Please help me stop my baby from crying because kodi keeps buffering

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Gutless2615@ttrpg.network⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

The toddler loves having Kodi full of all their faves but I haven’t been able to iron out all the buffering I’m getting streaming from my mini-pc NFS mounted shares to the pi4 libreelec hooked up via Ethernet in the living room. Everything is wired, so I wouldn’t think that would be an issue but here I am about to put down a couple hundred dollars for a Synology router that looks like the monolith from 2001. Is this going to do the trick, you think? Is there another router recommended to keep a distributed little homelab (any 10tb spread between various usb hdd, raspberry pi’s and mini PCs all hosting a variety of containers and services) running smoothly? Budget I’m hoping to keep under 300 and lower the better but happy toddler and buttery smooth streaming over lan is the priority.

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Scrath@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m not sure about how this works in kodi but in jellyfin the client might request a different resolution which causes the server to try and reencode the provided file on the fly. In my case my server isn’t fast enough for this which leads to constant buffering

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- GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Likely, This is it. It transcodes and hence it has to buffer because the server isn’t strong enough. Best is to use a gpu like intel a380 as described in jellyfin’s doc.
  
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  - Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    No no transcoding happening on kodi, it’s just playing it straight over the lan. That said I do have jellyfin set up on a machine that can handle transcoding for a number of clients. I gave considered switching to Kodi +Jellyfin and seeing if that’s better.
    
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  - Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    There’s no backend server to do the transcoding in this case. Kodi can access raw NFS/SMB file shares the same as accessing local storage, so it’s just reading the file over the network, the same as if you were playing it in VLC on your PC.
    
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- cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Kodi doesn’t do any transcoding. It just mounts the NFS share and plays the file.
  
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ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Are you by any chance using flat Ethernet cables? Those are not to spec and are vulnerable to radio noise. Friends don’t let friends buy and use flat Ethernet cables.

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- Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Woah really?? I am actually…
  
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  - haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Your setup sounds much too complex and misses key information and troubleshooting steps. The flat cables are kind of the cherry on top.
    
    You need to start laying out which devices grab which stuff from where and which cables, switches, routers and panels you are using.
    
    Otherwise people wont be able to help you. A new router isnt going to help you at all.
    
    Example: I run plex on a terra miniserver, stream to my phones and computers over wifi (the server is connected via cat7 wired networking with a tested gigabit connection). I also stream to a libreelec-pi in another room which is also on wifi and has issues sometimes. That is why I‘m gonna wire the connection later this month so that is no issue. I also have an appletv in the livingroom which is connected by wire and has no buffering. There are 3 gigabit switches and a fritz!box also connected but they‘re all gigabit as well: Between PCs and the main router, appletv and the main router and the server and the main router.
    
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- AlotOfReading@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Flat cables can be conformant and they still have twisted pairs. Cables just have to meet the physical properties set by the standard.
  
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  - ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure they might exist but the ones you buy off of That Website never are.
    
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  - haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Just run a sustained load over the cable in both directions and/or use testing tools. Even if the cables were okay, something is sincerely wrong with that setup and its not the pi as they work very well.
    
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MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Your router doesn’t handle LAN traffic so an upgrade shouldn’t make any difference, unless you have multiple VLANs and are passing traffic between them and don’t have a Layer 3 switch in use to handle inter-VLAN routing.

I would probably start with an iperf test for download bandwidth to the Pi from the server. If that looks OK then I would benchmark the NFS share for read speed from the Pi, make sure that’s not doing something weird.

If that all looks good then I would probably suspect that Kodi either isn’t using hardware acceleration properly, or the specific media codec is not supported by the Pi for hardware acceleration.

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jjlinux@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Change the baby for a dog. You’re welcome.

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- redline23@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Instructions unclear. Baby is now a werewolf and howls loudly when Kodi is buffering.
  
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  - jjlinux@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My bad, I apologize. Put it in the freezer for now and I’ll shout out when I have clear instructions in a codeberg repo.
    
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- possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I hear you need dark magic for that
  
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  - SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Broth…er?
    
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  - jjlinux@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Depends on the color of the dog.
    
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vext01@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I gave up on kodi. Jellyfin works better, presumably because it transcodes better.

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- RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Haven’t used Kodi but am running Jellyfin via the official docker image on a Raspberry Pi 4. Even there transcoding works reasonably well for one user at a time, admittedly didn’t try with several users at the same time so far.
  
  Just mentioning the docker image because I used to install it without docker directly via the repository and I never got transcoding to work on the same hardware.
  
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  - possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It still transcodes it just uses the CPU
    
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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
That is a complex setup. What’s wrong with Jellyfin?

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- Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  ? Not particularly. I have an intel mini pc hosting jellyfin and a few drives via nfs and samba in one room along with the rest of my homelab. In the living room I need to get that media to the tv so I’m using a pi4 running libreelec atm to connect to those shares.
  
