Samsung and ""Preparing to play"

[pbelisle]

I've recently begun having problems playing back HD home movies with Mezzmo on my Samsung UN46C65000 LED: the movies pause briefly while the "Preparing to play" displays. These annoying pauses occur randomly and repeatedly throughout the movies. Curiously, Samsung's own DNLA (PCShare) plays the movies flawlessly as, once, did Mezzmo (edit: that was true earlier but not now: playing the movie on PCShare resulted in a half-dozen playback delays).

These movies are (edit: MP4s) approximately 7000 KBPS, 1920x1080. Mezzmo plays run-of-the-mill (edit: MP4) files (eg., 1500 KBPS 1280x720) without difficulty.

Any thoughts appreciated.

[Paul]

The stuttering or "preparing to play" issue can be caused by several factors - for example, a high video bitrate of the video, the available bandwidth of your home network, and whether or not Mezzmo is transcoding the video on-the-fly. See this FAQ for a full explanation of the possible causes and how to fix the problem - http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread.php/6538-Tutorial-How-to-reduce-excessive-stuttering-or-buffering-when-streaming-videos.

If still no success, let us know and we'll help further.

[pbelisle]

Hi Paul, thanks for your quick response and the link to the troubleshooting thread. I have resolved the problem (though I don't know yet what the cause was).

Following the link, I did the following:

Home network...

- using wired network, 100MBs. Actual rate appears to be 65mbps using a network measuring tool
- no other applications/congestion
- router reset, just in case

Mezzmo settings
- default settings for device (Samsung C) and appropriate connection (100mps)

Transcoding

- N/A file not transcoded

Video files

- Device can play in real time (inserted the same file via USB on the TV) so the issue was not with the Samsumg tv.

What I did was to install Mezzmo on the ancient PC that used to be my media server and was replaced by the more recent PC. Problem disappears! Same network, same router, same cable. Clearly, there is something (process, hardware?) on the culprit machine that is interfering with the smooth delivery of the video stream. I'll do more testing and see what I can come up with and report back. If you have any thoughts on what I could look for, please let me know.

Pierre

[Paul]

Good troubleshooting, Pierre. If you are streaming the same video file, with the same device profile and same Mezzmo settings, and one PC streams fine but the other causes your TV to constantly buffer (i.e. 'preparing to play' message), then then the problem must be caused by some bottleneck in network bandwidth. The first place to look is your PC's settings. Check the network adaptor & check for network driver updates. Try turning off the PC's firewall and anti-virus/system protection software. Let us know how you go.

[pbelisle]

Good troubleshooting, Pierre. If you are streaming the same video file, with the same device profile and same Mezzmo settings, and one PC streams fine but the other causes your TV to constantly buffer (i.e. 'preparing to play' message), then then the problem must be caused by some bottleneck in network bandwidth. The first place to look is your PC's settings. Check the network adaptor & check for network driver updates. Try turning off the PC's firewall and anti-virus/system protection software. Let us know how you go.

Well, I got tired of watching the same movie over and over, so I:

- uninstalled the anti-virus system
- turned off the firewall
- updated the driver on the Fast Ethernet connector
- removed a virtual box connector that might have been in conflict.

And, one of those worked, but I can't tell you which one, I'm afraid! The movies all play without buffering.

Thanks for your help!

Pierre

[Paul]

Excellent result, Pierre! Glad you are up and running now :)

[BeFi]

Paul,

I ran into the 'Preparing to Play' issue with HD videos streamed to Samsung C (Mezzmo 4.0.6) also. However it seemed that the phenomenon was random. A video either played flawlessly or paused with 'Preparing to Play' every 20-30secs.

I think I found the culprit: I found a folder under my temp directory filling with Jpegs for those videos that paused with 'Preparing to Play', Now Mezzmo didn't report anything about transcoding and - when prohibiting transcoding for my Samsung C - the videos continue to play, hence must be natively played.

So I turned to the subtitles settings and deactivated subtitles for my Samsung C. That seems to have entirely resolved the 'Preparing to Play' issue for the HD videos.

Any idea what goes wrong here? My temp directory - where these jpeg folders are created when subtitles are active - are on a separate disc from the .mts videos. That separate disc is a superfast SSD so should not present any bottleneck.

[Paul]

Hi BeFi,

It sounds like Mezzmo is burning subtitles into the video, since when you turn off subtitling for your Samsung C, then the "Preparing to Play" issue disappears. But you don't see any transcoding taking place in the Transcoding pane - so that is strange. Can you email us a set of logs when the "Preparing to Play" issue occurs? And, also email us a few of the JPG images that are in the Temp folder. That should tell us what's going wrong.

[BeFi]

Hi Paul,

I can confirm that deactivating all subtitle options has completely remedied the 'Preparing to Play' issue for me. I recognized that I never observed the 'Transcoding window'. I always only observed messages appearing in the 'Status Window'. So - if a video got transcoded and that was only messaged in the Transcoding Window I would not have seen it.

It will take a few days for me to reproduce the issues. As stated before the 'Preparing to Play' issues appeared randomly for a specific video file. The same MTS-Video once played perfectly fine and on another occasion got interrupted every 20-30 secs. I will experiment during the next weekend and send logs and jpeg files as soon as I can reproduce.

I must admit that I don't understand the importance of subtitles in Mezzmo yet. That seems to cause a lot of complexity and I personally have never had a use case for it so far.

I would have expected a function that even needs video streams to be remuxed 'to burn subtitles into the video stream' is inactive by default and gets activated by users who have specific requirements. In my case the function was somehow activated as default by one of the last updates without prompting - potentially by me refreshing the device profiles of my two Samsung TVs.

[Paul]

Thanks for the testing notes, BeFi. Look forward to seeing the logs & JPGs.

By default, streaming subtitles with your videos is turned on in Mezzmo since we think people want to see them - especially if there are subtitles associated with the video files that are added into your Mezzmo library. As you mention, streaming subtitles can be easily turned off in the Options dialog for all devices or the Device Settings dialog for individual devices. We are also adding subtitle selection into our Mezzmo Android app so that it is more convenient to turn off/on subtitles and select what subtitle to display when streaming to a device on your home network.