For about a month now I've been having problems with VideoTS (DVD rips) skipping / pausing for about a second or two during playback. I don't have this problem with TV shows in AVI. To remind everyone, I have my files on a mac pro and everything is on the network, so the mini is pulling data from the pro.
My setup:
Intel based MacPro quad core 4GB RAM
2009 Mac Mini, 2.0 GHz with 2GB RAM
Time Capsule N router (not the newest one that came out a few months ago)
Netgear XAV101 Powerline Eathernet Adapter
Both the Pro and Mini plugged into its own Netgear poweline adapter and then there is one where the router is, in another room. House is one story, 1600 sq ft. (I say this so you can get an idea of distance). Straight line distance, imagine a triangle and everything is about 30 feet from any one unit. Both are running 10.5.7. Did it with 10.5.6 as well.
As I said, both 720DH MKV and SD avi TV shows play fine no problems. Playing the Video TS files is where I was having this pausing problems, which basically made the movie unwatchable.
Things I tired:
- I maxed out all the caches in the Plex - didn't work.
- I stopped spotlight on the mini - didn't work
- I was running iphone airmouse server on the mini. I stopped that - didn't work.
- Nothing else was running on the mini in the background.
- I moved the Video TS folders from the USB external drive to a Firewire External drive - didn't work.
- I moved files from the firewire to an internal HD on the Pro - didn't work.
- I reset both computers, and made sure the Pro wasn't doing any internet activies - didn't work.
- I reset the router and the Ethernet adapters - didn't work.
What happened last night? My girlfriend said, do you just want to watch it the macbook? Very annoyed the system wasn't working, and that we would lose the awesome explosions on the sub (we were going to watch Body of Lies), and eveything that goes along with it - I said, sure why not, we've tried everything else.
Well, usually with the mini, the Video TS movies would take like 30-40 seconds to load up and start. She pulls out the macbook and in like 5 seconds, the movie way starting - ummm....wow, that was pretty fast. - what's up with that?
So we select play and the actual movie starts again pretty quick. That's odd - usually it takes like 30 seconds for the buffer to fill up - interesting....
We keep watching - 1 minute, 2 minutes (by now on the mini, it should have studdered and paused/played) - we watch the whole movie - STUDDER FREE! WTF is going on?
Yes, I know you've thought of it too. It can't be the mini - the mini has only one thing on it - Plex. Nothing else is running. Her macbook had like excel open, firefox open, spotlight running, something else going on, etc... granted it is a 2.4GHz and 4GB of RAM, still....
The only difference is....yes - the macbook was wireless and the mini had wireless off and the netgear powerline as its connection.
Well, I just unplugged the netgear from the mini (still plugged in on the Pro) and turned on the wifi on the mini. The movie has been playing for an hour now in the background with NO skipping or pausing! Fantastic!
The only thing I can think of - originally when I set the system up, the Pro was running wifi and it was just the mini and the router connected via the netgear. Then recently I added another netgear to the Pro. I guess when you have 2 computers using the netgear via only 3 units, you start running into bandwidth problems.
Either way, problem solved and hope this helps anyone who is having similar issues :)
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