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Dremor@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
To me it looks like you don’t have enough power, either on the Pi4 side to decode, or the mini-pc to encode.

On the other hand, putting a baby in front of a screen just to stop it from crying isn’t a solution. That’s the best way to make him/her a future problematic child with poor impulse control.

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- Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Appreciate the solicited technical advice, less so the unsolicited parenting advice, thanks! You’ll be shocked to hear that hyperbole exists, I’m sure. I’m just trying to watch the Aristocats with the kiddo without them wondering why the screen stops mid song, stranger.
  
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- RegalPotoo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There are very few things more obnoxious than an asshole for unsolicited parenting advice
  
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  - Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Right? The absolute gall.
    
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- TheBigBrother@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  ADHD in 3, 2, 1…
  
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Faceman2K23@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
can you run something like iperf3 or openspeedtest between the server and client to prove its a network throughput issue?

do you have a network switch you can add to avoid switching through your router (if it is indeed bad?)

Have you ensured you arent unknowingly using wifi at either end?

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Mountain_Mike_420@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Before getting all crazy and changing the setup why don’t you try Wi-Fi. Yes Wi-Fi. Your cable might only be 100mbit and your WiFi may be faster.

Wi-Fi 5 can theoretically transmit data at speeds of up to 3.5 Gbps. And obviously WiFi 6 and 7 are even faster.

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TORFdot0@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The Pi4 USB controller and network adapter share bandwidth. Do you have any devices on the USB port that could be causing collisions? I really can’t think of anything in that kind of scenario that would cause that sort of issue unless somehow you were using USB for video out…

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Saff@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Do you experience buffering if you watch on a pc / laptop on VLC via network? This will tell you if it’s network speed related or hardware power related. I would assume the pi is not quite powerful enough. I am using a device called a Vero 4k+ and it works wonderfully. But my network setup sounds similar to yours, I just have an smb share on my pc and I added it as a source in kodi.

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- Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I don’t, super helpful. So I’m guessing this is a pi bottleneck. Just ordered the Vera V so we’ll see! Fingers crossed for happy toddler.
  
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  - Saff@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Nice, should be a nice upgrade! Been debating getting the V for av1 support, but I’m also just holding off hoping Apple TV will support it soon.
    
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  - Saff@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Any luck with the vero?
    
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  - General_Shenanigans@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    My first thought was also that it’s a Pi bottleneck. I have a 4b, and I don’t think I would really trust it to handle some of the higher-quality streaming. Mayne just barely.
    
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oldfart@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have a similar setup but my nfs server is not a mini pc.

You could try diagnosing if it’s the network or if your mini pc is too busy (maybe out of disk i/o?).

If that’s too hard, temporarly stop all other programs on the mini pc. Does it help?

Does streaming something from the internet to kodi work without freezes? If it’s ok, then network is likely not the issue

Last but not least, does playing the same video from an USB stick work smoothly? If not, maybe the quality is too high or the video is x265

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Zannsolo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Have you tried reading to your kid instead

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- Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thanks, twice a day, asshole!
  
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  - Zannsolo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well maybe don’t post about how you’re kid crys when they can’t watch TV. And maybe you should have solicited advice from your pediatrician.
    
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s38b35M5@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Kodi on my 2015 Nvidia Shield doesn’t stutter for me playing back 30GB+ 4k files on a 1Gb network from and ancient (2012) AMD Athlon TrueNAS box. It could be network related, but you can test this from another machine (laptop, desktop, etc) or by using local playback on the pi. I have cheap network hardware, and have never needed better. All this is to say Kodi mounting NFS shouldn’t need much bandwidth or high end gear. Perhaps the issue is on the playback side. Good luck!

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- Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Thanks! Super helpful data point. I don’t have the same buffering issues streaming the same video to my desktop over nfs, so I’m leaning towards it being a pi4 bottleneck. Just plopped down for a Vera V so fingers crossed that’s the issue.
  
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Glasgow@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
All these answers are wrong you want Stremio.

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Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
NFS	Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency
NUC	Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
SMB	Server Message Block protocol for file and printer sharing; Windows-native

[Thread #918 for this sub, first seen 12th Aug 2024, 12:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

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just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Just get a tablet and run VLC. Hardware transcoding is a privilege, not a necessity.

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- Gutless2615@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s not doing hardware transcoding afaik. This is the equivalent of running VLC, right? It’s kodi we’re not talking about jellyfin transcoding.
  
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  - just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    VLC will just do network transfer and decide on the software side without issue.
    
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NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In my living room, buffering happens when the connection is only WiFi, but you are on ethernet already (which solves that for me).

pi4 libreelec

Have you considered getting one of these small Chinese “Android TV” boxes?

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