LE 8.2.5 unable to play Blu-ray .ISO over gigabit SMB share smoothly on Chromebox or Odroid C2, but RPi3 is fine.

  • LibreELEC 8.2.5 seems to have some sort of issue playing back Blu-ray .ISO files over SMB shares. Neither my HP Chromebox or Odroid C2 can play them smoothly running it (bone stock LE 8.2.5 install). On both the time from clicking on the .ISO in the file menu until the simple menu is displayed is 25-28 seconds. After selecting the title to play the throbber thingy comes up in the middle of the screen, slowly counts up to 100 and then playback starts. However, within about 40 seconds playback starts stuttering with dropped frames / gaps in the audio / stutters & pauses in the video.

    In contrast the Raspberry Pi3 running LE 8.2.5 can play back the .ISO file fine. On it the simple menu pops up in about 14 seconds after clicking the .ISO. The Odroid C2 running wrxtasy's 32-bit 8.2.4.2 build of LE also can play them smoothly. With that HW/SW combo the simple menu pops up in 5 seconds after clicking the .ISO.

    The same .ISO will play fine on all of these from a USB flash drive. The simple menu pops up instantly and playback is smooth from USB. The server is a Windows 10 Pro box with a 10Gb SFP+ connection to the switch and 1GbE from the switch to the boxes (except the Pi which only negotiates 100Mbit). I can get >100MB/sec copying the ISO file from the server to other PCs. Likewise I can copy data over the default SMB shares to the Chromebox and the C2 at >100MB/sec.

    Forcing SMB 2 or SMB 3 from the LE menu didn't change the behavior with the C2. I didn't try that on the Chromebox.

    wrxtasy suggested there is an underlying problem that's affecting multiple LE Kodi platforms and to start a thread here. I can provide logs files for troubleshooting if someone tells me what to log/do and which of the log files are desired.

  • I build a 8.2.5 test version with a patch that wrxtasy suggested.

    You find it here Index of /testing/825-smb-chunk-64k/

    I started another build for Odroid C2 with the same patch, but when that is finished i am in bed, so that needs to wait until tomorrow morning.

    Thanks for the test build.

    I tried this on my Chromebox and it behaves the same as the official 8.2.5. Time to the simple menu after clicking on the .ISO is still 25 seconds and it can't play the Blu-ray smoothly.

    Edit: Here's a debug log with the video and SMB component enabled: http://ix.io/1kud

    I skimmed it. It seems to show the symptoms, but I didn't see a smoking gun.

    Edited once, last by Stereodude: Add debug log (September 19, 2018 at 12:18 AM).

  • I added a 2nd patch and updated the test builds here Index of /testing/825-smb-chunk-32k/

    So 32k version has now 2 patches.

    This one has dramatically improved the network speed. 8) Smooth .ISO Blu-ray playback is no issue now on both the Chromebox and the C2.

    The Chromebox gets to the simple menu in 2 seconds now after selecting the .ISO. The C2 takes 3 seconds. Huge improvement! ^^

    Thanks for not blowing me off and telling me it's just how SMB is and to use NFS instead. :thumbup:

  • Thx to Millhouse who directed me to a Kodi Leia - GETCHUNKSIZE patch and there is also a 32K Bufsize SMB patch from Sam Nazarko's Vero 4K OSMC:

    Quote

    From SN:

    wrxtasy The rationale behind my Vero patch for SMB chunking, around January IIRC was that smbc_read was returning some crackheaded numbers on AML.

    After some testing we found 32768 to be the sweet spot. Tested on 3.14 on both 100M and 1000M. For Pi, the same value is also good.

    If it is also working for RPi and Chromebox's those two patches that sky42 is using would be good for a LE 8.2.5.1 update methinks.

    They should increase speed for all SMB Kodi transfers.