Best settings for 4K HDR playback?

  • I played those very 60+ mbps releases over 100 mbps powerline adapter from a Windows PC (smb) as well as wifi ac from my mobile phone (copied some samples to it) and after the initial buffering, playback went smoothly, buffering at roughly the same rate as playback... I measured over 80 Mbps in both cases with ookla (perhaps not the most accurate method)...
    Off-topic: I'm not sure of the technical validity of those HDR releases, if they indeed are the ones I think they are . I'm not sure you can capture HDR metadata to a file, it was probably inserted after capture with generic or assumed values.

    Sent from my GM 5 Plus d using Tapatalk

    Edited once, last by mytbyte (February 3, 2017 at 7:22 AM).

  • I have spent some time testing SMB/NFS with my very cheap s905x (2gb / 16 gb) and I have 100M LAN with a Wireless AC (sync at 433 Mbit, Iperf proved it at around 230 Mbit using TCP and one stream).
    Based on that, just last night, I have tried files that should run flawlessly < 80 mbit over both networks and I couldn't get a decent result.
    I was about to return the box in favour of a S905 with gigabit interface, when I realized where the bottleneck is.
    I focused on NFS as I have a Linux machine as my NAS, but I believe the same can be applied to SMB.
    So, if I use the Kodi browser to list my videos over NFS, so therefore I'm assuming I'm using its "libnfs" (I think I have seen this name somewhere), I got very disappointing results (even a 75 Mbit is breaking and caching).
    However, if I mount NFS from OS, I can play files up to 140 Mbit over Wireless (jellyfish test with audio hdr 10) and almost up to 90 Mbit over LAN.
    A simple test, from shell (ssh):

    mkdir /storage/mnt
    mount [ipaddress NFS server]:[full share name like /home/nfs/share] /storage/mnt

    You then browse for videos as it's a local directory (/storage/mnt) and play from there

    You can add later on what works for you in this script: Autostart.sh - OpenELEC

    I would like to say that I didn't apply any changes to the way Kodi caches yet, so I believe there is root to improve the results.

    Feel free to PM if you want more details.

    Edited once, last by r4w (February 3, 2017 at 2:17 PM).


  • I can play 4K videos from external hard disk but couldn't stream properly through network, any help appreciated


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  • r4w:
    That sounds amazing!
    You should pitch this to the Kodi devs, wouldn't all platforms benefit from this? :)
    Eventually the devs could change the way we add network sources right now to always be mounted your way.

  • ssarava9  jd17: If you can try to mount NFS as I did and report to me your results, it would be interesting to understand what's your max video bitrate that your box can sustain.

    I can play without problems these files (I'm testing more my wireless at this point as I have more bandwidth):

    bird90.m2ts
    bird90.
    jellyfish-120-mbps-4k-uhd-h264.mkv
    jellyfish-120-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit.mkv
    Camp (Nature) 4K HDR Demo (Sony)h.265 (HEVC)3.840 x 2.160 75.8 Mbit/s 59.9410 bit HDR 2:07
    http://jell.yfish.us/media/jellyfis…4k-uhd-h264.mkv

    Maybe my wireless was better yesterday or I was too tired but I believe I have run this too:

    jellyfish-140-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit.mkv

    I can't see heavily buffering today but it seems that the GPU can't cope with it instead. Yesterday I was running Beta4a and today I'm on Beta5, maybe is there a difference?
    I will try tomorrow from a USB key to see how much it can handle, but so far I'm more than happy as 120 Mbit will cover videos for a while (at least for me).

    PS: sorry for the no-beautiful links ;)

    Edited once, last by r4w (February 3, 2017 at 11:41 PM).

  • There is a Kodi patch that aims to improve libnfs performance a bit, I will include in a next build. Let's hope it will get performance a little bit closer to native mounts.

  • I think he wants to setup a nfs share like a smb share so his Kodi devices can access it (presume his media is stored on a computer running a Windows OS)

    Verstuurd vanaf mijn GT-I9505 met Tapatalk


  • I think he wants to setup a nfs share like a smb share so his Kodi devices can access it (presume his media is stored on a computer running a Windows OS)

    Verstuurd vanaf mijn GT-I9505 met Tapatalk

    This but most solutions I found have to be paid for?

  • There is no noticeable benefit using a NFS server runnig on Windows(in this case)

    Testing a lot today:

    Result was disappointing using network :dodgy:
    Using USB-HDD is working fine. :)

    Best result was using USB3 interface running SPMC directly on the TV :D
    (TV running Android TV OS)

  • Tim_Taylor, have you tried to run iperf first between the two hosts (it works on Windows too) to see how much theoretical bandwidth you may get between the devices?
    Also, it really depends on how your network is designed (I have all Gigabit equipment and my "NAS" is a virtual machine running Linux).
    Regarding mounting NFS from the NAS, maybe you can check with the vendor or Google it for the appropriate string to mount it over linux.
    I didn't test from USB today yet, but I don't expect to see major differences.


  • There is a Kodi patch that aims to improve libnfs performance a bit, I will include in a next build. Let's hope it will get performance a little bit closer to native mounts.

    I'm really looking forward to test it, however I'm having a bad performance with SMB too (I didn't try SMB from shell yet).
    On the other hand, DLNA (UPNP) seems to work well (I use minidlna as server on the same Linux box).

    From USB, I can confirm that Jelly fish 140 Mbit is hitting the hard limit of my box, it can't play it.
    My box is fine with Jelly fish 120 Mbit (both HD 264 or UHD 265) and I can run the file from network via NFS (mount from OS only) or UPNP.

    I have also tried NFS over UDP, but no major changes in performance.

    Just for reference, I'm using this string for the mount (UDP):

    mount -o rw,relatime,vers=3,namlen=255,hard,proto=udp,port=2049,timeo=70,retrans=3 192.168.xx.xx:/home/download /storage/mnt

    TCP:

    mount -o rw,relatime,vers=3,namlen=255,hard,proto=tcp,port=2049,timeo=70,retrans=3 192.168.xx.xx:/home/download /storage/mnt

    But in my case, "mount 192.168.xx.xx:/home/download /storage/mnt" defaults to the TCP options above, so I don't need to pass them on.

    Edited once, last by r4w (February 4, 2017 at 10:50 PM).

  • r4w

    Testing my network speed using iperf

    #S905X Box <-> NAS
    340 MBytes 95.0 Mbits/sec sender
    336 MBytes 94.0 Mbits/sec receiver
    #Raspberry PI 3 <-> NAS
    324 MBytes 90.5 Mbits/sec sender
    323 MBytes 90.3 Mbits/sec receiver

    another test playing Jelly fish 140 Mbit over samba from Windows 10 PC
    not working at all

  • You will never be able to play a 140 MBit/s file over a 100 MBit/s network. Consider getting a USB2 gigabit network adapter. Those with asix chipsets have been reported to work out of the box.

  • Tim_Taylor: If the interfaces your box don't support more than 100 Mbit, the only option is what mmpp suggested. Or a USB Wireless AC adapter.
    I'm fortunate to have Wireless AC in my box, however the box can handle only up to 120 Mbit bitrate streams, so even only 100 Mbit should be adequate.

    You should be able to run birds 90 mbit file.

    Edited once, last by r4w (February 5, 2017 at 1:32 PM).