters on occasion. I tried a 10.5GB movie and the stalling was much more pronounced. Movies larger than 11GB are completely unwatchable stalling every minute or so and in some cases stalling every 30 seconds.
As a test of the 2 computers ability to play these files, I have also tried large movies on the local drives and that is not a problem at all - they play back just fine. Beautiful playback in hi-def for the Mini and even the crusty old HP. Mind you, some of these are the same files that were stalling over the network.
Over at the Apple forums they suggested enabling jumbo frames. So I enabled jumbo frames on the Mac Mini, ReadyNAS Pro, HP Computer, and the Netgear GS108T switch. All with MTU set to 9000. I also enabled flow control on the devices that had it.
After these changes I ran into the same problems with videos timing out - very annoying and frustrating as you can imagine.
Then I started playing with device configurations. My original configuration was NAS > Netgear switch > Mac Mini. I went ahead and switched the switch to an Airport Extreme I have as my WAP and the setup looked like this - NAS > Airport Extreme > Mac Mini. I even separated the connections and left only those devices connected to the switches. No go. Same exact problems.
It appears to me that the NAS is the one having issues providing the necessary data at the proper rate. I even tried connecting wirelessly to see if that would work and that was obviously not a solution.
BTW, I had similar issues when I was testing out a Boxee Box a number of months back and I ended up blaming it on the Boxee. HMMMMMM.
I am at a loss - this is not my area of expertise.
My only other alternative would be to spend $2000 for the thunderbolt enabled NAS that Apple sells - it's only money! Just kidding by the way.
Can anyone help with this and/or run into the same issues. Thanks in advance for the help!
Cesar
My NAS is a ReadyNAS Pro (RNDP6000) with 3 x 1 TB hitachi ultrastar (HUA722010CLA330) drives and a 1.5 TB seagate (ST31500341AS) drive setup in RAID config using X-RAID2. My switch is a NETGEAR ProSafe GS108T-200NAS initially set to the default settings. I haven't had a chance to start messing with VLAN settings or anything else. There is a bit of a learning curve on my part. I also have a brand new Mac Mini running Lion with a 2.7ghz i7 processor and 8GB of RAM with a wired connection to the Netgear switch accessing the NAS under CIFS. I also have a HP desktop running Windows 7 using a similar configuration.
The problem I am having is video playback when accessing large video files off of the NAS. These are typically 1080 HD mkv files although I have also experienced intermittent problems with video files in 720. Depending on the movie, I can have anything as minor as occasional stutters in the video playback to as bad as the playback issue crashing the program and sometimes even messing the network and, it seems, crashing the switch for a couple of minutes - I noticed this when my wife was on her iPad and she was suddenly unable to get on the internet and the same with the laptop I was on while working on the network.
As far as the movie playback, I have tested movies as small as 7.5GB with only slight stutters on occasion. I tried a 10.5GB movie and the stalling was much more pronounced. Movies larger than 11GB are completely unwatchable stalling every minute or so and in some cases stalling every 30 seconds.
As a test of the 2 computers ability to play these files, I have also tried large movies on the local drives and that is not a problem at all - they play back just fine. Beautiful playback in hi-def for the Mini and even the crusty old HP. Mind you, some of these are the same files that were stalling over the network.
Over at the Apple forums they suggested enabling jumbo frames. So I enabled jumbo frames on the Mac Mini, ReadyNAS Pro, HP Computer, and the Netgear GS108T switch. All with MTU set to 9000. I also enabled flow control on the devices that had it.
After these changes I ran into the same problems with videos timing out - very annoying and frustrating as you can imagine.
Then I started playing with device configurations. My original configuration was NAS > Netgear switch > Mac Mini. I went ahead and switched the switch to an Airport Extreme I have as my WAP and the setup looked like this - NAS > Airport Extreme > Mac Mini. I even separated the connections and left only those devices connected to the switches. No go. Same exact problems.
It appears to me that the NAS is the one having issues providing the necessary data at the proper rate. I even tried connecting wirelessly to see if that would work and that was obviously not a solution.
BTW, I had similar issues when I was testing out a Boxee Box a number of months back and I ended up blaming it on the Boxee. HMMMMMM.
