Help! WD TV Live Plus choking on streaming ACVHD from canon hf100 vixia...

[jmatej]

I have video clips recorded on a Canon HF100 Vixia camcorder and stored on a Synology ds410j server that I am trying to stream to my plasma TV through a WD TV Live Plus box. The clips frequently stutter and then freeze altogether along with asynchronous sound. My network is wired and the same problem occurs when I try to utilize the media player built in with my Samsung BlueRay player. If I stream through my PS3 however I have NO PROBLEMS WHATSOEVER. What is going on? What does the Plystation 3 do differently with these ACVHD clips that both the WD Media player and the Samsung Blue Ray media player cannot do?

[jagabo]

Try running newer or older versions of the firmware in the WDTV Live Plus. WD is very bad about fixing one thing while breaking another with each release.

[RabidDog]

PS3 is 5x more powerful than your WD and 28x more powerful than your BRplayer. Try remuxing or transcoding the footage to another format. What format is the footage, use mediainfo.
You may have too many cabacs or high level Bvops

[jman98]

PS3 is 5x more powerful than your WD and 28x more powerful than your BRplayer.

I find that statement rather dubious.

No WD models support BluRay format and for sake of ease let's call AVCHD BluRay format as it's close enough. You'll have to play the m2ts files directly and that may or may not have problems. Despite my serious doubts about the PS3 being at least 5x more powerful than anything else you have, RabidDog does have some good advice. It could be that there were encoding options that the WD and Samsung have problems with. Just FYI the WD players do sometimes have problems with wireless streaming of 1080i/p video. That's not your situation but it's still worth mentioning for others who may find this thread.

[jmatej]

Even if i connect a flash drive with the video file directly to the WD device I get choking in the same spots...so I know it is not a network issue


So this is the info I get from mediainfo...

ID : 0 (0x0)
Complete name : C:\Users\Jan Matejka\Desktop\WMSConcertFeb2011.mpg
Format : BDAV
Format/Info : Blu-ray Video
File size : 11.4 GiB
Duration : 1h 39mn
Overall bit rate : 16.3 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 20.3 Mbps

ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 2 frames
Codec ID : 27
Duration : 1h 40mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 15.4 Mbps
Maximum bit rate : 16.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.248
Stream size : 10.8 GiB (95%)
ID : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension : CM (complete main)
Codec ID : 129
Duration : 1h 39mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossy
Delay relative to video : -69ms
Stream size : 183 MiB (2%)

[jagabo]

The WDTV shouldn't have any problem with that video. Only 2 ReFrames and the bitrate isn't very high. Try changing the extension from .MPG to .M2TS. Try remuxing into an MKV container. Make sure your flash drive is fast enough -- older flash drives were pretty slow. You can try some the sample files from here to check for throughput problems:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=18052824&postcount=6

You shouldn't have problems until you get up to 50 Mb/s and above.

Can you provide a short sample that shows the problem? I'll try it on my WDTV Live.

[RabidDog]

The WDTV (AFAIK) likes m2ts files better than mkv.
You could also try putting the file on a hard disk and playing from that
What are you running on the Ps3 to play back the clips?
A quick remux may be your only answer: are the stuttering spots very high bitrate? maybe these spikes are too much for the wdtv/brraplayer


?Re: Earlier stats
Doom on the WDTV 1fps
Doom on PS3 200fps

*all stats quoted may differ from real-life and are quoted for illustrative purposes only.

Use of this product may cause anal leakage

[jagabo]

are the stuttering spots very high bitrate? maybe these spikes are too much for the wdtv

Not likely. The WDTV Live can play over 70 Mb/s CBR h.264.

?Re: Earlier stats
Doom on the WDTV 1fps
Doom on PS3 200fps

Pretty meaningless because the player uses a dedicated chip for h.264 decoding, not the CPU.