Multiple problems with Raspberry Pi 3B+

1st Official Post

    I have a 3B+ running LibreELEC 8.2 and Kodi 17. It's connected to my router via Ethernet. Also I have a 3TB external NTFS harddrive connected via USB.

    I wanted to be able to stream all my media files from a central device but so far I ran into multiple problems:

    • Sometimes the playback through UPNP (with VLC player on my PC) is really stuttery and even freezes totally at some point. SMB is even worse. The PC is connected via Ethernet (DLAN)
    • Not all files of a TV show are being recognized (i.e. only 50 of 100 episodes are listed)
    • Streaming from a Samsung Smart TV with DLNA also froze after a couple of seconds. However, I seemed to fix that by using a Ethernet connection to the TV.
    • Trying to stream from a Fire TV Stick, also using the VLC app, only worked the first time and then never again. But this might also be due to the VLC app.

    Any suggestions on how I could solve these problems? Before LibreELEC I used OSMC with similiar issues. When playing any file locally from the Pi everything works perfectly.

    • Official Post

    1) Streaming from a RPi3B+ ... Its ethernet port may be advertised as a gigabit port but AFAIK it is connected internally via US, and maxes out at 300Mb/s. The HDD is connected to a USB 2.0 port, that usually only goes upto 40MB/s (but it's a low-powered RPi, so I doubt you will get those speeds). So reading 40MB/s *could* turn serving into 20MB/s max for the RPi device. What sort/size of media files are you streaming?


    2) Not-scraping certain shows is a separate problem altogether.

    3) Streaming from a TV, I don't have too much confidence there. TVs usually only have a 100Mb/s port and crappy outdated hardware at best. The same goes for router SMB servers.

    4) VLC may be posing as a comparison, it is basically making you compare apples and oranges.

    I'm not quite sure on the whole use case here.

    You want to set up the RPi3B+ as a stand alone server, or not? Does it also have to run Kodi? If so, attached to which device?

    Which protocol is required for file serving: UPnP, SMB or both?

    Which device(s) will be used as a video client: the TV directly via UPnP or does the TV has its own Kodi device attached (FireTV) ?

    Quote from Klojum

    I'm not quite sure on the whole use case here.

    You want to set up the RPi3B+ as a stand alone server, or not? Does it also have to run Kodi? If so, attached to which device?

    Which protocol is required for file serving: UPnP, SMB or both?

    Which device(s) will be used as a video client: the TV directly via UPnP or does the TV has its own Kodi device attached (FireTV) ?

    Yes the RPi3B+ is supposed to be a media center that possibly every device in the apartment can access and stream from (not at the same time of course). That being said I think I'd only need UPnP as a protocol. If there is a more suitable solution it does not have to run Kodi necessarily.

    Concerning the video clients I am using a Samsung TV that has direct UPnP functionality, a Fire TV Stick (which doesn't run Kodi at the moment) on a different non-smart TV and two Windows 10 PCs.

    As I mentioned earlier, when I am playing files from the Pi directly (over HDMI) everything works fine, so I don't think there is a problem with the external HDD.

    It may be worth giving the current LE9 alpha version (8.90.003) or a current Milhouse build (see LibreELEC Testbuilds for RaspberryPi (Kodi 18.0) ) a try.

    Quite a lot of ethernet and Wifi fixes for the RPi3B+ are included in these builds that are not in 8.2.5.

    Also test the network performance (using iperf3 from the network-tools addon and a iperf3 client on some other box in your LAN), DLAN / powerline adapters can be problematic as well. Test with a "real" ethernet connection (ethernet cables and a switch) to see if this is an issue.

    I can't comment on UPNP / DLNA, never used this.

    so long,

    Hias

    • Official Post

    I know we tested an add-on version of Mini-DLNA on a Generic (not RPi) LibreELEC 8.90-something build some 6 months ago or so, and that seemed to work okay for video, music and pictures. I don't know what its current status is.

    Otherwise, you could install Raspbian onto your RPi3B+ and install Mini-DLNA. That won't require you to 'scrape' anything, it would just serve the media files 'as-is'. It won't keep any statistics or settings like watched status or resume points.

    • Official Post

    I have a similar setup to you, except files (Samba) are transmitted by 5GHz Wifi and I don't get any issues. So something is definitely wrong.

    As asked before - what type of files are being streamed? 4K, x264, x265, VP9?

    Also, how is the HDD connected and is it powered or connected via a powered USB hub.

    A log file might be helpful, also the output of dmesg|paste.

    Please provide a full debug log.

    How to post a log (wiki)

    1. Enable debugging in Settings>System Settings>Logging
    2. Restart Kodi
    3. Replicate the problem
    4. Generate a log URL (do not post/upload logs to the forum)

    use "Settings > LibreELEC > System > Paste system logs" or run "pastekodi" over SSH, then post the URL link

    In terms of the video files I'm streaming they are all 1080p at max. I have to double check again to see which codecs they're using but I'm quite sure the majority was H264. Two days ago I switched from the Ethernet connection to Wifi and since then no further problems occurred.

    If the problem shows up again I'll use this thread to post a complete log. Until then thank you all for your ideas.

    Hello!

    I've been having a very similar issue as of now. A simple 720p show in H.264 over SMB tends to stutter and very often freezes while I have to wait for it ot load when my Raspberry 3B+ is connetted via Ethernet. I have no such issue on WiFi.

    I would like to stay on Ethernet though as I've noticed that the unit runs way hotter when using WiFi than when using Ethernet.

    Any help would be extremely wellcome.

    Thank you!

    • Official Post
    Quote from Dr.Romca

    Any help would be extremely wellcome.

    The same request applies to yourself too.

    Please provide a full debug log.

    How to post a log (wiki)

    1. Enable debugging in Settings>System Settings>Logging
    2. Restart Kodi
    3. Replicate the problem
    4. Generate a log URL (do not post/upload logs to the forum)

    use "Settings > LibreELEC > System > Paste system logs" or run "pastekodi" over SSH, then post the URL link