I am at a loss - this is not my area of expertise.
My only other alternative would be to spend $2000 for the thunderbolt enabled NAS that Apple sells - it's only money! Just kidding by the way.
Can anyone help with this and/or run into the same issues. Thanks in advance for the help!
Cesar
20 Replies
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- Now the latest thing is that the NAS doesn't let me access the file structure. I can see the root folders but they stall when i try to read into the other folders. And the damn Raidar utility gets stuck accessing the admin page.
I can't believe this happened minutes after my original post!!!!!! - What version of RAIDIATOR is on your Pro?
You mentioned you have a Windows PC. What happens when you try to stream movies from the NAS to the PC?
In general Jumbo Frames should not be necessary to stream movies. Are you sure your network cables are all OK? Try swapping them out.
Within Readynas Frontview you can check network transmission errors. Click NETWORK > INTERFACES > SHOW ERRORS. Report back what it says in this window. mrwizard93 wrote: Now the latest thing is that the NAS doesn't let me access the file structure. I can see the root folders but they stall when i try to read into the other folders. And the damn Raidar utility gets stuck accessing the admin page.
I can't believe this happened minutes after my original post!!!!!!
How are you logging into the NAS? Did you create user accounts? Try to reboot the PC and/or disconnect the current connection to the NAS and reconnect using your user account credentials.- I set it up so that i log in as a guest so as to not have any issues with rights, quotas, etc, etc. I have minimal experience setting this kind of stuff up so i tried to simplify this portion of the network.
As far as what i have done today - I set up the connection as an AFP instead of a CIFS connection. I tried different IP address thinking about possible conflicts. I rechecked all the settings on the switch. I drove myself CRAZY with problems with not being able to see the NAS because of an unknown IP conflict.
Nothing. I get somewhat better results, but i get erroring out after 8 minutes of movie watching rather than 2. improvement, yes but not good at all.
I have the latest firmware installed BTW.
I AM CLUELESS as to what in the world could be the problem. - Another thing, the worst part of all this is that it seems like i can transfer a 12 gig file in around 4-6 minutes but the same movie can't be feed to my Mini over the course of a 2 hour movie. I don't understand.
- Try going back to the GS108T and enabling "global flow control" on the switch. Not sure if it will help, but it might be worth a shot.
- I also forgot to mention that this has happened with the following programs trying to play video files for me:
VLC (Windows and Mac)
MPlayerX (MaC)
Plex (Mac) - I already enabled flow control for all ports on the GS108T and on the Macs.
- What are you using as a Router/Gateway for DHCP, DNS, etc..?
As mentioned earlier, please check and post any Interface transmission errors on the Network Interface screen on the NAS.
What version of RAIDIATOR is on your Pro? "Latest" is not a version #.
Have you checked the NAS Health screen to see if any of your disks have SMART errors?
Try swapping Ethernet cables. Disconnect other devices on the LAN.
My NVX has no problems streaming MPEG2 videos to my Sony TV. Sony only support MP2 for streaming but it works with no hiccups. - Mrwizard: Here are a couple of tools I've used in the past to analyze stuttering as I feed HD video to my LG blu-ray player.
Addgadget Network Meter: http://addgadget.com/network_meter/
With this you can watch the bitrate of data flowing into your HP Win7 machine as you watch an HD movie. That may help you determine what bitrate your NAS can support and at what bitrate it starts to freeze up. In my case, 5-10 Mbps was common in a 7GB 1.5-hr movie; however, in the high bitrate scenes (action, panning, etc.) I would easily see 30-50Mbps. No problem for an ethernet connection, but quickly saturated my wireless-N connection. Maybe it'll help you see new data?
Wireshark: http://www.wireshark.org/
Little bit of a learning curve on this, but if you build a filter in Wireshark to watch the data to & from a specific IP address, it'll tell you what the packets are doing. Do you have dropped packets? Is it transmitting via UDP, or TCP? In my case, I discovered that my LG blu-ray player would only pull data via the much more stringent TCP method, so when the network connection topped out, it bogged the whole system down as it tried to retransmit all dropped packets.
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